Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Nina
June 2025
I t shouldn’t have surprised Nina that Jeremy was still working the archives of the Nantucket Historical Society. After all, it was only thirteen years after her first visit in 2012—a lifetime, in her case, but only a blip on an island like Nantucket, where the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Jeremy was no longer the strapping young jock of his youth, the football player who’d suffered greatly after a major car accident, but he’d transformed into what amounted to a very handsome middle-aged father with a wedding band on his left ring finger and, on his desk, a photograph of a recent wedding day and another of a very young woman who might have been his daughter. Nina searched his face for some memory that they’d met before—that, once upon a time, she’d been a twenty-five-year-old brand-new bride who’d let her new husband con her into coming to Nantucket to “dig around her past.” But Jeremy gave no indication of recognizing her face. He stuck out his hand and said, “I’m Jeremy. How can I help you?”
Despite her years of living and working as a professional anthropologist—after managing to communicate with tribes in South America and monks in Asia, Nina wasn’t yet sure how to attack the situation, which was, ironically, on her island home. She shook his hand and said, “Hi. I’m Nina, a professor of anthropology at Princeton.”
Jeremy’s face brightened with excitement. “Princeton! Anthropology! What a pleasure to meet you. It isn’t every day we get people of that caliber down here in the basement archives. Dare I say you’re researching something?”
Nina smiled and scanned the drawers where, back in 2012, she and Daniel had dipped their toes into initial White Oak Lodge history. She’d run out of here, too frightened to face her past and angering Daniel, who’d wanted to dig deeper to expose the roots of Whitmore pain. Why had he wanted to do that—so soon after their wedded bliss had begun? Never, in all their years of marriage since, had they talked about it. She wondered what Daniel would say if he knew she’d come back here alone.
“I’m conducting research on old historical families in Nantucket,” Nina explained, hoping that Jeremy didn’t know so much about anthropology as to suggest this sort of thing wasn’t exactly anthropology-based research. Her story was half baked at best. “Namely, the Whitmores.”
Suddenly, there was a creak on the staircase, and Nina and Jeremy spun around to see none other than Alana Copperfield—a beautiful ex-model who, if Nina remembered correctly, had been the reason for Jeremy’s long-ago car accident, the high school girlfriend who’d done him wrong. The year before Nina left the island, the Copperfields had been shamed, their father thrown into prison, and the children rushing out into the four winds. It was a story not entirely unlike the Whitmores’, save for what had happened recently. Nina had caught a newspaper headline about the family, one that cited Bernard’s innocence, but she’d been so lost in the chaos of her own life that she hadn’t put too much time into discovering more. Now, to her disbelief, Alana cleared the distance between the staircase and the desk and greeted Jeremy with a light kiss. She was the woman in the wedding photo.
“What are you doing here?” Jeremy said.
“I thought we could grab lunch,” Alana said, her smile every bit as sensational as the one that had graced the cover of countless magazines over the years. How much older than Nina was she? Nina thought she was maybe Jack’s age—seven or eight years older and therefore forty-four or forty-five. No surprise she’d aged like a dream.
Jeremy winced and glanced at Nina, who, she knew, he was meant to “babysit” during her time in the archives. Just when he was about to tell Alana he couldn’t, Nina piped up to say, “It isn’t my first rodeo with historical documents. You can call Princeton and ask them to vouch for me.”
To add credence, she fished her Princeton professor badge from her wallet and flashed it—feeling like a cop overseeing a crime scene.
Jeremy let out a soft laugh of what seemed like relief. “No need to call Princeton. I trust you. Think you’ll be longer than an hour? That’s when I’ll be back.”
“Not sure,” she said. “But anything I find, I can just take photographs of. I don’t need to check anything out.” Not yet, anyway.
Jeremy reached for his keys and looped his arm around Alana’s back. He reminded Nina that he’d be back soon to answer any questions she might have, and then he was gone, their laughter echoing up the staircase and winding through the cobblestone streets.
It seemed it had been easy for them to fall back in love.
Nina opened the first drawer with a shaking hand and took a second to find and remove the photograph of her father at age ten. There, Benjamin Whitmore was holding up that newly caught fish that flashed in the sunlight of a forgotten afternoon. Frozen forever—just thirty-eight years before his death. Her breath caught in her throat. Everything rushed back at once: the ornate dinner with Daniel, her belief that she’d never be able to face what had happened at the White Oak Lodge, her sudden fear that Daniel wasn’t who she’d always thought him to be. She’d been right about all of it. But she’d forced her fears about Daniel into the dark alleys of her mind and proceeded to build a life with him—a life with two children and a beautiful house a few blocks from Princeton campus, a life of theses and research papers and tremendous amounts of travel.
It had been a good life. But most of it had been a lie.
It was a relief to be in that basement alone. It was a relief to feel like Daniel was miles and miles away and without any comprehension of where she was. Slowly, she shifted through articles and photographs and Whitmore-related items, using her cell to take photographs and jotting notes into her notebook. So many years after the fire, it felt as though the story of the White Oak Lodge was more like a myth like the characters of her family were characters from a storybook, like any attempt to find them was the same as trying to find Rumpelstiltskin or Snow White. But the thing was, after all these years, she’d held that photograph she’d stolen from the restaurant—the photograph that seemed to depict her dead brother Jack Whitmore on a golden beach in the year 2002. The photo had moved from one desk to another, from one house to another, from the office at Princeton and back to the office at her home. It had always eaten away at her, begging to be understood. She’d come back to reckon with the past. To put away the idea that Jack had actually escaped death that night. It had been gnawing away at her.
So many years later, she was grateful she’d never told Daniel about the photograph. He’d been overeager to learn about the Whitmores, to unravel the events of her past, especially after she’d told him that she wanted nothing to do with them. But she should have seen that coming, she guessed. He was a scientist. It was not only his job to answer difficult questions—he saw it as his mission.
Eventually, Nina found the very first published newspaper article about the fire at the White Oak Lodge. Sitting on the cold concrete ground, she read and reread the article, feeling as though she was dropping into the sludge of time, unsure if she’d have the strength to swim her way out again.
It read:
On the Fourth of July, at approximately 11:17 p.m., a fire broke out at the luxurious White Oak Lodge, which proceeded to consume much of the hotel. Sources at the scene suggest that the cause of the fire was a rogue firework from the beachside celebrations—the likes of which are known as some of the very best Fourth of July celebrations on the island. Due to the joyous atmosphere and the intoxication of many of the guests, the fire wasn’t called in for quite some time, and firefighters didn’t reach the scene till nearly midnight. By this time, much of the property was damaged beyond immediate repair. Most of the hotel guests escaped the fire and required no medical assistance. The fire did, however, claim two casualties: Benjamin Whitmore (48) and Jack Whitmore (17), both of whom were inside the White Oak Lodge, in the Whitmore family quarters, at the time of the fire.
The White Oak Lodge was originally built in 1862 and was a pillar of the Nantucket community and the longtime home of the elite Whitmore family. Jack and Benjamin preceded in death a number of Whitmore family members: Benjamin’s loving wife, Francesca, and the remaining of their children, Alexander, Lorelei, Allegra, Charlotte, and Nina.
At the mention of her name, Nina nearly dropped the newspaper article. Here it was, proof not only that she’d been a member of the “elite Whitmore family” but also that Benjamin and Jack were dead. Nina took a photograph of the article and hunted through the archives for the death certificates—all of which were located in the entire row three aisles away. There had been a lot of Nantucket deaths. The boxes in which the files were stored weren’t dusty in the slightest, as though numerous other Nantucketers and family researchers waded through these archives, looking for answers, looking for confirmation of who they were, where they belonged and who had come before. Nina flicked through the folders to find July 1998. Confident was the word for what she was. Ready to move on? That photograph from 2002 was either incorrectly dated or not of her brother at all. It was a red herring, something meant to throw her off. She knew that in just a few moments, she’d find Jack’s death certificate, solid confirmation of what she’d always known, and she’d immediately leave the archives, go back to the cabin, pack up her things, and go pick up her children from the summer camp. I have a divorce to get back to , she reminded herself. It’s time to move on to the next phase of my life.
But in the file, she found no such death certificate—not for her father, nor for her brother. Nina didn’t know what to do. Her mouth tasted of sand. She kept checking and re-checking, flipping through the files, reading and rereading the obituary pages from July 5th all the way to the 31st. But there was nothing. There was no mention of the funerals she’d supposedly “not been allowed to attend,” either.
Her ears rang.
She couldn’t be in that basement a moment longer.
Nina was extra diligent in putting everything away. Jeremy knew she was a professor from Princeton, and although she wasn’t currently certain about her future at the university, she didn’t want to smudge her once-good name. She checked her phone to see that she’d already been down here a full hour, which meant that Jeremy’s lunch with Alana was running late, the two of them dropping into an ice creamery or kissing on the boardwalk, unable to rip away from one another. Had Daniel and Nina ever been like that with one another? She supposed. But it felt like a story that had happened to somebody else.
When Nina went up the staircase and into the chilly, air-conditioned lobby, her legs wobbled beneath her, nearly toppling her to the tiled floor. Her phone exploded with messages she hadn’t been able to receive down in the basement—some from the divorce lawyer, a couple from Daniel, and two emails from Will and Fiona, which they’d been allowed to write during tech hour at camp. But before Nina had a chance to open anything, the woman at the front counter announced they were closing for the rest of the afternoon.
“It’s a beautiful day!” she said. It meant that she needed Nina to get out of there as soon as possible.
Nina pocketed her phone and booked it out of the Nantucket Historical Archives. She could feel a headache crawling up the back of her neck and threatening to ruin the rest of her afternoon. But when she directed herself back to her car, she spotted someone on the opposite side of the street, drinking a coffee and jotting in a journal. It was Amos, the handyman. Her heart spasmed. She’d known Nantucket to be a teeny-tiny island, a place where everyone knew everyone else, where gossip was like social gasoline, revving everyone forward. But she hadn’t expected to meet the handsome stranger who’d broken into her cabin last night and sat with her in quiet reflection, watching the moon over the Sound. A part of her had put the vision to bed—deciding it was a dream. But here he was.
Nina panged with nerves. On the one hand, she wanted to duck into her car, go back to the cabin, and hatch a plan, one that would unveil why her father and brother didn’t have death certificates and whether their lack of death certificates suggested foul play. Foul play? What am I thinking? The lodge burned down. They were in it. Case closed. Right?
But she saw a cheeseburger special at the little diner Amos was sitting at, six dollars and ninety-nine cents with fries and a soda, and she wanted to drop into a chair across from him and fill herself up. When was the last time she’d eaten anything? She crossed the road and paused in front of his table, trying to make out what he wrote. But before she could, he flinched and looked up, covering his journal with his hand. His eyes melted.
“Nina!” he said.
Nina tried to laugh at herself, at how strange it was that she’d approached him like this. “Hi! I’m sorry. I saw you across the street, and I thought I’d say hi.”
It sounded so sloppy. Could he tell how thrown off she was?
But Amos told her, “I’m so glad. Please. Sit down.”
Nina did. A moment later, a pretty blond woman came out to take her order, and when Amos heard it, he said, “I’ll have the same thing.” The blond woman gave him a funny look, shrugged, and went inside. Nina wanted to ask what that was about, but her head was overstuffed. When the blond woman came back outside, she was carrying two enormous chocolate milkshakes, which she set in front of them, saying, “On the house.”
“Thanks, Stacy,” Amos said.
Nina put her lips around the straw and drank three gulps—more at once than she had in years since she was a girl in Michigan, brokenhearted and nervous, the only child staying at her great-aunt Genevieve’s house. Why hadn’t she been allowed to ask any questions about her parents? Why had her mother never called? Where had her siblings been?
Nina was beginning to question every element of her entire life. What was going on?
“You look like you have something on your mind,” Amos offered.
Nina closed her eyes. A cold chill flushed through her.
“It’s strange to be back,” she whispered.
“I can’t even imagine,” Amos said.
“Did you ever live anywhere else?” Nina asked, forcing herself to open her eyes to look at his shaggy dark curls and the few dog hairs stitched out across his shirtsleeve.
Amos shook his head and let his gaze fall. Nina’s instincts said there was a story there.
And because she was suddenly so exhausted, so sick and tired of her own story, the family she’d never understood and never really known, she asked, “Did you want to leave?” And then she hurried to add, “You don’t have to tell me one way or the other.”
Amos bit his lower lip and cast his eyes toward the yonder harbor, where the turquoise sound glinted gently. Being on an island allowed for a bizarre sensibility. It felt like everything else in the world didn’t exist—that on the mainland, Will and Fiona weren’t running around at summer camp, and Daniel wasn’t off somewhere having celebratory drinks about his tenure status, introducing his mother to the new person in his life.
“I wanted to go,” Amos confessed. “I had ideas about college. But some stuff got in the way.”
Nina felt how ominous this was. A baby? An accident? What could have kept this handsome and charming man behind? What could have forced him into a life of handiwork? Not that there was anything entirely wrong about this life. He was sitting in the sunshine, drinking a milkshake, with seemingly nowhere to go and nothing to do. Wasn’t that everyone’s version of a fantasy?
“I got involved in some bad stuff when I was younger,” he explained. “My parents didn’t have a lot of money, and then my dad died, and, yeah, I don’t know. There was this guy. An older guy. He wasn’t from here, foreign, from Europe, and he roped me and a few of my friends into a kind of mess, I guess.”
Nina was intrigued. She had the sense that Amos never told this story, that he was uncovering pieces of himself that he didn’t necessarily let other people see.
Stacy burst out of the diner with their burgers and fries and set them between them. The smell of tantalizing red meat made Nina’s mouth water. Amos shook his head, seeming to force all attention to the burger instead. It left Nina to wonder if Amos had nearly gone to prison. Had someone manipulated him and altered the course of his life?
That was when she opened her lips as if to take a bite of the burger and said words that she knew might change everything between them.
She said, “My maiden name is Whitmore.”
Amos dropped his french fry in shock.