Chapter 10
The following week, Aurora walked with Pino and Nadia to the beach to say goodbye.
In the morning, they were already flying back to Rome with their father, each returning to the things they had to do, the responsibilities they’d taken on.
Pino was to continue his work at the lab, and Nadia was gearing up for her junior year at her university in Florence.
Aurora yearned to ask her siblings if they sometimes felt similarly empty when it came to life.
She wanted to know if their studies and pursuits had filled them up enough, or if they still wondered about what else was out there in the world.
But she also didn’t want to frustrate her siblings more than they already were.
To them, Aurora was an anomaly, the sister who’d been meant for great things, who kept smashing into metaphorical walls.
They probably didn’t want to “catch” whatever failure she had.
They’d brought a bottle of wine down from the kitchen of the White Oak Lodge, which they now opened and used to fill their glasses.
In Aurora’s backpack was Great-Grandpa Charles Whitmore's World War II journal, and she considered showing it to her siblings, but she decided against it. She wasn’t sure if they cared about their American side of the family as much as she did, and she didn’t want to watch them roll their eyes.
Rather, she decided to ask Nadia and Pino their final opinion on Nantucket Island.
“It’s pretty, I guess,” Nadia said in a small voice.
“Yes.” Pino sounded resigned. “It’s beautiful, sure. But we still don’t understand why you want to stay. We’re Italian, Aurora. We’re Romans.”
“And Papa is very upset,” Nadia added.
“We were wondering,” Pino continued, his eyes flashing. “We know that what happened to you in Berlin was… not good. It was really hard. But would you ever, I don’t know, want to continue your work at art school? Any art school? Even if it wasn’t in Berlin?”
Aurora laughed in a way that, she hoped, showed how little she cared about art school, or any school for that matter. “I wish you guys would make up your mind. Should I go to art school or business school? Should I run a company or paint a picture?”
They gave her looks that felt very familiar to Aurora, looks meant to remind Aurora that she needed to get her life in order.
But what about excitement? What about spontaneity?
She wanted to ask them what they lived for.
What about how beautiful and strange and unpredictable everything was?
It seemed her siblings didn’t want to take that into account.
They wanted to box her into a description of someone—a business person or an artist person.
It made them feel safe, being able to categorize people.
Eventually, Pino and Nadia finished their glasses of wine and said they were going back to the Lodge to pack. They left Aurora on the orange sand, her throat thick with sorrow. She wished she could relate to her family more and didn’t feel so alone.
The following day, rather than say goodbye to her father, Aurora met up with Kenny and Oren to show them Charles Whitmore’s journals.
They were in the apartment that Kenny and Oren shared in one of the staff-filled alcoves of the White Oak Lodge.
As he read, Kenny was delicate with the pages of her great-grandfather’s journals, reading aloud in a voice that nearly broke Aurora’s heart.
Oren interrupted him halfway through the reading of a particularly harrowing passage.
“This is really good, Aurora,” Oren said excitedly, his hands bouncing against his chest. “But what do you see as the emotional crux of this story? What is the, like, reason we’re telling it?”
Aurora considered this for a moment, sort of miffed that Oren had asked but also down to answer, then took the journal back and flipped to the passage she hadn’t been able to get out of her mind. “Maybe something to do with this?” She read aloud:
“October 22, 1944
“I’ve just heard from Mother and Father.
Edmund was set to fight in the Netherlands.
The story is that he was killed in battle.
It’s strange. Despite my devastation, I haven’t been able to shake the fact that I didn’t know.
All our lives, my brother and I were twins.
We came into the world together. I always assumed that I would know if he died.
I always assumed I would experience some part of it.
But the truth is, we came into the world as separate souls, and we’ll leave as separate souls.
Maybe the fact that we shared the same face and body didn’t matter as much as I thought it did. ”
Aurora stopped reading and closed her great-grandfather’s journal. Her hands shook so much that Kenny had to reach over and steady them. Luckily, Oren was on his feet, pacing and thinking aloud, so much so that he didn’t notice Kenny’s hand on hers.
When Oren did finally begin to speak, Kenny pulled his hand away.
“This is wild,” Oren said. “Twin brothers in different World War II battles. And then, presumably, Charles had to come back to the White Oak Lodge to handle the family hotel all by himself.” Oren spread his arms out wide.
“This hotel is filled with ghosts. I told you that when we first got here, Kenny. Didn’t I? ”
Aurora crossed her arms over her chest. She wasn’t entirely sure if the White Oak Lodge was haunted, per se. But numerous stories were lost between its walls.
“We’ll run with this for now,” Oren said brightly, making a note in his own little book. “You’re a rock star, Aurora. Seriously. We’re so lucky that we met you.” He eyed her in a way that made her understand how much he wanted her.
Soon after, Kenny went to the staff kitchen to get them snacks to help them work. Oren took this opportunity to close his book and say, “You know, Aurora, I’m going to come out and say it. I would really like to take you out.”
Aurora was seized with a panic that she knew she couldn’t show him.
“You’re surprised,” Oren said. “I can see that. But you shouldn’t be! You’re a beautiful woman. I’ve liked you since the moment I laid eyes on you.”
Aurora was suddenly nervous that if she said no to Oren, the documentary project would be taken away from her. She didn’t know if she could deal with that. Sweat pooled along the back of her neck.
She had to handle this delicately.
“Oren…” She breathed. “It would honestly make me so happy to go out with you. But…” She gestured toward the space on the bed where Kenny had only just been. “I’m worried. I don’t want Kenny to get jealous, and I want us to be able to keep working together.”
Oren furrowed his brow. “Kenny can deal with it. We’ve been friends forever. Girls come and go, you know?” He laughed, then added, “Although I don’t think I’d let you go that easily. You’re different.”
“I don’t know,” Aurora said. “Maybe we can go out after the project’s over? I take my art really seriously. I…”
Kenny came in carrying chips and popcorn and crackers and cheese. He tossed them across the bed and gave them a look that meant What did I miss?
“Aurora was just telling me that she takes her art seriously,” Oren said. “Very seriously. But actually, I don’t think you’ve talked to us about your art very much, Aurora.”
Aurora slid her tongue across her teeth and considered the men before her. Oren looked jocular, as though he was in the midst of a game he felt sure he would still win despite this moment of defeat.
When Kenny turned his eyes toward her, a look of expectation fixed across his face, Aurora knew that she needed to say something to fill the silence.
“I went to art school in Berlin,” she offered finally.
Immediately, the guys were impressed.
“Berlin. Whoa. That’s, like, a crazy artsy place,” Oren said, sitting back down on the bed and taking a chip. “What was your medium?”
“I experimented with a lot of different things,” Aurora said. “My great-grandfather’s a filmmaker, as you know, and I considered going down that path, but my boyfriend at the time wanted me to paint more, so I found myself painting.”
“Boyfriends, huh?” Oren teased. “They always tell you what to do.”
Aurora decided not to mention that her boyfriend, Sebastian, had also been her professor. So of course she’d done what he told her to do because he seemed the best pathway to the art world.
“Did you graduate?” Kenny asked, his voice quiet.
Aurora shook her head. “Berlin got sort of intense for me. I had to go.”
“We’ve heard that story before,” Oren said. “Plenty of film students in New York relocated to Berlin. A lot of them burned out. Did you party too much?”
“No. Not really,” Aurora said.
Aurora remembered going clubbing with Sebastian, of course, but she’d never been particularly rowdy.
She’d just liked the music, and she’d liked to dance.
Her favorite part of the night had been when she and Sebastian had gone home together on the subway, their hands laced as they’d kissed.
When they’d left the train, the sun had been coming up over their city, the city where they’d fallen in love. It all felt like a fantasy, now.
Kenny and Oren were quiet for a moment.
“You know, we heard some people from your family talking,” Oren said, arching his eyebrow. “Something about you in business school? But we didn’t want to believe it.”
Aurora cackled. “Yeah. No. That was my dad’s whole thing. He wanted me to go to business school so I could help him with his restaurant empire.”
“He sounds wealthy,” Oren said.
Aurora thought about their Rome apartment, about how she and Nadia had had to share a room, about how she’d heard her parents fighting deep into the night about cash.
“We do okay,” she said. “But we’re nothing like the Whitmores used to be.
” She gestured vaguely around them, indicating the entirety of the White Oak Lodge.
“You should take us to Berlin sometime,” Oren said suddenly. “We’ve always wanted to go, and you can show us around.”
Aurora cracked an ironic smile. “I don’t know about that.” She’d told herself she’d never go back to that city, since that was the site of her original breakdown. But she didn’t want the guys to know that.
For a little while, they talked about how they were going to bring the story of Great-Grandpa Charles’s tragedy to light on screen.
They talked about Edmund Whitmore, about the horrors of war, and about how those horrors could slip into the narrative they were trying to tell about Nantucket Island.
It was a beautiful and fluid conversation, one that drew them further and further away from Aurora’s private tragedy in Berlin.
Later that night, they made a bonfire on the beach. When Oren went to get firewood for the flickering flames, Kenny sidled up to her. She could feel the heat from his breath on her neck.
“You’re good at this,” he said.
“At what?” Aurora could barely hear her own voice.
“At making art. I can feel it when you talk about the documentary and what it can be,” Kenny said. “Your instincts are there, even if you haven’t made anything for a while. It’s beautiful to witness.”
Aurora turned to gaze into his eyes. She considered telling Kenny that Oren had asked her on a date earlier today, that they were in dangerous territory. But before she could, Oren came around the corner, and Kenny and Aurora split apart.