Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
It wasn’t that Francesca minded that. Her children had given her life meaning in ways she hadn’t previously been able to fathom.
Each with their own unique personalities and bright, dark eyes, they taught Francesca new ways to look, feel, and love.
She knew that they’d taught these things to Benjamin as well, but in a minor way, since he had such limited time with them.
“Soon we’ll take a family vacation together,” Benjamin had promised more than once, to which Francesca had said, “Sounds great.” She knew it wouldn’t happen, that there was too much to do at the Lodge during all seasons, especially now that Charles and Elaine had taken a step back.
Left to her own devices, of course, Francesca spoke only Italian with her children, so much so that when they did see their father, Uncle Ronald, or grandparents, they struggled to switch back to English. She took pride in that. She wanted to uphold her culture, so far from home.
For lunch that afternoon, Francesca made Ronald, Benjamin, and Charles a hearty pasta sauce and heaps of spaghetti, which they piled onto their plates and ate without speaking.
Allegra, Lorelei, and Alexander were all sleeping blissfully upstairs, and Francesca craved adult conversation.
She wanted to tease and be teased. She wanted to talk about the books she’d read and the films she’d seen.
But Benjamin and Charles were too caught up in the White Oak Lodge, and Ronald, who usually liked those topics, was too frightened to seem uninterested in Lodge happenings to follow her lead.
As they piled their plates post-lunch, Francesca overheard Benjamin mentioning that he was interviewing a new horseback riding instructor that afternoon. “He comes highly recommended,” Benjamin told his father. “You remember how disastrous Jacques was last year.”
“Awful,” Charles agreed, although Francesca couldn’t remember anything wrong with their last horseback riding instructor.
She’d liked him. She’d liked his jokes. Maybe she’d missed something about him, something that made him ill-suited to the job or the Lodge.
She often did miss those sorts of things.
“What’s the new guy’s name?” Ronald asked, collecting the silverware for Francesca.
“It’s quite a name,” Benjamin said. “Jefferson Albright. It sounds like something from one of Francesca’s novels.”
Francesca was caught off guard at the sound of her name. She’d allowed herself to believe she was almost invisible, especially when the men spoke only of the Lodge.
“It’s certainly dramatic,” Charles agreed.
“I like it,” Ronald said, eyeing Francesca. “Can I meet him?”
“You can come to the interview if you want,” Benjamin said to his brother. “I’d love your opinion on whether I should hire him or not.”
Ronald looked pleased. He liked it when Benjamin included him in the goings-on around the Lodge, and he liked it when Benjamin either seriously or falsely considered his opinion.
Francesca appreciated that Benjamin still took his younger brother’s feelings to heart, especially in the wake of everything that had happened with Ronald’s ex-girlfriend and the miscarriage and his all-encompassing loneliness.
Since 1974, he hadn’t left the Lodge at all.
He hadn’t gone on a date, either, at least as far as Francesca knew.
She kept tabs on him in the way she kept tabs on her own children. She ached for his own broken heart.
Not long after lunch, Lorelei and Alexander woke up and wanted to go outside, so Francesca packed up Allegra’s baby things, bundled everyone up, and went out onto the grounds.
Alexander ran wild from one end of the beach to the other, whooping and hollering, while Lorelei scrambled to keep up with him, and Allegra slept peacefully on Francesca’s chest. Something out of the corner of Francesca’s eyes demanded she turn around, and she caught sight of Benjamin, Ronald, and a man she’d never seen before, coming out of the horse barn.
It must be Jefferson Albright, she thought.
They paused for a moment, talking together.
Jefferson smiled in a way that twisted her stomach, although she couldn’t say why.
Suddenly, Benjamin spotted her, watching them, and raised his hand to beckon to her.
She knew he wanted to hire Jefferson Albright and introduce his children to the new employee, perhaps to bring him deeper into the fold.
Francesca got all three kids up the beach and onto the grass, where she shook hands with Jefferson Albright.
“Good afternoon,” Jefferson said, his accent British and beautiful in her ears. It reminded her of the Englishmen who’d traveled to Rome, drank far too much beer, and tried to flirt with her at the café where she’d worked. “You have a wonderful place here.”
Francesca bit her tongue to keep herself from telling him that the property was her husband’s, that she had nothing to do with the Lodge. It wasn’t true, anyway. She’d lived and worked there since 1971, which was an enormous chunk of her life.
“Thank you,” she said instead. “What brings you to Nantucket?”
“I’m a bit of a vagabond.” Jefferson shrugged.
“Traveling here and there and everywhere. I heard about your glorious island from a hunter in Denver, Colorado, of all places. He showed me photographs that piqued my interest. When I arrived a week ago, I was shocked and appalled at how terribly cold it is here. But all the locals tell me it will get better. Now, Mrs. Whitmore, tell me. Are they lying to me? You’re European, like me. You of all people can’t lie to me.”
Francesca felt suddenly tongue-tied. Is this man flirting with me?
She wondered, then dismissed the thought and let out a laugh.
“It will get better, Mr. Albright,” she said.
“You have to have a little bit of patience this spring, apparently. But here at the White Oak Lodge, we have plenty of food and drink and good conversation to see us through the dark and cold times.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Mrs. Whitmore,” Jefferson said. “I’ve known many Italians in my day, and I’ve found them all to be good and decent people.”
“Not this one,” Benjamin said, drawing his arm around Francesca, almost as though he was showing ownership over her. “This one’s always up to no good.”
Ronald wavered on his feet, his expression sour.
But after that, Jefferson laughed and doted on her children for a little while, teasing Alexander and saying that Allegra and Lorelei were the prettiest little girls he’d ever seen. Benjamin beamed at him, although Ronald looked miffed, like he couldn’t figure out what this guy’s motive was.
When Jefferson left for the afternoon, Francesca gathered her children upstairs in time for the nanny to come and watch them during her daily two-hour window, a time during which Francesca either cleaned the house, cooked dinner, lay on her back and read, or stared into space.
The nanny had been Benjamin’s idea, a reminder that the Whitmores were doing well enough money-wise to allow Francesca a little bit of time to herself.
But as Francesca descended the staircase, she felt a pang of loneliness.
It was only when she was with her children that she felt completely herself.
Without them, she was reminded of how little time she and Benjamin spent together and of how far away from home she really was.
But when she rounded the corner into the sunroom where she often read, she found Ronald, sitting alone, staring out the same window she frequently stared out of.
His face was drawn. It looked like he’d been crying.
Francesca hesitated before entering, just loud enough so that he’d hear her and turn around.
When he did, he didn’t bother to smile. She was glad that he didn’t feel like he had to pretend.
“Hi,” she said gently.
“Hello.” Ronald turned and looked at her.
Francesca pulled up a chair. “Do you mind if I sit with you a while? The nanny’s here, and I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“I don’t know what to do with myself either,” Ronald said.
Francesca’s throat felt taut, but she offered him a soft smile and said, “You’ve been working hard all winter long. I feel like you haven’t taken a break in ages.”
Ronald rolled his shoulders back. “Benjamin doesn’t take breaks either.”
“Yes, but…” But he’s obsessive. But the Lodge is his. But he has a family, a wife, something to live for. “But I know you’ve been through a lot,” she pressed on. “Have you considered going on vacation somewhere? Meeting friends, maybe?”
Ronald gave her a look she knew meant: "What friends?" She shuddered, thinking of her dear friends Rosa and Barbara, who communicated only infrequently by letter. Someday soon, she knew, they wouldn’t keep in touch at all anymore.
“I have been thinking about going down to Florida,” Ronald said, surprising her. “A few friends set up a shop in Miami, and I’ve always wanted to see it.”
Francesca encouraged Ronald to go to Florida. “It will be a blast,” she said. But what she didn’t say was how certain she was that Ronald needed a fresh perspective, a new way of thinking about himself within the world and outside the parameters of the Whitmores.
A few days later, Ronald set a date for his trip and informed Benjamin and Charles that he was going away.
Benjamin looked confused but happy for him and assured him that he’d be able to manage the Lodge without him for a little while.
“But we need you back before mid-April,” he said, fake-punching Ronald’s left shoulder.
Before his flight, Francesca packed Ronald with numerous Italian snacks and made him promise to write down everything he experienced in a journal so he wouldn’t forget anything.
Ronald blushed with thanks and said he’d put it all down.
“It’s my first adventure in a while,” he said as he gathered his suitcase and proceeded down the hall.
Francesca realized that Ronald was only twenty-four, a year and a half younger than she was. Sometimes he seemed dramatically younger, and at other times, he appeared decades older, nearing the end of his life. Francesca couldn’t understand why she thought that.
During the two weeks of Ronald’s vacation, Jefferson Albright moved into the staff quarters of the White Oak Lodge.
He proceeded to tighten up the horseback riding stables, creating a better cleaning and organizing schedule and instilling order among the stable employees beneath him.
Benjamin talked about Jefferson quite often, indicating that Jefferson was the best new-hire the Lodge had seen in Benjamin’s time.
Even Charles took to Jefferson, sometimes jokingly calling him the son he’d never had.
Francesca was grateful that Ronald wasn’t around to hear that.
He’d take it to mean that Charles liked Jefferson more than Ronald—and Francesca wasn’t entirely sure that wasn’t what he meant.
So early in her motherhood journey, Francesca couldn’t fathom loving one of her children more than the rest. But the love she had for her children often threatened to overtake her.
When Benjamin suggested that they have more children, she winced and said she wasn’t ready.
Alexander, Lorelei, and Allegra were perfect. And wasn’t three enough?
It wasn’t till Ronald returned from Miami that things took a turn.
Francesca was the one who picked him up from the Nantucket airport.
The nanny was tending to her children, Benjamin was dealing with a staffing issue, and Charles and Elaine were at a charity event in the main square.
Francesca waited outside the car, feeling the sunshine on her face, as Ronald slumped from the airport and walked in a haze toward her car.
Francesca bolted over to him and put her hands on his shoulders. His eyes were glazed.
“Ronald?” she demanded. “What’s going on?”
But Ronald couldn’t say. He dropped into the passenger seat and put his face in his hands. “I don’t know,” he murmured. “I really don’t know.”
When Francesca drove him home, he disappeared into his bedroom for three full days, only leaving to use the bathroom or drink water.
Francesca brought him food, probably more often than he wanted it.
Benjamin and Charles were too busy with the Lodge to recognize how bad Ronald was feeling, so Francesca lied and said that he’d gotten the flu in Florida. “He’ll be fine soon. He needs to rest.”
But something had happened to Ronald in Florida, something that Francesca couldn’t guess.
On the third day after his return, Francesca finally got up the nerve to ask him, but Ronald gritted his teeth and said, “I’m fine!
Can’t you people leave me alone?” He slammed the door in her face, waking baby Allegra down the hall. She wailed and wailed.
As Francesca rocked Allegra back to sleep, her heart pounded with the realization that she’d been the one to tell Ronald to go to Florida.
That she’d pushed him to take a risk. She wondered if he blamed her for whatever had happened, if their beautiful in-law relationship had been destroyed forever.
She prayed he would be all right. She prayed he would return to her, her sweet and heartfelt friend.