Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Venice Beach, California, and Nantucket Island
It was the first day of August, and several days into Chloe’s stint in Venice Beach, when Chloe finally admitted to Janie what she wanted to do.
She had a plan, which was more than Janie could say about herself.
She was still hiding out in Venice, ignoring Alexander’s calls, watching the news for more signs that he’d done what they’d said he’d done, and waiting for her children to demand answers.
The thing was that her children seemed to be flourishing in Venice Beach. They knew not to pester their mother about their father. They were emotionally intelligent, perhaps even more than Janie herself.
When Chloe finally said something about her next steps, they were at the beach, watching Gwen, Conor, and Xander surf their hundredth wave of the week, sipping sparkling water, and exposing their stomachs to the bright sun above.
Janie still hadn’t gotten over how comfortable it was to be back with Chloe again.
Janie felt both twenty and forty-nine at once.
She felt like all the ages she’d been since she’d met Chloe at that fish restaurant in Nantucket in 1996.
Chloe’s voice, her laughter, her stories—they echoed through the years.
And Xander, Conor, and Gwen all called her Aunt Chloe and had barely questioned her arrival, though they hadn’t seen her in several years.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Janie said, rolling onto her stomach and stretching her arms across the hot sand. “I thought I was going to go insane.”
Chloe smiled and pulled her curls into a loose bun. Her eyes reflected the glowing ocean. “I could hear it in your voice on the phone. It reminded me of my darkest moments.”
Janie sat up on her elbows and looked at her friend’s beautiful profile. Just like many friends, she wished she could take her best friend’s pain away.
Look at what the Whitmores have done to us, she thought. But I am a Whitmore! My children are Whitmores!
In the distance, Gwen cried out in ecstasy as she rode another wave. She was fast becoming better than her brothers, and Xander was growing both resentful and proud.
“How long do you want to stay in Venice?” Chloe asked, her voice wistful. It was a logistical question, the likes of which they hadn’t offered to one another since Chloe’s arrival.
Janie let her head fall on her towel. “I don’t know. Do you think I can hide here forever? Or should I move the kids and myself to New Zealand or something? China? Colombia?”
Chloe snorted. “No. I don’t think it’s good to keep running away.” She reached for one of the apples they’d brought and took a massive, crunchy bite. “If anything,” she said after a long time of chewing, “I think we should run toward our problems. Face them.”
Janie’s stomach twisted. She sat upright and wrapped her arms around her knees. But as much as she wanted to protest what her friend said, a part of her knew Chloe was correct. Running like this was doing nothing but giving her nightmares.
“What do you have in mind?” she asked.
Chloe’s smile was mischievous. “Don’t you want to get to the bottom of all this? Don’t you want to know what’s really going on with the Whitmores?”
“I don’t know if anyone knows,” Janie said tentatively.
Chloe curled her fist through the sand and squinted. “Benjamin knows.”
Janie winced. Chloe had hardly mentioned Benjamin since she’d arrived in Venice, but Janie knew Chloe well enough to recognize that Benjamin was in Chloe’s thoughts all the time. He was like her permanent ghost.
“He didn’t die,” Chloe murmured.
Janie put her face in her hands and didn’t speak for a good five minutes. The heat on her shoulders became so unbearable that she thought she might have a panic attack.
Finally, Janie whispered, “Where would we run to discover anything?” Her voice was edged with a sarcasm that she wanted to take back.
“We can’t stay on the West Coast,” Chloe breathed. “We have to go east. To Nantucket.”
Janie’s ears rang. “My kids start school in a few weeks.”
“We’ll be back by then,” Chloe said.
“They’ll hate being away from all this.” Janie gestured at the beach, the boardwalk, the sky.
But Chloe shrugged. “Nantucket is paradise, in case you forgot.”
Janie knew Chloe was right about that, that for years she and Alexander had craved to show their children the island where they’d met all those years ago, to take them sailing on Atlantic surf and show them their favorite lobster shack, ice creamery, and diner.
When the kids had been really young, she’d yearned to fly them to Nantucket, dress them all in white, and take beautiful family photographs.
She’d even toyed with asking Alexander to buy a property on Nantucket, one that would allow them to acknowledge Alexander’s family history without owning the horror of the past. But eventually, Alexander had said it was too difficult for him, emotionally speaking, and they’d stopped talking about it.
Chloe squeezed Janie’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “How about an adventure?”
Two days later, Chloe, Janie, Xander, Conor, and Gwen were on an airplane from Los Angeles to Boston, Massachusetts.
Janie had decided to buy tickets from an airline that Alexander wasn’t associated with so as not to put herself at the mercy of other people’s questions.
Alexander’s legal and professional problems were Alexander’s legal and professional problems. But she knew that because she was his legal wife, they were hers, too.
She tried not to think about it, not from thirty thousand feet in the air, where she chatted with Chloe about a new skincare brand they wanted to try, trying to forget where they were headed.
Behind them, her kids were cackling, eating chips a little too loudly, and watching movies silently on their iPads.
When the conversation with Chloe lapsed, Janie turned around, looked at her children, and asked if they were okay.
“We’re fine, Mom,” Gwen said, vaguely irritated as she popped her earbud out of her ear and then returned it just as fast.
At the Boston airport, they waited a few minutes for the rental cars they’d reserved: one for Chloe and one for Janie.
Once they reached the island, Janie planned to rent an additional vehicle for Xander.
The plan was to be in Nantucket for the next three weeks, until school started, and she didn’t want her children to feel stranded at home.
She wanted them to feel free and able to roam the island.
In her opinion, there was nowhere safer on earth.
Well, sort of. If you didn’t think too hard about the nineties. Ha.
They reached the ferry at Hyannis Port at seven that evening.
After they boarded, the kids scrambled to the top deck, where Xander purchased a soda and a Snickers and shared his snacks with his siblings.
Janie watched, always eagle-eyed when it came to her children, until Chloe nudged her and pointed. “There it is.”
The sight of the island after so many years took Janie’s breath away.
She squeezed Chloe’s hand, remembering the first time she’d seen Nantucket.
All she’d had was a backpack, stuffed with dresses and skirts and tubes of lipstick.
She’d strolled through the Historic District for the better part of an hour, inquiring vaguely for gigs, before she’d been offered her first job at the fish restaurant.
“I must have met you on my first day,” she said to Chloe, elbowing her. “Everyone was so mean to me, you remember. They hated that I was stealing their shifts.”
“Which was crazy, because nobody wanted to work.” Chloe giggled. “I remember being really intimidated by you, though.”
“What are you talking about?” Janie was taken aback.
“I mean, you were so much younger than me,” Chloe said.
“And I felt like an exposed nerve, being back on the island after so many years away. I wasn’t sure what I was doing here.
” She took a breath, and the wind swept up from the ocean and blew all her hair back.
“I still don’t really know what I’m doing here! But we’re back.”
Janie laughed, surprised at how euphoric she felt. They were back!
When the ferry rumbled to a stop and set down its ramp, the five of them hurried back to their cars and prepared to drive to the rental house.
There had been a last-minute cancellation on a gorgeous three-story beach house about a mile and a half down the beach from the White Oak Lodge, and Janie and Chloe had sprung for it.
Gwen entered the beach house's address into her GPS, and Janie listened to the instructions as she drove slowly from the port and out toward Siasconset. It felt as if every sun-drenched corner was filled with memories. It was painful. She squeezed the steering wheel and tried to focus on her children, who were laughing excitedly and talking about what they wanted to do first. She’d promised a delicious meal tonight.
“This is where you and Dad met?” Gwen asked. Her voice was curious and in no way manipulative, but it still hurt to hear.
“We did,” Janie said, trying to appear strong. “We were so young.”
She was glad that her children left it at that.
Privately, she wondered if somehow, some way, Alexander knew she was in Nantucket. She questioned if he could sense that she’d brought his children back here—to the place that continued to haunt them both.
The beach house was even better than the pictures.
Janie and Chloe roamed the sunny living room, the back veranda that cut up against the white sandy beach, the kitchen with its marble countertops, the living room with its massive couches and television, and the dining room with its twelve-person table, laughing to one another.
The kids were already upstairs, deciding which room belonged to whom.
“I can’t believe we stayed in that Venice hotel for so long.” Janie winced. “It’s like I panicked and froze there. It wasn’t fair to them.”