Chapter 17
Aurora had never let her mother—nor anyone—into her world in such a dramatic and personal way. But now, as she explained what had happened for the first time, she felt the tension in her chest spill out of her. She felt herself take bigger, deeper, more relaxing breaths.
Had this freedom always been available to her? Could she have started talking earlier and saved herself?
“I never should have agreed to go to business school.” Aurora tried to smile before discovering it was too difficult.
She let her lips fall. “Maybe that’s the understatement of the year.
But after Sebastian’s accident, I didn’t know what to do.
I was so lost. If you hadn’t come to get me in Berlin, I don’t know what I would have done. ”
Aurora’s mother furrowed her brow and leaned forward. It was like she knew not to interrupt, although Aurora guessed she desperately wanted to.
“When Papa suggested I go to business school, I shrugged my shoulders and went along with it,” Aurora said.
“I figured I’d be there a semester or two, make some money at the restaurant, then go traveling.
It was everybody’s shock that I was pretty good at business school, I guess.
Nobody was more shocked than I was. Without even trying, I was suddenly at the top of my class, and people were asking me to intern at their companies.
” Aurora could see from her mother’s eyes how proud Lorelei was.
After that first semester of business school, Aurora had thrown herself into the business world headfirst, telling herself not to look back.
She’d decided that the art world wasn’t for her, that it was filled with manipulative people who didn’t care about what you made.
They only cared about what you could do for their career.
This disgusted Aurora. At least business people were more honest about what they wanted from you and from everyone else: money.
During her second semester, Aurora had taken an internship at a financial law firm, where she’d risen up the ranks, bypassing some of the proper employees in trust and payment.
The company begged her to join their team immediately, but Aurora reminded them that she had a couple more years left of university.
Plus, she wasn’t sure she wanted to work in that particular sector.
If she was going to major in business, she wanted to be selective about what kind of business she did.
Perhaps she didn’t want to wear a skirt and suit every day to work.
Maybe a year or so into business school, when what had happened in Berlin felt further away than ever, Roberto suggested that Aurora spend a few days at their family’s Rome-based restaurant to check on the business side of things.
“Maybe you can look at our operations through the lens of what you’ve learned at school,” he suggested.
Aurora had always loved going to her parents’ restaurant. She loved the hustle and bustle, the smells, and the free food and wine that flowed from all directions. She also loved to see her mother and father at work.
Not long into her work at the restaurant, however, Aurora understood what a mess the place’s finances were in. She saw how haggard and lost her father often was, especially at the tail end of a long day, so she tried to implement various financial systems to make things easier for Roberto.
But Roberto didn’t take kindly to criticism from his daughter even though he’d initially asked for her help, and he surely knew she was right.
“You’ll take over one of the restaurants when you’re done with school,” he told her sternly.
“But for now, finish out your degree. Then, we can make big changes.”
It was like he wouldn’t trust what she knew without her degree hanging on the wall.
Regardless of what Roberto said to her face, however, it seemed that he was bragging all over Rome about the business prowess of his daughter Aurora, so much so that soon, one of the most prominent and trendiest restaurants in the city reached out to Aurora to ask if she’d take over the business side of things.
They called it a paid internship, and for the first time ever, it seemed that the pay was astounding.
Aurora checked with her father first to make sure she wouldn’t be stepping on his toes.
“Nico is a friend of mine,” her father said of the owner of that trendy restaurant, the man who’d called Aurora in the first place. “He already asked me if it was all right. I gave my blessing. Now, go. Get out of my kitchen.”
Aurora wondered if this was her father’s strategy: to distract Aurora with some other job so she would lay off Roberto and his inefficient business practices. It didn’t matter. She was ready to go.
Aurora started work at Nico’s restaurant in January of 2026—just six months ago. By then, Lorelei was off on Nantucket Island, tending to Francesca, who’d been diagnosed with cancer yet still refused to come back to Italy for reasons that were confusing to the entire Italian side of the family.
During this time, Aurora lived on her own in Rome and hardly saw her siblings and father.
She worked long hours at Nico’s restaurant and went to school whenever she could, which meant that she didn’t have much of a life either.
None of that mattered to her. Since her time in Berlin, she’d arranged her life like this.
She didn’t date. She didn’t have many friends.
She didn’t make art. She didn’t like to spend too much time without anything to do, for fear of what would creep into her mind and haunt her.
She did not like thinking about the past.
Numbers were safer than anything else.
Aurora was surprised at how much she liked Nico.
He was in his late thirties, with a funny sense of humor and very good taste in decorations and, of course, food.
There was a reason her father trusted him.
And Nico trusted Aurora, too. Unlike Roberto, he took her opinions about the business seriously, and he made adjustments after the fact.
He called her his “right-hand woman,” which made Aurora laugh.
Nico had a family, a wife and three little kids, all of whom Aurora adored.
Frequently, they invited her to their place for dinner, and Aurora found herself more at ease with them than she was with her own family.
Roberto was endlessly stressed about his three restaurants, and Lorelei was often in and out of Nantucket.
Pino and Nadia were doing their own thing and didn’t seem to care about Aurora.
But Nico and his wife asked Aurora questions.
Their children cried when she went home.
It was like she’d finally found a place not only to show off her brilliant mind but also to breathe.
Aurora was endlessly grateful for the internship, so much so that she was considering telling Nico that she would continue working there after she graduated.
Originally, she was supposed to graduate at the end of 2026—but she’d secretly been working ahead and had enough credits to graduate in the spring, meaning May, meaning soon.
She was suddenly excited about this new chapter of her life.
When Aurora got up the nerve to enter Nico’s office to ask him about her future at the restaurant, Nico stood and closed the door behind her.
Aurora didn’t think anything of it at first. There was a lot of noise in the adjoining restaurant, and she guessed that Nico just wanted to be able to hear her properly.
But as Aurora began to tell him about how much she liked working there, and how much she wanted to carve out a future for herself there, Nico got closer and closer to her.
Each time Aurora tried to take a step back, he followed her until his nose was only a few inches from hers.
Anxiety filled her stomach. She’d never had anything like this happen before, and although she’d read about it online and heard about it from friends, she was frozen and didn’t know what to do.
“I know you want me,” Nico said to her finally, steadily. “You can give in. Nobody will know.”
Aurora was petrified. She wanted to shove Nico away from her as hard as she could.
But she was also worried about what that might do not only for her own career but also to Roberto and his restaurant.
If she made Nico an enemy, what then? Would Nico try to kill the last of Roberto’s restaurant?
Would he stir up rumors about Aurora and what she was really like?
She’d heard of all of this happening before.
“I, um…” Aurora’s voice shook. “I need to go. Please.”
But Nico didn’t seem willing to let her go. “Don’t play games with me,” he said.
Just before Nico could corner her, just before he could get his lips over hers, Aurora ducked away from him, threw open the door, and ran out of the restaurant. Luckily, she had her wallet and her phone and her keys in her pocket. She didn’t go back to get anything else.
Down the streets of Rome, she ran, breathless and teary-eyed. When she got back to her room, Nico had texted her to ask why she’d left work.
NICO: You have things to do here. We pay you well, and we expect your respect. That means staying till the end
of your shift. That means telling us if you have to go home.
Her hands shaking, Aurora blocked his number and threw her phone on her bed.
She had to get out of Rome.
By then, it was the end of April, and soon, the White Oak Lodge would reopen on Nantucket Island.
Aurora knew that the island was filled with her mother’s ghosts, but Aurora didn’t have a single ghost to speak of in the United States and certainly not on Nantucket Island.
She imagined herself falling into the familiar arms of her Grandma Francesca.
She imagined herself swimming in the ocean, her arms pumping, her heart surging.
She called the airline and changed her flight to be a week early.
She then called her business school and told them she was withdrawing from all of her classes immediately.
“You’re going to graduate in three weeks,” the woman on the line said, exasperated.
“Something has come up,” Aurora said. “I can no longer graduate. I can no longer finish my classes or my degree.”
“But…” The woman tried to protest, but Aurora hung up.
Now, Aurora raised her chin and looked at her mother, Lorelei, whose eyes were wet, her lashes dripping.
She hadn’t interrupted Aurora during her story, not once.
Now, she opened her arms and beckoned for Aurora to come over to her.
Lorelei held Aurora tightly and cooed in a mix of Italian and English.
“You shouldn’t have had to go through that.
He shouldn’t have done that to you. My baby. It’s so wrong.”
Aurora shook violently, maybe at the intensity of finally telling the truth. “I know Papa’s going to be so angry that I quit the internship,” she said. “He’s going to be so angry that I quit business school. I’m supposed to save the Sardinian restaurant.”
Lorelei spread her hand across Aurora’s forehead. “You aren’t supposed to do anything,” she said. “The only thing you’re supposed to do is be our daughter and live the life of your dreams.”
Aurora laughed gently into her mother’s shoulder. “I don’t have dreams anymore.”
Lorelei was quiet for a moment. “What about the documentary you’re making?”
Aurora felt another spasm of guilt and shock. She pulled back a little and explained that, too. It was simpler, a matter of describing Grandpa Benjamin’s devastation at learning about his uncle’s death and how that death mirrored his own brother Ronald’s death.
“I knew we couldn’t tap the Whitmore family for more tragic stories,” Aurora explained.
“I tried to explain that to Kenny and Oren. Oren didn’t take it very well.
And then…” She bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the intensity of her and Kenny’s kiss, remembering how fuzzy with desire she’d been until Oren had spotted them and Kenny had run after him.
“Oren doesn’t care about using our family,” she said finally. “And I think he hates me, because…”
“Because you fell for his best friend?” Lorelei chimed in.
Aurora raised her head to look at her mother, surprised. But it was clear that her mother had been watching her like a hawk since they’d come to Nantucket. She’d sensed the intensity between Oren, Kenny, and Aurora. She’d seen it all like a warning.
“Do you have feelings for him, too?” Lorelei asked.
Aurora nodded, then felt a spike of pain in her chest. “But I don’t want to have feelings for him,” she said of Kenny. “I don’t want to have feelings for anyone.”
“Is that because of what happened to Sebastian?” Lorelei asked. “Because, honey, you can’t keep blaming yourself for that. You can’t let this haunt you forever. What happened was a tragedy. But it wasn’t your fault.”
Sometimes late at night, Aurora could still hear in her head the sound of the car hitting Sebastian in that back alley in Berlin.
She tormented herself with that sound. She kept herself awake for hours, telling herself that Sebastian would still be living in Berlin and making art and maybe even loving her if Aurora hadn’t dragged him out of the house that day, or if only Aurora had saved him.
Aurora’s life could have been so different.
Maybe she would have made something of herself by now.
Maybe she wouldn’t be begging for pieces of an artist pie from Kenny and Oren. Perhaps she would have had her own exhibition. Maybe she would have made herself a beautiful career.
“And if you think your father is going to stop loving you because you stopped attending business school, you’re so wrong,” Lorelei said finally.
“Your father is a lot of things. He’s stressed.
He can be mean and arrogant and hard to talk to.
But he loves you three fiercely. When I first got pregnant, he was overjoyed to bring babies into the world. There was no hesitation.”
As her eyes filled with tears, Aurora was reminded of her mother’s diaries, of how upset she’d been that her high school boyfriend had abandoned her during her pregnancy.
Rather than talk more about herself and her endless feelings and sorrows, Aurora asked her mother, “Are you doing all right?”
Lorelei flicked a tear away. “Honey, I’m fine. I’m having a great summer with you and Allegra and my siblings. I love being around my mother. I love working at the Lodge.”
Aurora felt a “but” hanging after her words. She ached to know more of what was on her mother’s mind.
“What’s it been like to play music with Carter Johnson?” she asked finally.
Lorelei laughed. “That guy? Gosh, I don’t know. I just don’t know how far I want to go down memory lane. It always looks so rosy from the outset, but there’s a reason you don’t build a house on memory lane and live in it forever. There’s a reason you have to move on.”