Chapter 12
Aurora stood at the back of the crowd, flanked by Kenny and Oren, watching her mother perform song after song.
It was clear that the audience couldn’t get enough of her.
They were captivated by the beauty of her singing voice and the dense layering she built with her rolling wrists and sensitive fingers.
It was hard for Aurora to believe that Lorelei had abandoned music for so many years.
In fact, Aurora couldn’t remember the last time she’d heard her mother play.
How was it possible that her mother had buried this clear talent deep within herself for so many years? How had she turned her back on herself?
Had Aurora’s father demanded that Lorelei quit?
And who was that man beside her? This “old friend”? It was clear that Carter was—or at least had been—in love with her. Had Lorelei loved him back?
“Wow,” Kenny muttered into Aurora’s ear, bowing his head toward her mother.
“Seriously,” Oren said. “It’s not like I like Simon and Garfunkel, but this is great.”
But Aurora found that she was too emotional to watch the rest of the set.
It had been a difficult day, one filled with goodbyes to her brother and sister, one that had found both Aurora and her papa ignoring one another before Roberto’s flight.
He was angry. She could still feel his anger despite how far he was over the ocean.
She wished she could be the sort of daughter Roberto was proud of.
But she lacked whatever he needed: a business mind, an organized soul.
“I’m heading out,” Aurora said to Kenny and Oren.
“Wait,” Oren said, taking a step toward her. “We said we were going out after this.”
And it was true that there was an islander party on the opposite side of Nantucket.
Kenny and Oren had met several beautiful and wealthy islanders who liked to throw big, boisterous parties and drink too much and make enormous bonfires beneath the starry sky.
They’d invited Kenny and Oren, and they had, naturally, invited Aurora along.
Maybe Aurora would have gone for it another time. But she’d lost her energy.
Once inside her bedroom, Aurora searched on her bedside tables for the journals she’d discovered in the closet.
For whatever reason, she hadn’t yet dared to read the one her mother had written.
Now, she burned with curiosity about her mother’s past and everything her mother had left behind.
She burned to know why Lorelei had stayed on Nantucket Island while Roberto had returned to Rome.
Aurora got cozy under the covers and opened her mother’s journal to the first page. In it, a much younger Lorelei Whitmore had written: January 1996: This is the secret diary of Lorelei Whitmore. Aurora shivered, imagining her mother as a teenager. A teenager with secrets, just as Aurora had been.
She began to read. The first few entries were relatively inane.
Lorelei wrote about fights with her sister, Allegra, and her brother, Alexander.
She wrote about her responsibilities at the White Oak Lodge and how excited she was to graduate from high school in a few months.
She also wrote about her boyfriend Carter—Carter Johnson? —whom she called “the love of my life.”
Aurora’s ears rang. As a teenager, she’d probably called ten or more boys the love of her life.
But it seemed that her mother’s teenage life had been different, as Lorelei had had just the one boyfriend.
From the looks of things, they’d had plans.
Real plans—to move to New York City together, to pursue their music together.
Aurora read:
February 22, 1996
Sometimes I can’t believe that very soon, Carter and I will go to New York and look at apartments together.
Money will be tight. Dad doesn’t want me to go to NYC.
He wants me to stay here with Alexander, to work at the White Oak Lodge and watch the rest of my life slip away.
I heard Mama asking him last night, “Why do you think she took all those piano lessons? Don’t you think she deserves to go after her dream, if she wants that?
” But Dad just said something about the White Oak Lodge being our destiny as a family.
That anyone can play music or make art or (in Alexander’s case) fly planes recreationally.
But everything comes back down to the Lodge and the heartbeat of our family.
Admittedly, things between Mama and Dad have been strained lately. I couldn’t help but feel that they were using the argument of “me and my problems” as a cover for whatever was really going on.
This is not how things are between Carter and me.
We are honest with each other about everything.
We light each other up, rather than tear one another down.
I can’t imagine being in a marriage where you keep things from one another.
I can’t imagine how both Mama and Dad have been so dishonest with one another.
It really hurts my brain to think about it!
Carter and Lorelei Johnson. Doesn’t that have a great ring to it? We can travel the world, making music together. We can be happy and free.
Aurora took a breath, allowing her eyes to drift to the window, through which she could see the party continuing.
Her mother and Carter’s music had ended, but she could see them together, chatting with Aurora’s grandfather and grandmother, the very people in the pages of this journal who’d fought about Lorelei’s future as a musician.
Aurora had never known that her mother wanted to move to New York City and pursue music.
Because she’d apparently wanted to pursue music with Carter, rather than as a solo musician, Aurora imagined that Lorelei hadn’t wanted to play classical music.
Maybe she’d wanted to write folk songs, like Simon and Garfunkel’s.
Maybe she’d wanted to perform in little jazz clubs with Carter by her side.
Aurora continued to read, burning with a desire to learn what had happened to her mother and Carter and why they’d eventually split up.
Over the next two months—from February to April of 1996 —Lorelei continued to show endless excitement about her future with Carter.
To Aurora’s surprise, Lorelei lied to her parents and went to the city with Carter to look at apartments.
They both searched for jobs, too, knowing they’d need to start paying rent immediately and that they hardly had enough between them to cover the first two months.
Aurora imagined that New York City rent was more reasonable in the nineties, but not so reasonable that it wasn’t daunting for them.
In April of 1996, Lorelei wrote: Sometimes I feel so sick to my stomach about the future, but I know it’s just nerves about everything coming together.
I know that Carter and I will find a way.
I know that, even if Dad’s angry, he’ll eventually forgive me for leaving and pursuing my destiny. He has to.
Aurora couldn’t believe how perfectly Lorelei’s relationship with Grandpa Benjamin mirrored Aurora’s own relationship with her father. Did all fathers want things from their daughters that their daughters couldn’t give them? Did all daughters disappoint their fathers?
Aurora read on.
April 22, 1996
I’m still feeling so sick, throwing up often. Carter thinks I should go to the doctor. But we have graduation at the beginning of June, and I don’t want to distract myself from all the homework and tests ahead.
For some reason, I’m trying to hide my illness from Mama and Allegra.
April 30, 1996
Allegra caught me vomiting this morning before we were headed to school.
She sat with me until I felt better, then followed me into our bedroom, shut the door behind us, and asked me if I thought maybe I was pregnant.
I told her that was ridiculous, but she looked at me in this ominous way…
I knew, as soon as the silence settled around us, that she was right. I knew it in my bones.
Of course, I had to take a test to confirm. Allegra and I both blew off school and went to the mainland to buy some tests, which I took in a gas station bathroom. All of them said the same thing. Positive. Positive, positive. I am positively pregnant with Carter Johnson’s baby.
It occurs to me now that I missed my period last month, too. That I may be at least six to eight weeks along. I feel like the least responsible person in the world! What about my dreams?
Then again, I can’t help but feel romantic about this. Carter and I will have the most beautiful and adorable baby. We will be really happy and easy with each other.
It makes me wonder whether I should talk to Dad about giving Carter a job at the Lodge?
There are certainly jobs to be had here.
There are things that could keep us busy and stable until our baby graduates from high school.
Ha! I can’t believe I’m already thinking about the baby’s graduation, only about a month before my own.
I know I need to tell Carter. But it’ll be tricky. He wants to call on the apartment we looked at in Manhattan and tell them we’ll take it. But now, I’m not so sure.
I need to think.
May 3, 1996
Today, I tried to explain to Carter what’s going on. When I told him I was pregnant, he told me, “That’s impossible, you can’t be pregnant, we’ve been so careful.” I told him, “Apparently, we haven’t been careful enough.” He didn’t know what to say. He told me he needed to think about it.
I don’t know what there is to think about, really. The baby is a factual thing. We need to think about what we’re going to do and how we’re going to bring a baby into the world and how we’re going to afford said baby—but that comes later. Why can’t we celebrate what we know to be true?
May 4, 1996
Carter didn’t come to school today. I didn’t know what to do, so I found Allegra in the hallway, and we went to the pay phone and called Carter’s home number. Nobody answered.
May 5, 1996
Still no Carter today. Everyone keeps asking me where he is, and I don’t know what to tell him. As his longtime girlfriend, I’m supposed to know whether he’s sick. I’ve lied three times to say that Carter isn’t feeling well, or that he has a doctor’s appointment. I feel like a fraud.
But where is he? All morning, I had morning sickness. All morning, I was throwing up and thinking about Carter, wondering if he’s abandoned me.
I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to raise this baby alone.
The entries went on, with Lorelei panicking about Carter’s whereabouts, and Carter not showing up to school.
Eventually, Lorelei’s classmates seemed to understand that Lorelei didn’t know where Carter had run off to, and they began to pity her.
This made things all the more difficult for Lorelei, who felt she had to hide so much.
As Aurora read, she grew increasingly angry with Carter Johnson—that handsome singer with the guitar outside. How had her mother let Carter back into her life? Did she not remember how he’d abandoned her?
And then, the worst possible thing happened in her mother’s life.
May 15, 1996
I woke up this morning to blood. There was blood soaking in my pajamas, all over my sheets.
I got up and screamed, and Allegra woke up immediately and rushed me into the bathroom.
We both knew in a moment that I was having a miscarriage.
Allegra wanted to go get our mother, but I told her not to.
I told her, “Nothing matters now. It’s over.
” Finally, the blood stopped, and I cleaned myself up, put on a pad, and went to school.
All day, I wondered if people could see what had happened written on my face. I wondered if someone was going to pull me aside and tell me how sorry they were for my loss. But nobody knew a thing!
I’m emotionally devastated. I feel at the end of my rope.
Carter is gone. Our baby is dead, and I feel that the future I’ve been planning for years is now dead as well.
I don’t know how to approach the next years of my life.
I suppose I’ll walk across the stage and graduate from high school.
And then what? Will I spend the rest of my life on Nantucket Island? Will I ever leave the White Oak Lodge?