Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Nina
July 2012
O n the day of Nina Whitmore’s wedding to Daniel Plymouth, Nina’s soon-to-be mother-in-law spent nearly forty-five minutes reminding Nina that it was okay that she didn’t have any family to invite because the Plymouths were her family now. “And it’s not like the Whitmores were ever a decent family to you!” Fluttering around the salon, her hair in curlers, her makeup half done so that she had one very thick eyebrow and one very slender one, Deborah Plymouth presented the facts of Nina’s life as though she were a haughty political candidate, reminding Nina, “After you lost your great-aunt, I know you had nobody to reach out to, and I know your family is scattered to the four winds. We just want you to know that we’ll fill both aisles, love. You don’t have to worry about being an embarrassed bride. You will have plenty of love.”
Until that moment, it had never fully occurred to Nina to be embarrassed by how few wedding guests were invited, specifically from her own life. Since she’d met Daniel at Princeton, she’d fallen so completely into his world, his friends, his family, that she’d nearly forgotten that back in Michigan, she’d been raised by Great-Aunt Genevieve and had a shadow of a life, just a few acquaintances, and buckets and buckets of dreams. Nantucket was a thing of the past—and more like a nightmare than anything else. But apparently, Deborah was very much aware of the difficult nature of Nina’s past and here, just three hours before the ceremony, wanted to remind Nina all about it. Did that mean Daniel had spoken to Deborah about Nina’s family? What had he told her? Had he told her about the White Oak Lodge? But Nina had only told Daniel what she knew—which wasn’t a lot.
But it didn’t matter, Nina reminded herself. Daniel and Nina were in love and preparing to pledge that love to one another in front of two hundred and fifteen guests, most of whom, Daniel had told her, were “social acquaintances” of his parents, people who’d come from money and were prepared to keep that money and social standing no matter what. The fact that Daniel had studied anthropology had ruffled a few feathers, of course, because where was the money in that? But his parents soon understood that a life of intellectual pursuits and academia very much fit in with their social structure, and they were often caught bragging about their son, his big brain, and his future as a professor, for sure at Princeton because where else? The fact that his fiancée was supposedly going to be an anthropology professor too was not something they talked about, presumably because they thought she’d give it up and have some kids and be a Plymouth wife—a strong and good-hearted creature whose place was far off campus, probably in the kitchen.
This was something that Nina and Daniel sometimes laughed about, mostly because everyone knew that Nina was the prize-winning anthropology student and Daniel was not. “You’re the brains,” Daniel teased her, “and I’m in it for the tweed suits.”
Not that Nina didn’t think Daniel was brilliant. She wouldn’t have had any interest in him were it not for his wonderful mind, his zipping thoughts, their hours-long conversations that ran deep into the night about all things anthropology: language and culture, heritage and identity, migration and diaspora, and so on. Nina’s few friends—who were also at university and therefore also Daniel’s friends—liked to say that Nina and Daniel would be impossible partners for anyone outside of their field. But it was that way for most graduate students, Nina knew. Once you became obsessed with something, it was all you could see in the world. Daniel fit into that picture.
Nina walked down the aisle at two thirty in the afternoon and performed all the rituals of a beautiful East Coast bride. She said her vows, kissed her husband, and talked endlessly with people whose names she would never remember, people she would maybe see again at Christmas or birthday parties or maybe never again. She shoved cake lightly into Daniel’s mouth and accepted his cake-shoving, laughing and drinking more champagne. She was caught in the splendor of a life she’d never imagined would be hers, not after the fire at the White Oak Lodge, and she hardly gave herself time to remember her own family, the family she hadn’t known since she was eleven years old. When she and Daniel danced to their first song, he kissed her cheek gently and whispered, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”
That night, Daniel carried Nina over the threshold of the honeymoon suite and set her on the mattress so that the skirt of her elaborate wedding dress went all around her.
“I feel like a doily,” she joked.
Daniel kissed her collarbone, her forehead, and her ear. “You look like my beautiful bride,” he told her.
Nina closed her eyes and was suddenly plagued with the image of her mother and father, dancing together on the sands in front of the White Oak Lodge as a copper sun dunked into the water behind them, her mother’s hair black and sweeping, her father’s hand large and powerful on her mother’s back. Nina opened her eyes and shook the image out. Be in the moment, she reminded herself, kissing her husband and embracing her future. The Whitmores were gone, and this was all she had.
That night, twisted up in one another’s limbs in a beautiful embrace, Nina swept her fingers through his thick black chest hair and laughed with Daniel about their wedding guests, about the faux pas they’d made, about the silly gifts they’d gotten, and about Daniel’s mother, who’d wanted all eyes on her as much as possible throughout the reception. “She’s a diva,” Nina whispered. “She told me she thinks it’s insane that we’re pushing back the honeymoon. But come on! We’re both writing our theses. We need to be here. We need to work.”
They planned to travel to South America next year—Chile and Argentina—to study various mountainous tribes and write additional research papers, thus elevating their theses in ways that would, they hoped, escalate their tracks to becoming professors and, later, to securing tenure. Their plan was to help one another through their academic trials and deepen their understanding of the anthropological world. They'd decided that trip to South America would serve as their honeymoon. Nina thought this was endlessly romantic.
But now, the glint in Daniel’s eye told her he was up to something. “I had an idea about that,” he said.
Nina struggled to keep from groaning. She wanted to say, your parents didn’t give you money to force you to take me on a honeymoon, did they? But she kept it in.
“Come on, Nina,” Daniel said, touching her hair. “We only get married once, right? We need to celebrate.”
Nina groaned again and reminded Daniel of all the work she’d planned for the month of August, the long hours she’d spent at the library outlining her thesis paper and reading testimonials from previous anthropologists who’d traveled through South America, the huge chunks of time required of her to sit in rooms and think. “I just don’t see how we can honeymoon anywhere when I have that lined up for myself,” she said, “and I thought you had similar plans?”
Daniel assured her he did. “The honeymoon I have in mind isn’t too far,” he explained.
Nina’s stomach churned with anxiety. She got out of bed and poured herself a glass of water, feeling Daniel’s eyes follow her around the room. Her feet were bare, and she was suddenly chilly. She tugged a fluffy hotel robe from the closet and pulled it around her shoulders. “I take it you want it to be a surprise,” she said finally, recognizing Daniel’s expression as one he’d worn when he’d thrown her a surprise birthday party or taken her out to dinner without telling her where they were going.
Daniel opened his arms and wrapped them around her, tugging her back to bed. “You’re going to love it,” he said, nuzzling her neck. “Don’t I know you better than anyone? Don’t I know what you’d like?”
What could Nina do but agree?
True to his word, Daniel didn’t tell her anything about their “mini-honeymoon,” save for which dates she needed to set aside. He opted for the final weekend in July, days of ravenous heat that had Nina running from her car to the air-conditioned library and back again. “I hope we’re going to Antarctica,” she said, throwing sundresses and shorts and tanks into a suitcase.
To this, Daniel winked and said, “Don’t forget your swimsuit.”
Nina and Daniel packed up Daniel’s Porsche—a gift from his mother and father—and drove north. Daniel had a brilliant memory and required no navigation, and Nina did her best to avoid reading signs or paying attention to what highway they were taking and how far out they were going. They’d left Princeton at nine in the morning and stopped for gas and lunch three hours later, eating tuna salad sandwiches at a diner that played Elvis exclusively and had what looked to be no fewer than fifteen signed photographs of him. Daniel said, “I bet they’re fakes,” just as the server came up and informed them that, no, the king himself had signed each and every one of them. When she walked away, Daniel and Nina chuckled, and Daniel said, “I bet she doesn’t know she’s talking to a couple of anthropologists. We could get to the bottom of that claim if we wanted to.”
“I don’t know that I want to,” Nina joked. “Sometimes it’s fun to believe in a fake version of the truth.”
“Most people call that lying,” Daniel said.
Nina raised her shoulders and ate a potato chip. “I think for most people, lying and living are closely related.”
“What about for us?”
Nina smiled. “I think we’re all about the truth. For better or for worse.”
Daniel said, “That’s my wife.”
Such was her joy, and Nina thought she might float out of the diner.
Daniel paid the server in cash and tipped 30 percent.
But it was less than an hour later on the road when Nina saw the sign for Nantucket Island. It felt like a cold stone in her stomach. She jerked around to look at Daniel, who’d seen the sign as well and wore a funny and handsome smile, one that told her that the assumption she had was right. They were going to Nantucket Island. Nina’s heart raced, and her palms were sweaty. The least he could have done was tell her—tell her they were going to the island where she’d been born, the island where she’d been raised with her five Whitmore siblings at the immaculate White Oak Lodge, the island where, after a mysterious fire on the Fourth of July, she’d been ripped from the foundation of her childhood and taken to live with her Great-Aunt Genevieve in Michigan. It was an origin story like something from an old Charles Dickens novel, she knew, but it was also her truth. She swallowed. Had Daniel’s mother put him up to this? Had she said, you need to dig around and see what’s really going on back on the island?
When Nina didn’t say anything for another five minutes, sitting in the passenger seat throbbing with fear, Daniel raised his chin and said, “We’re just going to go see what it’s like. We’re anthropologists. We don’t let anything remain uncovered. We stare the truth in the face.” He flicked his eyes toward hers and tilted his head. “Right?”
Nina closed her eyes and remembered the smell of the fire. She remembered the glass exploding in the window frames and someone screaming. Nina herself had already been outside; it was the Fourth of July, and she’d been watching the fireworks with the other kids staying at the White Oak Lodge, children her own age and children so much younger than the rest of her siblings. Nina’s oldest sibling, Alexander, was born in 1974—a full thirteen years before Nina and the others had followed dutifully after him. It meant that Nina had very little in common with her brothers and sisters. It meant that from a young age, she understood what it meant to be lonely.
Nina didn’t say anything else until Daniel drove the Porsche onto the ferry, cut the engine, and hauled around the car to open her passenger-side door. He leaned down and took both of her hands in his. “I’m right here,” he reminded her gently, his thumb tracing a line over her knuckles. “You don’t have to be afraid.”
Nina raised her eyes to his and reminded herself that showing fear was something she’d told herself from a young age never to do. She couldn’t let her older brothers or sisters know she was frightened because they would use it to their advantage. And when she’d moved to Michigan, she couldn’t let her new classmates recognize the bizarre nature of her previous circumstances, or else they would slap a “weird” label on her and give her a wide berth. Even still, she’d struggled to make friends and had decided, basically, who needs them? Studying people from a distance was always more interesting. It meant taking yourself out of the equation.
Upstairs, Daniel and Nina hovered at the railing and watched the island draw closer. There was a knot in Nina’s throat that she struggled to loosen. When Daniel made a joke, she remembered a split second too late to laugh, and it sounded false in her ears. Did Daniel notice?
They reached the island and drove to a quaint B&B not far from the Historic District and three blocks from the Sutton Book Club, where Nina’s mother, Francesca, had often dropped Nina off to read and talk about books with other children. Francesca had known Nina was bookish, but by then, Francesca had raised five other children and was exhausted and ill-equipped to nurture Nina’s intellect. At least, that was how Nina remembered it.
The B&B had a beautiful upstairs bedroom with European-style shutters and glowing white drapes and a king-sized bed with the fluffiest pillows Nina had ever felt. Daniel urged her to change into her swimsuit, and they hurried back to the car to drive to a beach she half remembered from her childhood—Sconset Beach, with long, sweeping sand dunes and gorgeous beach dwellers. The Nantucket Sound was even more turquoise and grand than she remembered, and when she and Daniel held hands and ran into the waves, she felt a sense of euphoria she hadn’t since she was eleven years old.
For dinner, they had a four-course fish dinner with plenty of white wine. They talked about the children they were sure to have after they’d secured their positions as professors of anthropology. “Isn’t it wild,” Daniel said, cracking open a crab leg, “that we’re still at the beginning of our lives? It feels like so much has already happened. How do we quantify all of it?”
Nina smiled and agreed.
“It’s like, sometimes I just want to study myself or spend a good few years studying you,” Daniel said. “It’s like each human has within them a universe of decisions and memories and complications. Every human might require twenty-five research papers written just about them.”
Nina set down her fork and picked up her wine. Her heartbeat slowed. Above them was a densely black sky filled with what seemed to be hundreds of stars. Nina felt very small.
“I just think it’s a shame, you know,” Daniel said. “That you don’t know more about your past. You spend so much time studying everything else in the world, but in Nantucket, there is this great black hole.”
Nina’s thoughts swirled. Just let him talk , she told herself. He’ll tire himself out. He always does.
And then Daniel said, “I mean, you don’t even know why the White Oak Lodge caught on fire.”
Nina snapped the glass of wine back on the table and blinked at him. “I told you. It was a fire on the Fourth of July. It’s pretty clear to me that it was a fireworks accident.”
Daniel rubbed his palms together and leaned over the table. “But how do you know that for sure? Look at the facts, Nina. Your entire family scattered after that. Your father and brother died, but you didn’t go to their funerals.”
Nina pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead and looked down at her fish curry, glistening in sauce. For the first time since she’d met Daniel, she wanted to tell him to keep his mouth shut. His beautiful mouth. She tried to take a bite of food, but she was so distracted that it tasted of nothing.
A realization struck her like a lightning bolt. This was no ordinary honeymoon. Daniel brought her here to study the Whitmore family. But why would he do that without asking? Suddenly, she was on her feet, and the chair she’d been sitting in was sideways on the floor. A few people in the restaurant were looking at her. Daniel was asking her if she needed a glass of water, but she was already on her way to the bathroom, where she threw up most of her dinner. Her legs shook violently. When she came out of the stall, Daniel was standing there, his eyes filled with worry. He held her and told her the bill was already paid, so they could go.
That night, Nina slept for ten hours and woke up to a buttercream morning. Daniel apologized profusely. He said he understood that this was incredibly emotional for her. “I don’t think I really got it before,” he said with a soft sigh, “but I do now, and I’m sorry. You say the word, and we can go.”
But Nina had lost the harsh stab of fear from the night before. She’d started to see his point, sort of. Why was it that she knew so little of what had happened to her family? Why had she accepted what Great-Aunt Genevieve had told her—that her mother was too grief-stricken to care for her, that her siblings were adults who needed to step away from Nantucket, and that it wasn’t strange that there hadn’t been a funeral for her father and brother? She’d been eleven and terrified. She’d been thrust into the Midwest with a suitcase and a backpack and a violent fear in her heart. Great-Aunt Genevieve had hardly left her sofa —had hardly done anything but eat TV dinners, watch reality television, and talk badly about Nina’s mother. Very suddenly, Great-Aunt Genevieve was the only person in the world who said she loved Nina. Very suddenly, Great-Aunt Genevieve was the only person in the world who demanded that Nina say she loved her back.
It was no small miracle that Nina had managed to go to undergrad and graduate school. It was no small miracle that she’d been “normal” enough to fall in love and get married. Not that anyone would ever call Nina “normal.”
Nina’s lips quivered. Up at Daniel, she blinked and said, “You know, maybe we should go to the Nantucket Historical Society. Just to look around and see what they have. Maybe something will turn up?”