Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Amos
September 1998
I t was two months after the fire that engulfed the White Oak Lodge. It was also Amos’s first day of senior year. Prior to, Amos woke up at dawn and went out in the fishing boats, working a four-hour shift that made him dreary-eyed and exhausted when he reached school at eight o’clock. Because he was three minutes late to first period, he was written up and told that if he “didn’t pull it together, he wouldn’t be going to college.” Amos almost laughed. Amos? Go to college? Maybe at one time, he’d thought he was meant for that. But now that he’d been interviewed so many times by the police and so many people pinned the fire at the lodge on him and saw him as a lowlife and a freak, he knew to keep a low profile. Maybe he would find happiness between the shifts of his three jobs. Perhaps he would find happiness in a good film or a book.
It was clear he wasn’t going to leave the island.
At school that first day, Amos overheard many students gossiping about the White Oak Lodge and the Whitmores. It was one of the strangest stories any of them had ever heard, and they picked it apart.
“I heard Benjamin isn’t dead,” a kid in third period whispered, “but I heard he accidentally killed Jack and covered it up!”
“No way,” another kid said. “Jack’s dead, but his dad didn’t kill him. That’s crazy gossip.”
“Why wasn’t there a funeral?” another demanded.
“There was,” another kid said, “but they’re so crazy wealthy, it was closed. They didn’t let anyone else in Nantucket grieve over Jack or Benjamin. I think it’s cruel.”
“Not even Jack’s ex-girlfriends got to go!” another kid said. “Now they’re all hanging out together and mourning him. Have you seen them? They’re all wearing black and crying all the time.”
“Man, what if Jack didn’t die?” another kid suggested. “What if he stole the Whitmore riches and ran off to Switzerland or something?”
“The Whitmore riches? You mean, all that gold they have under the lodge?” another kid asked.
“How would he get the gold on the plane, dummy?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what these Whitmores are capable of. I never understood them.”
“Too bad Allegra was so much older than us. She’s the hottest.”
“Whatever, man. They’re gone.”
“Where did the girls go?” another asked.
“Francesca disappeared,” one said.
“You know, Francesca had an affair once,” another offered. “My dad told me.”
Amos’s thoughts spun. He got away from them, his back hunched as he maneuvered through the halls and on to his next class. Often, he wondered if he’d imagined the Whitmores—a family so wealthy and beautiful and entrenched in Nantucket history that they seemed too good to be true. But Amos still had cash from selling drugs. He still had enough to maintain an okay lifestyle for himself and his mother for a little while. But he’d taken on three jobs as a way to put the cops off his scent. He needed the work.
Besides, the money would run out one day. And he had no plans to return to a life of crime again. It was too much for his heart.
Amos’s mother passed away a few years later. It was cancer, inoperable, and it broke Amos’s heart. On her deathbed, she asked him to travel, to live, to open his life up to love. Amos was too frightened to admit it, but he didn’t know how to do any of that.
At his mother’s funeral, Amos got up to give a speech. Only fifteen people from the island came, which was more than Amos had expected, and he caught himself blathering off-topic things for a while before he diverted back to what he’d wanted to say.
“It’s just been my mother and me for a very long time,” he said. “I don’t know what I’ll do without her. I hope she knows that I did my best.”
It was then, as he gazed out across the sparse pews, that Amos felt sure he saw Jack Whitmore. He was older, twenty-three or so, just as old as Amos now was, and he was wearing a suit with his black hair slicked back. He looked somber and respectful, but he was leaning against the back wall, as though he wanted to get out as soon as he could. When their eyes connected, Jack flashed one of his knowing smiles and winked. Amos looked away, panic making his head throb, and when he glanced back, Jack was gone. Amos was able to convince himself it hadn’t been Jack. Jack was dead. He’d been dead for years.