Chapter 18
Not long after Aurora finished telling her horrifying story about that Roman restaurateur Nico, Aurora fell asleep in Lorelei’s bed.
Lorelei sat quietly, her heart throbbing as her daughter slept peacefully.
It felt as though Aurora had come in and unburdened herself.
It felt as though Lorelei was meant to carry this burden for the rest of her own days, which, as Aurora’s mother, she was overwhelmed with the desire to do.
But Lorelei was restless and unable to sleep.
Midnight crept to one and then to two, and she knew she had to do something.
She had to fix this. Maybe that meant calling Roberto and asking for a divorce outright so that she could move forward with her life.
Maybe that meant calling Roberto and telling him to lay off Aurora as well, if only so that Aurora could continue to heal.
Lorelei grabbed her phone and tiptoed out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her.
She was reminded of putting her children to bed when they were little, how they’d always fallen asleep during story time, and Lorelei had had to creep out so as not to wake them.
Aurora, especially, had been a terrible sleeper.
She’d been plagued with nightmares. She hadn’t wanted to drift away.
In the kitchen, Lorelei was surprised to find Allegra and her mother, staying up late with mugs of tea. They wore light pink robes and glasses, and their makeup had been wiped clean.
“You’re still awake!” Allegra got up to hug Lorelei before turning to put the kettle back on the stove.
Francesca pulled out the chair beside her. Just now, she wore no wig, and the hair she’d managed to grow since her treatment ended was curly and gray. It made her look like an adorable mouse, which Lorelei knew better than to say aloud. Oh, she loved her mother.
Now that Aurora had unleashed her own emotions for Lorelei, Lorelei sensed that she was ready to do the same with her sister and mother. She filled her lungs.
“I asked Roberto point-blank if he was being honest with me,” she said. “And he said he wasn’t. I think it’s finally over. My marriage is over.” She felt her face crumple, but she did not cry.
Allegra and Francesca took one of each of her hands.
“It’s just like a man to be honest about his dishonesty without being more forthcoming,” Allegra said. “You asked him for his truth, and all he could do was tell you how untruthful he was.”
Lorelei squeezed her eyes shut. “I always thought he was different. But it’s like all these decades of marriage and children and restaurants weigh so heavily on our shoulders.
It’s like we can no longer see each other as people.
Sometimes I think that’s why I like playing music with Carter.
No matter what happened between us, Carter, for some reason, sees me as I was at seventeen: bright and shiny and ready to open my heart to the world. ”
Allegra scoffed, and Lorelei knew it was because of what had come after that: Carter’s abandonment and the baby she’d lost.
“What did happen between you?” Francesca asked. “Wasn’t it just the story of two teenagers going in different directions? It happens all the time.”
“Yes,” Lorelei said, although Allegra gave her a harsh look. Lorelei felt there had been too much honesty for one day. And if she was going to get around to calling Roberto, she had to save her heart from too much bruising.
After finishing her tea, Lorelei went to the veranda, where she sat in the dark and watched the fireflies dance over the beach. Her phone was like a stone in her hand. Please, she said in her mind, maybe to the universe, maybe to Roberto. But she didn’t know exactly what she wanted.
Finally, she dialed Roberto’s number. It was nearly nine in the morning in Rome, and she knew he was probably frantic, preparing for the lunch rush he prayed would come by noon. Italians were hungry, always so hungry, but they had too many choices when it came to restaurants, and they were picky.
“Good morning,” Roberto said, his voice sort of flat. But he’d answered.
“Hi,” Lorelei said. “Where are you?”
“Walking to the restaurant,” Roberto said. The walk from their place to the restaurant took no more than twenty minutes. Roberto and Lorelei had done it thousands of times over the years.
“Are you going to get yourself a cornetto from the bakery on the way?” Lorelei asked.
Roberto laughed at the memory. For more than a year, they’d always gotten a cornetto filled with pistachio cream from the same place, nearly every day, which had resulted in them both gaining weight: five pounds for Lorelei and twelve for Roberto.
They’d had to go on a strict diet after that, which hadn’t been easy, given their proximity to delicious things.
“I might skip a cornetto this time,” Roberto said. “But I could pick one up for you, if you like?”
“Please,” Lorelei said, her voice wavering with tears. “I’d like pistachio and maybe a vanilla cream.”
“Delicious,” Roberto said.
There were sirens in the distance, coming closer. It was clear that Rome was active and awake, while Lorelei sat by the ocean in the dark.
“You know,” she said, willing herself to say what she needed to say. “I’ve been thinking about your text message. Your text about not being honest.”
Roberto was quiet.
“And I was thinking that I don’t care,” Lorelei said.
“I don’t care what it is. I just need to know.
I need to know the truth. In the Whitmore family, we’ve been hiding from the truth for decades, for generations.
My poor father just discovered that his uncle died in World War II!
It was never talked about! That is not normal.
” She closed her eyes and pictured poor Aurora, who’d just spilled the beans on her own heartache.
It was brave. Lorelei needed to be brave.
But before she could say anything more, Roberto let out a strangled sob.
“You’re right,” he said. “I need to be honest with you. I need to find a way.”
Lorelei closed her eyes. Another siren blasted from the opposite side of the world and into her ear.
“I’ll fly back to Nantucket so we can talk in person,” Roberto said. “It isn’t fair to say it over the phone.”
Lorelei knew this was the worst sign of all.
After they hung up, Lorelei walked the beach in front of the White Oak Lodge for two hours, tracing her toes through the sand and waiting for the first light of morning to illuminate the island.
She hadn’t stayed up all night in many years, and it was invigorating to watch 3 a.m. turn to 4 and 4 a.m. turn to 5.
Soon enough, plenty of staff members were milling around the grounds, preparing for the day ahead.
They cast side-eyed glances at Lorelei, but they didn’t say anything.
At some point, Kenny came to open the doors of the stables and wake the horses up. His best friend Oren wasn’t with him. Lorelei watched him from a distance as he swept the floor of the stables, his face serious.
Lorelei went back to the family apartment, where she found Jack and Addison, sipping coffee and discussing what they wanted to do today.
Jack had plans to paint a room that hadn’t been finished yet, and Addison wanted to clear out a corner of the garage that was still filled with old Whitmore junk.
It was gorgeous to watch them work together so seamlessly.
It was gorgeous, too, to know that Addison had had to relearn how to talk to Jack, now that she knew his real name.
For years, she’d known him only as Seth Green.
But she knew his heart. Maybe that was all that mattered.
“Haven’t seen you in a little while!” Addison said, smiling and standing up to pour Lorelei a cup of coffee.
“Did you go for a hike?” Jack asked.
Lorelei looked down at herself, realizing she looked as though she’d been out wandering for hours, which was what she had been doing. “Sort of,” she said finally.
“We’re going to have burgers later on Madequecham Beach,” Addison said, speaking of the house they owned on a different beach, the house Seth Green had purchased years ago. “You should come! Bring Aurora!”
Lorelei agreed. It sounded nice to leave the confines of the White Oak Lodge for a little bit. If she stayed here any longer, she might drown in her own emotions.
Besides, she wanted to get her mind off the thought of Roberto, traveling halfway around the world to tell her specifically why he was breaking her heart.
That afternoon, Lorelei didn’t have anything to do.
Allegra and Charlotte were at the front desk, and the rest of the Whitmores milled around the Lodge, doing odd jobs and helping guests.
This left Lorelei to her own devices. When Carter wrote to ask if she wanted to rehearse, she asked if she could come to his music camp instead, if only to go somewhere else.
He sent her the location, and Lorelei borrowed one of their family cars to take herself there.
On the drive to Carter’s music camp, Lorelei sang along with the songs on the radio, trying and failing to get her mind elsewhere.
Not even Mariah Carey could distract her.
A tiny voice in the back of Lorelei’s mind asked her if Roberto wanted to leave her, and if Carter wanted to love her now, what would she do?
Would she take the safe option? Would she fall in love with Carter all over again?
Lorelei knew plenty of forty- and fifty- and sixty-somethings who’d gotten back together with their old loves.
In the fiction world, it was called “second-chance romance,” and Lorelei was endlessly captivated by the romance of it.
She was also curious about how you could forgive your ex-partner for anything they’d said and done in the previous iteration of your romance. How can you overcome the past?
Lorelei parked at the music school and followed Carter’s instructions to the practice room on the second floor, where he stood waiting with his guitar and a few oatmeal raisin cookies, which he’d stolen from the music school kitchen.
Lorelei laughed and sat at the piano bench, too nervous to touch the keys.
She wanted to dive directly into the music.
She wanted to bask in the light that shone out of Carter’s eyes.
Is this what love is supposed to feel like?
For more than an hour, Lorelei and Carter sang all their favorite songs: “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the Carpenters’ “Solitaire,” the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” among others. She fell into the musicality of his voice. She fell into the gorgeous plucking of his guitar.
By the time they took a break, Carter’s face was so close to hers that Lorelei thought he was really going to kiss her this time. Lorelei’s heart pumped.
“Carter,” she said gently.
“I know,” Carter said, brushing his hand through his hair. “It’s just, seeing you brings back so many emotions for me. It makes me feel young again, yes, but that’s not all. We make magic together, Lorelei.” He tried to lace his fingers through Lorelei’s, but Lorelei clamped her hand into a fist.
“We need to talk,” Lorelei said.
“Uh-oh.” Carter laughed. “Can I continue my pitch first?”
Lorelei shook her head.
“Maybe after,” Carter suggested.
But Lorelei was drawing into herself, getting up from the bench and leaning against the wall. “Carter, do you remember why we split up?”
Carter’s eyes were shadowed. “We were teenagers. We wanted different things.”
“We didn’t want different things,” Lorelei said gently. “We got pregnant, and you took off without telling me where you were going. You moved to Manhattan and lived the life we were going to live together, while leaving me to fend for things here, alone.”
Carter flinched. Lorelei wondered if, incredibly, Carter had blocked out this memory. She wondered if he’d told himself a different story for so long that he’d begun to believe it.
“But you didn’t have the baby,” Carter said, shrugging, as though that took care of it.
“I had a miscarriage,” she said, flaring her nostrils.
“I was alone and frightened and in pain. I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone about it.
You were my boyfriend. You were the boy I loved, and you were just gone…
” She trailed off, her voice fluttering.
Even as she said all this aloud, she couldn’t believe it had really happened. She couldn’t believe he’d done that!
Carter got up abruptly and slammed his guitar into its case. “I didn’t realize I was on trial for stuff I may or may not have done when I was eighteen,” he said.
“You did do that,” Lorelei said. “You completely changed my life. And not in a good way.”
Carter’s eyes were rimmed with red. He picked up his guitar case and opened the practice room door.
“It’s so clear to me that you’re miserable,” Carter said.
“You’re in a miserable marriage, and you hate Italy, and you don’t know what you want in your life, so now you’re going to pick apart the past and make me the enemy. I am not your enemy, Lorelei. Grow up.”
At this, Carter stormed out of the room and down the hall.
He left Lorelei in the corner alone, her heart in her throat, her eyes burning.
But maybe the biggest surprise of all was the smile she felt on her lips.
She thought to herself: I am so glad he left me when I was eighteen.
I am so glad I didn’t marry him. I really dodged a bullet.