Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Florence, Italy
It wasn’t too late to go out for a cocktail, but Alexander was too exhausted and miffed to entertain the idea, no matter how often Ned Fulton, his friend for the past twenty-five years, suggested it.
“I think we need to take a load off,” Ned had said twice so far, stretched out on the bed near the window, rubbing his forehead with the heel of his hand.
“Haven’t we done enough?” He meant, haven’t I done enough?
But he was cautious of Alexander’s mood.
Ned had not done enough, in fact. He hadn’t done what Alexander had hired him to do.
Ned had just returned to their hotel in Florence with awful news.
After working as a gardener at Francesca’s villa and after interviewing her with pointed questions, he was no closer to discovering where Jack Whitmore, Benjamin Whitmore, and Tio Angelo had disappeared to on the night of the fire, nor where they were now.
Alexander had long ago given up on the idea that any of them were dead, as many believed.
It was too convenient. Plus, where were the death certificates?
Why hadn’t there been official funerals?
How had this secret been buried for nearly thirty years?
The Whitmores had been too upper-class, too important in Nantucket society, so they’d been able to manipulate the story however they pleased.
Something was fishy. And now, that story from so long ago was affecting Alexander, his career, his life.
Alexander—now fifty-one years old as of this month, incredibly—scratched his gray-and-black five o’clock shadow and collapsed in the chair next to the mirror. He could feel the adrenaline burning off, leaving him nervous and broken. He felt older than he ever had.
Ned got up off his hotel bed and gave Alexander a meek smile.
Alexander remembered when he’d first met Ned.
They’d been at flight school and just kids, really, pursuing their passion for air travel.
But Ned had been no good. It felt cruel to say so, but it was true.
He’d had no confidence in the cockpit, so much so that he’d actually been kicked out.
Alexander had taken Ned out for drinks that night and asked him where he saw himself in ten, fifteen years.
Ned had said he still saw himself in the skies.
Alexander had said, “I’ll help you do whatever it is you want to do.
But I think you have to put your flying to bed. ”
Ned had decided to become a private detective.
Alexander was no longer sure if he was very good at that either.
Then again, Ned had had several successes with other clients.
He’d found people’s long-lost daughters, sisters, mothers, and friends.
He’d tracked down crooked businessmen who’d wronged “ordinary folks,” and he’d helped wives blackmail ex-husbands, which Alexander didn’t really approve of.
But when Alexander had first approached Ned to find his father, brother, and uncle, Ned hadn’t gotten very far. Even now, all those years after the first search, Ned was failing him.
Alexander raised his chin and looked hard at Ned.
He wanted to say something cruel, something that showed how disappointed he was.
But despite everything, Ned was still his friend.
They hadn’t seen one another for years, and they were both in Florence.
Maybe he’d go out for a cocktail and a conversation.
Perhaps he’d find a way to let Ned down easily.
You’re fired, but I still like you, he thought.
Alexander and Ned left the hotel and wandered through the densely hot and humid night.
Alexander’s thoughts hummed with questions about his mother, about how she seemed.
He hadn’t seen her in many years at this point, and he ached with an urgent need to visit her now.
But he was never sure how entrenched Francesca was in their family drama. He wasn’t sure if he could trust her.
Ned and Alexander were seated in a gorgeous piazza, with a glowing Roman fountain at its center.
They ordered Negronis and were served bowls of chips, olives, and Tirelli, which Alexander adored.
He remembered that Tio Angelo had brought bags and bags of Tirelli to the White Oak Lodge when he’d first moved to Nantucket, and Alexander and his siblings had stuffed themselves silly with them. Jack had made himself sick.
Ned raised his glass, as though he wanted to toast something. But he winced and put it back down again. “I know I’ve failed you, Al.”
Alexander hated the look of sorrow on his friend’s face, but he didn’t know what to say to make it better.
“But it isn’t over, you know,” Ned said. “There are other strategies we can try. There are other ways to get to Jack and the others. What about your other sisters? The ones in Rome?”
“Allegra and Lorelei?” Alexander considered them, the two sisters who’d stuck together since the Whitmore family had fallen apart, and shook his head. “I imagine they’re pretending the rest of us don’t exist. They’re all about appearances, and the Whitmore story doesn’t do much for their brand.”
“That doesn’t mean they don’t have skeletons and aren’t hiding things,” Ned said. “In my experience, it’s always the people you don’t expect who’re hiding something essential.”
Then why haven’t you found anything about the Whitmores? Alexander wanted to ask. Why has it taken you months to learn nothing?
But as they sat in silence, Alexander remembered that, when Ned had failed him the first time around, he’d hired another private detective who’d done just about as well as Ned.
He felt like a dog chasing its own tail.
Maybe there was nothing to learn about the Whitmore family.
Maybe their story had burned up and disappeared the night of the fire.
Ned was still talking, suggesting better paths to discovery, thinking of other disguises he could wear so that he could get closer to some of the sisters.
Alexander had told Ned his theories about why Jack, Benjamin, and Tio Angelo had disappeared that night, but because it was all so secretive, Alexander never knew if his theories were correct.
Maybe they were acting as red herrings, distracting Ned from what was really going on.
Alexander and Ned ordered fresh cocktails and fell silent.
Alexander watched the tourists around them, laughing, ordering red wine, and holding hands under the dense Italian sky.
Because he still spoke Italian (and always would, as he’d learned it right alongside his English as a baby and toddler), he was inundated with too much information at once.
He could hear the Italian servers making fun of the other tourists.
He could listen to the American tourists making fun of the Italian servers.
Is this what people did when they went on vacation?
Alexander suddenly couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on vacation.
His palms were sweaty, and he wiped them on his pants.
Finally, Alexander burst out, “You know what’s at stake for me, don’t you?”
Ned melted before his eyes and looked into his fresh Negroni. “I know. I do.”
Alexander rubbed his chest and, feeling fidgety, considered getting up and walking through Florence, leaving Ned with the bill and all this guilt.
But Alexander was on the verge of tears.
“What I know about that night could destroy me, you know? It could destroy my career. My family. It could ruin everything I’ve built.
Which is why we have to get to the bottom of who’s after me.
” He stabbed his finger in the center of the table and watched the candlelight quiver.
“I didn’t ask for any of this. And every year that goes by makes me think that maybe I’ll get away with it.
Maybe I’ll be free from the Whitmores. Maybe I won’t have to face July 4th, 1998.
But lately, it’s felt like that fire is creeping after me, apt to destroy everything. And I can’t take it.”
Ned blinked furiously, as though he was on the verge of crying.
Alexander wondered if other of his clients had yelled at him like this; if others had made him feel bad for not achieving the results he’d promised.
Alexander remembered how frightened Ned had looked in the cockpit, trying and failing to regain control of the plane.
Always, their instructor had taken over, shaking his head.
“Look,” Alexander said, “I respect you, Ned. You’re a brilliant detective.”
“Don’t fire me,” Ned said stiffly. “I know I can find what you’re looking for.”
“But you keep telling me how hard it is. Maybe we should agree it’s impossible?”
Ned filled his mouth with Negroni. It seemed impossible for him to lift his eyes to Alexander. “Nothing is impossible. I have to keep working. I have to keep digging. The past is right beneath our fingers. I can feel it.”
Alexander heaved a sigh and agreed to keep paying Ned for his private detective work. But a part of his stomach tied itself into a knot and reminded him what a fool he was.
If I don’t find my way out of this, he thought, I’ll be ruined.
After their second drink, Alexander and Ned parted ways.
Ned wanted to head back to the hotel to get some sleep, while Alexander preferred to roam the streets and think.
They shook hands, and Ned hurried away, looking more like an insect than a man.
Alexander sometimes imagined private detectives that way, always slinking through the cracks of things to discover the truth.
Alexander meandered through the city streets, his hands in his pockets, his mind racing. He’d been in Florence no longer than a few days, but he was itchy, eager to get going again. Such was the life of a pilot (for as long as he could call himself a pilot).
Alexander found himself on an iconic bridge, watching water trickle along beneath the moonlight. He thought about the female Whitmores: about Nina, Charlotte, Lorelei, Allegra, Francesca. He felt a dull ache, as though missing the women in his life was an old wound that would never really heal.
Before he chickened out, he reached for his phone and dialed the number of a person many time zones away.
The phone rang and rang, but no one answered.
He guessed they never would again. Fighting the urge to throw the phone in the river, he shoved it back in his pocket and bent his head. He had to find a way through this.