Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Nina
June 1998
I t was the last day of fifth grade, which, to Nina, had felt like the longest year of school so far. Being ten and then eleven was no easy feat for a girl, and Nina had been through a great number of hardships—like the day her entire family had forgotten her birthday, or the day she learned everyone else in her class had been invited to Tiffany Bannerman’s birthday party, and she had not. But it was over and done with, and now, summer could begin. Nina took the bus back from elementary school, her eyes to the clouds out the window as she daydreamed. The other kids were screaming, competing for attention, singing songs, but Nina was lost in the rapture that was sure to come from long and beautiful days spent by herself, wandering the beaches or eavesdropping on the elegant guests of the White Oak Lodge.
Nina got off the bus without looking back and was immediately struck by a sight—lined up in front of the White Oak Lodge were no fewer than five police cars, their lights flashing. Nina had never seen anything like this before. Even the bus driver paused longer than necessary, rubbernecking to see what was happening. Nina hurried around the cars, noting that a few of the officers were talking to hotel staff. Her father was chatting with another officer near the bar, wearing a big and almost ridiculous smile. It looked like he was faking it. Nina’s heart pounded. She hurried up to her father and interrupted the officer mid-conversation, “What’s going on?”
Her father flinched and glanced down at her. “Ah! My youngest. Nina, say hello to Officer Delaney.”
Nina gave the officer her best glare. She’d seen enough movies and read enough books to know that sometimes fathers were arrested by officers, even when fathers had done nothing wrong, and there was no way she’d let them take him without a fight.
“Why don’t you run inside and have Charlotte make you a snack?” her father suggested.
“I can make myself a snack,” Nina said. “I’m eleven.”
She felt ashamed for saying her age in front of the officer and slunk away, still watching the cars. Maybe something had happened with one of the guests? It was impossible to always know what they were up to, where they’d come from, or who they really were. They came to the White Oak Lodge with stories and missions all their own—sometimes to conduct love affairs with people they weren’t married to and sometimes to hide out from governments they weren’t keen on returning to. She’d heard a rumor that part of the reason her Italian grandfather had been at the lodge in the first place was because he’d been hiding from the Italian tax authorities, although Nina didn’t know enough about taxes to confirm or deny that.
Before Nina ducked into the kitchen, she heard the familiar sound of her mother having a mini breakdown. Nina crept around the corner to witness Francesca leaning over the railing and calling out to the officers. She was wearing a silk dress, and her hair was styled elaborately, but she looked in the middle of a depressive episode. “Don’t you realize you’ve made a mistake?” she was saying to them, half begging, half singing. “Don’t you realize you’re hurting good Nantucket people? We rely on our guests to come year in and year out. Think of our reputation!”
Nina couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother like that. Terrified of what might happen next, she hurried back to the kitchen and slammed the door behind her.
At the kitchen table sat Charlotte, Allegra, and Lorelei—her three beautiful older sisters. They were pale and jittery. When the door slammed, Allegra said, “Nina, you need to think about other people for a change!”
Nina felt as though she’d been smacked. Confused and exhausted after the long day at school, she nearly burst into tears. Lorelei sighed, sensing she was about to cry, but Charlotte got up and hurried to make her a snack. “She doesn’t know what’s going on any more than we do,” she said to them. “She’s just a kid.”
Charlotte made Nina her favorite after-school snack: peanut butter and jelly toast. Nina sat at the table with her sisters and ate as softly as possible. Allegra had once told her she sometimes smacked her mouth, and she didn’t want to be yelled at again. When she fully swallowed a bite, she got up the nerve to ask, “Why are the cops talking to Dad?”
Lorelei put her face in her hands.
“We don’t know,” Charlotte said. “We’re waiting for more information.”
“Are they going to arrest him?” Nina asked.
Lorelei said, “Aren’t you listening to us?”
Shame filled Nina’s stomach. It was a curse to be so much younger than her siblings, she’d often thought. They would never respect her.
Suddenly, the door between the kitchen and passageway burst open, and Tio Angelo came through. He was sweaty and strange, his hands touching his pockets, tugging at the fabric of his shirt. His eyes couldn’t focus on them when he said, “Where is your mother?”
“She’s talking to the cops, Tio,” Lorelei said.
Tio Angelo straightened up and looked at them. Silence filled the room. “The cops are here?”
None of them answered. But Tio Angelo shot out of the kitchen so fast that he left the door open. Lorelei, Allegra, Charlotte, and then Nina followed him. Nina was half convinced he would run away from the house, as fast and as hard as he could, and never come back. He’d told them he’d been a first-rate champion of sprinting back in Florence, after all. But instead, he steadied himself and walked up to the cops that Francesca was currently half singing, half begging to. Tio Angelo transformed his face into one of a charming Italian man who was a little bit confused. He even upped his Italian accent to make himself seem extra out there.
“Ciao! What seems to be the problem?” he asked the cops.
Francesca was full-on crying, maybe because she hoped the cops would pay attention to her. But they twisted around to look at her brother instead. Nina and her sisters couldn’t hear what the cops were saying to Tio Angelo, but they could hear Tio Angelo plain as anything.
“Are you quite sure about that?” he asked. “I would be happy to show you around the house. Anything you want to see, I will show you.”
“But Angelo!” Francesca cried.
Angelo’s performance deepened. “My darling sister, we must help the authorities. We live in an American society now, and we must cooperate. No?” He then said something in rapid Italian that made Francesca straighten her spine.
What is he saying? Nina wondered. It wasn’t the first time she’d cursed her terrible Italian. Her mother had tried and failed to teach her when she was six or seven, but Francesca had been too impatient, and Nina had been too daydreamy. They’d failed.
Tio Angelo led the cops into the kitchen of the family apartment. Nina, her sisters, Francesca, and Benjamin followed them in. The kitchen could hardly hold all of them, so Tio brought them deeper into the house, explaining to them the architecture of the old place and reciting stories that Benjamin had told him about old whalers and passionate outdoorspeople.
“I’ve never been in here,” one of the cops said, clearly fascinated, looking up at the crown molding. “I always wondered what it was like.”
One of the cops nudged him and gave him a look that meant keep your head in the game.
Tio Angelo led the cops away from the kitchen, down the passageway, opening doors and explaining things. Nina, her sisters, and her parents hung back in the kitchen, wordless, listening hard. Nina thought she’d never seen her father that pale and green, and her mother kept moving her lips to form rapid Italian words, almost as though she were praying. But not long into his mini-tour, Angelo suggested that he cook dinner for all of them, including the cops. “It’s my mother’s recipe from Tuscany,” he explained, music in his tone, light in his voice. “Because Francesca and I started a garden right here at the side of the White Oak Lodge, our ingredients are top level and stellar. I think my recipe combines the best of Nantucket and the best of Tuscany. Would you like to give it a try?”
For most of the cops, it wasn’t a hard sell.
Before long, Nina was shooed out of the kitchen to make room for the cops. Benjamin and Francesca cracked open beers and played perfect hosts while Tio Angelo showed them the best way to slice a clove of garlic and told them hilarious stories from the old country.
“Is it true that your father was a filmmaker?” one of the cops asked, taking a slice of bread drizzled in olive oil and eating it in a single bite.
“It’s true,” Tio Angelo said. “Francesca and I were practically raised on a film set. It was difficult to grow up and realize not everything was always so spectacular. Right, sis?”
Nina was listening to everything from the living room next door. Allegra, Charlotte, Lorelei, and even Alexander sat with her, expectant, their heads tilted. Something strange was going on, but none of them knew how to explain it.
When Tio’s immaculate pasta was spiced to perfection and splayed out on a beautiful plate, the cops dug in and fell silent. Nina had had Tio Angelo’s food many times and knew how delightful it was—about twice as good as her mother’s and far better than anything she’d ever tried at an Italian restaurant.
One of the cops groaned. “This is the best food I’ve ever had.”
“What is that? Linguine?” one of them asked.
“It is fettuccine,” Angelo explained with a sharpness to his voice that, Nina knew, served as judgment that these silly Americans didn’t know their pasta shapes.
As the cops finished their meals, the kitchen door opened, and Jack hollered ciao. But the “ciao” died out just as quickly when, apparently, he walked through the door and saw the cops sitting at the kitchen table with his uncle and mother and father.
“What’s all this?” Nina heard Jack ask. She could picture his confused face.
“We’re just having dinner, darling,” Francesca explained.
“Have some!” Angelo urged. “Anyone want seconds? Oh, and Francesca, we really need to open that bottle of wine.”
Not long after that, Charlotte, Allegra, and Lorelei slunk off to their bedrooms, maybe to paint their nails or talk about their boyfriends, things they never invited Nina to do with them. Alexander, too, left for the night, his motor rippling as he sped away. This left Nina alone in the living room, listening as Jack and Tio Angelo told outrageous stories, doubling over with laughter that, in turn, made the cops wallop. It was clear that Tio Angelo had them wrapped around his finger. It was even more clear that Jack wanted to imitate Tio Angelo’s every mannerism and word. Nina’s mother and father were out of their depth. Jack and Tio Angelo ran the show.
It wasn’t long after that when the cops left for the night. Nina listened to them thank everyone and say goodbye until the very last moment, when she scurried out of the living room and went to her bedroom, closing the door behind her. She didn’t want to be caught eavesdropping. Francesca liked to say it wasn’t becoming.
Upstairs, Nina sat on her bed and wrote in her diary—a diary just a few weeks from burning to ash—that something weird was going on with Jack. But maybe because she was only eleven, she really couldn’t say what it was.