Page 44 of Return to Whitmore
“Why didn’t you do this at home?” she asked.
Ralph blinked at her. “They say to do it in a public setting.”
“Who is they?” Charlotte gathered her things and sniffed. She didn’t want to burst into tears in front of all one hundred of the nearby picnickers.
“Come on, Charlotte. Let’s talk about this,” Ralph said. “You know we weren’t meant to be. Actually, it was pretty selfish ofyou to make me break up with you instead. It’s been pretty clear for months that you weren’t happy with me.”
Charlotte coughed and stepped back. “What?” Sure, she hadn’t been happy—but Ralph had been sick, and Jack had left, and everything had felt insane. She felt her life unraveling. “I wish you would have told me all of this before I planned my life around you.”
With that, she turned on her heel and sped away, away from Ralph, away from that fabulous picnic, away from Central Park. She ran back to the apartment she’d shared with Jack, where she now had a new roommate named Bethany who left dishes in the sink and liked boy bands too much. When she came in, Bethany called from her room to say, “I’m going to do the dishes soon!” It was another lie.
Charlotte collapsed on her bed and sobbed. All she wanted in the world was to call Jack, to tell him what had happened, to make him tell her where she could find him. Maybe she could drive to Nantucket and find him at the Madequecham house. But a part of her was terrified to drive that path again. It was the route that had ruined her life. Maybe Nantucket was where bad things happened. Perhaps it was important to stay away.
Instead, Charlotte called Kathy. Although their friendship had been strained lately, a result of bad memories and Charlotte’s broken heart, Kathy came over with buckets of fried chicken and bottles of white wine. They holed up on Charlotte’s bed and watched television and both talked and didn’t talk about Ralph, about “Seth,” about Charlotte’s fledgling career. Nothing seemed to matter anymore, not to Charlotte. She could feel Kathy’s worry for her.
“What if I tried to get you a job at the gallery?” Kathy finally asked, after a few days had passed. “We always need videos done for artist portfolios. And we’re talking about putting more things online.”
Charlotte hated the internet. It felt so sinister to her: too much access to too much information felt so sinister to her. She knew that was wrong, that it could ultimately help her career. But she also hated that when she googled Jack’s name, the only results said he’d died in 1998. If the internet knew so much, how come it didn’t know anything about Jack?
After a few days of groveling, Charlotte pushed herself to work on her most recent documentary, a shorter feature about the history of an old fish market in Greenwich Village. Her heart wasn’t fully in it, but she watched herself research for interviews, ask questions, and film when she could. By midsummer of 2005, Charlotte had the makings of a new documentary and a will to live again.
Very late one night, when Charlotte was up editing on her brand-new laptop, the phone rang. Thinking it was maybe Jack, eager to find her again, Charlotte didn’t hesitate to answer it.
“Is this Charlotte Whitmore?” It was an unfamiliar and gravelly voice that gave Charlotte the creeps.
“Who is asking?” Charlotte asked.
“I’m a friend of the family,” the man said. “I’m looking for Jack Whitmore.”
Charlotte’s blood ran cold. “Jack Whitmore died,” she said automatically. But it was clear that whoever this was didn’t believe that.
“Meet me tomorrow at the SOS Diner on Broadway,” the voice said. “Three o’clock in the afternoon. Don’t be late.”
The man hung up and left Charlotte with a sick feeling in her stomach. At first, she resolved not to go to the diner, resolved to pretend none of this had happened. Something about it was too sinister. But as the hours wore on, her curiosity mounted, so much so that she couldn’t sleep.
She had to go to the diner. She couldn’t fathom not.
The following afternoon at the SOS Diner, Charlotte grabbed a booth in the back and hid herself behind a laminated menu, searching the other tables for some sign of the creepy telephone caller. Three p.m. turned to three ten, which shifted to three fifteen, and still there was no sign of him. Charlotte ordered a cup of coffee and then opted for a slice of pie and told herself that somebody was playing a prank on her. But who else knew about Jack?
Just when she gestured to the server, wanting to pay and get out of there as soon as possible, a man in a cartoonish-looking trench coat entered and shot directly to her table. The man was maybe in his forties, with graying curls and kind eyes. He sat across from her and folded his hands on the table.
“Who are you?” Charlotte rasped. She didn’t have time for these games.
“Thank you for meeting me. My client is very pleased that we made contact,” the private investigator said. “It wasn’t easy to find you, you know.”
Charlotte remembered that Jack had insisted they put the apartment under a different name, that he hadn’t wanted “Whitmore” anywhere near the paperwork. It was under Kathy’s name. When they asked Kathy for the help, she’d shrugged and said, “Sure, but make sure you pay the rent. I don’t want any nasty creditors after me.” They’d promised.
But someone had found her anyway.
“Who is your client?” Charlotte demanded now. And then she took a deep breath and asked, “Is it Tio Angelo? Angelo Accetta?”
Was Tio Angelo after Jack because Jack was the only person who knew anything about what happened that night? Because Jack was after him—eager to figure out what Tio had really been up to, why he’d turned on the family?
“I am not at liberty to say,” he told her.
Charlotte’s frustration mounted. This was ridiculous.
“You have been in contact with Jack Whitmore, have you not?” the man asked.
