Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Nina
July 4, 1998
N ina’s great-great-great-grandfather built the White Oak Lodge in 1862. It was another time of American Civil War unrest, when even Nantucket boys were being sent off to fight for the Union. It was also a different time in terms of home technology. Indoor plumbing had only recently been invented, but because the White Oak Lodge was in no way luxurious by that time, it wasn’t featured in the lodge itself. More than that, things like smoke detectors weren’t exactly common. Nina’s grandfather eventually added it, but in the years after that, it was rarely updated, and rarely checked on, which meant that when the lodge caught on fire that hot and humid Fourth of July night so many years later, there were no smoke detectors to alert the guests nor the family members asleep within it. Some might say it was a tragedy waiting to happen. Others might say it was the perfect crime.
Nina was eleven years old and had been sent to bed at ten, where, after hours of eating s’mores and barbecue and drinking sickly sweet lemonade, she crashed hard and sweated through her sheets. She woke up to the smell of fire and the suffocating density of black smoke. She heard screams and fireworks exploding in the distance. It felt like a part of a nightmare. She bolted to the window, thinking that maybe the stables were on fire or something had gone wrong with the fireworks. But instead, she saw that the other side of the White Oak Lodge had erupted with orange flames.
Nina didn’t know what to do nor what to save. In school, they’d been taught never to think twice about belongings during an emergency, but what about the teddy bear she’d loved as a little girl? What about her journal, her notebooks into which she’d written her biggest fantasies and deepest thoughts? What about the photographs she’d taken of her family members, the one of her mother with a long cigarette between her bright red lips and the one of her father on his birthday? Nina tore through her belongings as her anxiety spiked. Finally, she threw a few journals and her teddy into a backpack and ran to the hallway. Smoke slunk around her ankles, and she pulled her T-shirt over her mouth. She screamed her siblings’ names, “Jack? Charlotte? Allegra?” but nobody answered. They probably hadn’t come in from their Fourth of July parties yet. Maybe Nina was the only one in the house.
Nina reached the kitchen and whipped out the door to find a large crowd had formed along the beach to watch the lodge burn. Nina staggered to a halt next to the kitchen staff, who had their hands over their mouths. She wondered if it had been an accidental kitchen fire. She pondered if something had gone wrong with one of the fireplaces on the hotel side of the lodge. But why would anyone build a fire on such a hot night? She searched the crowd for her father, her mother, or her siblings and finally discovered Charlotte at the far edge, weeping. Nina ran over to her and tugged her sleeve. “Charlotte?”
Charlotte bent down to hug Nina close.
“Where is everyone?” Nina cried.
“I don’t know,” Charlotte wept.
“Where were you?” Nina asked.
But Charlotte didn’t answer her. In her eyes, Nina watched the flames’ reflection. She closed her eyes hard and told herself it was all in her imagination, that she would wake up in her bed in an instant. It didn’t work.
The firefighters arrived shortly thereafter and began to douse the lodge with water. Cop cars and police officers swarmed everywhere. Nina and Charlotte walked hand in hand, hurrying through the crowd to find anyone else they knew. Nina thought she heard several officers calling out about potential victims. She thought she heard a firefighter say, “Couldn’t get them out.” Something crumbled and crashed within the structure, maybe a wall giving out.
Nina wasn’t accustomed to tragedy. She knew only daydreaming. She knew only sunshine and long days along the sea.
It wasn’t for another hour that they found their mother. Francesca’s face was streaked with tears and soot, and she couldn’t stop sobbing. She gathered Charlotte into her arms and pressed her forehead against her shoulder. Nina hung back, knowing her mother wouldn’t hug her like that. Charlotte reached over to draw Nina closer, but Nina flinched away. She wanted her father.
“Mom?” she demanded. “Mom?” But it took another five tries for Francesca to raise her head and glare at Nina. Nina asked, “Where is Dad?” But Francesca looked so angry, so rabid, that Nina backed away, unable to hear her answer. Charlotte continued to hold their mother, trying to console her.
The next several hours rushed by in a strange blur. Nina found herself in the back of a cop car, clutching her backpack as tears streamed down her cheeks. Allegra and Lorelei were beside her, holding hands and muttering quietly. They were taken to the station, where they sat with Charlotte, Alexander, and Francesca in a sterile room with white plastic chairs. The clock on the wall said it was two in the morning. Nina was wide-awake. Here with four of her siblings and her mother, what they’d lost was becoming more and more apparent.
Jack. Their father. Their Tio Angelo. Where were they?
But the somber faces of the police officers told Nina everything she needed to know. Dead. Gone. Lost in the fire. Not long after their announcement, she collapsed across the police station floor. Someone drew her into their arms and carried her somewhere, and the next thing she knew, she was waking up to a buttercream day of sunshine. It was almost like nothing bad had happened and she’d made up the fire in her mind. The only thing that gave it away as truth was the smell of burning that remained in her nose. A kind older woman born and raised in Nantucket looked down at her with tears in her eyes. She said, “Honey, I don’t know if you remember me. I’m your great-aunt Genevieve. I’m your father’s aunt.”
Nina had blinked up at her with confusion. She’d met a Great-Aunt Genevieve several years back at one family reunion or another, but as far as Nina remembered, Great-Aunt Genevieve lived somewhere else, Minnesota or Wisconsin or one of those states along the Great Lakes. What was she doing here?
Great-Aunt Genevieve perched at the edge of the bed where Nina was lying. She looked timid and strained. Nina blinked to bring more of the room into focus and realized she was in a hotel she didn’t recognize. But through the window, she could just barely make out the Sutton Book Club across the street, which meant she was somewhere in the Nantucket Historic District. She pulled herself up and crossed her arms.
“Honey,” Great-Aunt Genevieve said, “I’m so sorry for your losses.”
Nina’s lower lip quivered. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m sure it will take some time,” Great-Aunt Genevieve said.
Nina didn’t want to believe what the cops had told her. “They have it all wrong.”
Great-Aunt Genevieve shook her head and looked down at the white sheets that stretched over Nina’s legs. How long had Nina been sleeping?
“Where is my mom?” Nina demanded. “Where are my brothers and sisters?”
But as soon as she said it—the word brothers, plural—she felt a stab of horror. Jack was gone. Alexander was the only brother she had left. It can’t be true!
“Your mother is very sick,” Great-Aunt Genevieve said tentatively. “She needs to rest. She needs to grieve.”
Nina raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t yet a teenager, but she wanted to throw a bit of sass Great-Aunt Genevieve’s way, demanding what that was supposed to mean.
But instead, she waited for Great-aunt Genevieve to say, “You’re going to come live with me for a while.”
Nina’s mouth went dry. She searched Great-Aunt Genevieve’s tone for some sign it was a joke, or a lie, or part of a strange dream. Yet again, she found herself terribly entrenched in reality. All she could do was go along with what the adults around her wanted.
“But they’ll come get me,” Nina said. “When my mother is better, they’ll take me back.”
Great-Aunt Genevieve swept Nina’s hair behind her ear and sighed.
It was then Nina understood. Nothing about the future was sure.
Maybe she’d never see Nantucket Island again.