Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
It was at the end of a tireless and harrowing season at the White Oak Lodge that Benjamin Whitmore packed up his bags and left.
Francesca didn’t realize he’d gone till dinnertime, when she and their three children and her mother waited for him at the dinner table, listening for the familiar creak of his footsteps as he descended from his office upstairs.
Francesca threw her napkin on the table and went up to look for him, but returned with a sharp anger in her chest. “Let’s eat,” she said.
“He’ll be down soon.” It was a lie, and her mother looked at her as though she knew it.
But what could Francesca say or do but lie? She was so ashamed.
Ronald’s death had cratered through her husband’s chest and made him incapable of life at the Lodge or life in their family.
A small, dark part of her thought that maybe it was better if Benjamin never returned.
She and her mother could manage the White Oak Lodge.
They would keep it running until Alexander was old enough to take over.
Because Francesca had given up on film and on Italy and had lost her identity in so many ways, the White Oak Lodge was all she had.
It made her feel powerful and confident. It made her feel important.
That night, Francesca waited up for hours on the back porch, listening for Benjamin to return.
Through the moonlight, Jefferson slipped out of his quarters and strolled down the beach, his hands in his pockets.
He didn’t see Francesca watching him as he stripped to his underwear and went on a night swim.
Throughout his months at the Lodge, Francesca hadn’t seen Jefferson with a single girlfriend and hadn’t known him to spend any time in town, hanging with locals and drinking at bars.
He seemed like a solitary sort of man, a man who didn’t need anyone.
She was envious of this. Sometimes her loneliness felt like it was eating her alive.
A few days later, Francesca and her mother took the kids to the beach.
Allegra was nearly a year old, and she ambled around, crawling and trying to walk on the sand.
Francesca’s heart skipped a beat when she imagined that Benjamin would never see Allegra walk.
She took a bite of an apple and tried to distract herself from her own misery.
But her mother, who saw everything and seemed to know everything, wouldn’t let her off the hook.
“Has he left you?” she asked softly, her eyes to the ocean.
Francesca took another bite of the apple and refused to answer.
A week went by, and then another. The Lodge continued to welcome guests who came to the island to enjoy the peaceful autumn weather, the crisp air, and hearty food.
Alexander, now four, started preschool, and Francesca had a big cry about that.
When she picked him up on his third day, she overheard some of the other mothers gossiping about Benjamin, saying that he’d left his family and wasn’t coming back.
She wanted to snarl at them and tell them to mind their own business.
But a part of her also wanted to beg them for information about where he was.
At the beginning of Benjamin’s third week of absence, his parents, Charles and Elaine, came for dinner.
It was bizarre to serve them in the kitchen where they’d once treated her like a guest, but Francesca threw herself into it, playing the part of a perfect wife and mother.
Benjamin’s name didn’t come up until the tail-end of their meal, when Charles gave her a list of potential people to call about Benjamin’s whereabouts.
He looked pale and thin, as though losing first Ronald and now, maybe, Benjamin had run him ragged.
“I’m sure he’s just fine, dear,” Elaine said before they left, kissing Francesca on the cheek.
Francesca initially felt too proud to phone Benjamin’s random friends from the city to inquire about his whereabouts.
But after another few days without a word, she forced herself to sit in front of the phone and call the first few numbers.
The women who answered were the wives of men that Benjamin had known during a brief stint of college in the city, a time Francesca knew very little about.
She wondered how Charles had gotten the numbers in the first place.
None of the wives knew where her husband was.
They didn’t seem to know where their own husbands were.
Francesca wanted to cry for all of them.
At the beginning of November, Francesca’s mother asked if she wanted to return to Italy and raise the children there. “I miss your father,” she said simply. “He doesn’t know how to be on his own.”
Francesca sensed this wasn’t true of her father.
She guessed that her father was a lot better at being alone than her mother was, especially given that her father had traveled all over the world, making films, while her mother was at home with Francesca and Angelo.
But she sensed, too, that her mother was at the end of her rope with this Benjamin business.
Francesca was brokenhearted but livid, waiting up for her husband to return, wondering if he was gone for good.
It was after this conversation with her mother that Francesca donned one of her husband’s massive winter coats and went outside to clear her head.
Snow blew through the blustery winds and stitched into her hair.
She felt terrible. Somehow, she watched herself walking to the horse stables, where she found Jefferson Albright similarly bundled up, tending to the horses with a soft smile on his face.
When he spotted her in the doorway, his eyes lit up.
It was almost as though he’d been expecting her.
Jefferson kept a bottle of whiskey in a locker in the stables. He poured two glasses and handed one to her, saying, “It’ll warm up your soul.”
“I don’t think my soul can be warmed,” she said. “It’s frozen solid.”
Jefferson laughed. “That’ll serve you well on this island.”
Francesca sipped the bitter liquid and grimaced. She hardly drank anymore, and she felt it go straight to her head. “Are you going to stay at the Lodge during winter?” she asked him.
Jefferson arched a single dark eyebrow, gazing at her. “I’ll stay if you tell me to stay,” he said finally.
Francesca took a sharp breath. But her chest gushed with sudden love for him, a love that felt misplaced yet so real, yet so unfathomable.
Never had she imagined she would feel anything for a man who wasn’t Benjamin Whitmore.
But where was Benjamin Whitmore now? Why had he left her here to tend to his family’s Lodge and raise his children?
Tears spilled from her eyes. She set down her drink and muttered, “I can’t handle my alcohol. ”
Jefferson touched her cheek gently. His lips were so close to hers, liquid-smooth. “I can’t believe he left you,” he whispered. “Who could ever leave a perfect woman like you?”
It happened quickly after that: lips and bodies coming together, hearts pounding as snow filled the windowpanes and blocked out the moonlight.
Francesca felt all the loneliness drift out of her body, replaced with something else.
Jefferson was tender and strong and wonderful.
He made her forget, if only for a moment, that she’d given everything up for this cold and lonely life.
Their brief affair was fiery and charged.
Francesca was sure her mother knew about it, half hoping Francesca would find a way to divorce Benjamin, marry Jefferson, and take the kids back to Italy.
Francesca felt torn between two worlds. Twice that November, she cut ties with Jefferson, only to return to him, crying and saying she couldn’t understand her own mind.
She didn’t tell him how much she still loved Benjamin and prayed he’d come back.
But when Benjamin appeared early on Thanksgiving morning, a pumpkin pie balanced in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other, Francesca nearly fell to her knees.
Alexander, Lorelei, Allegra, her mother, Charles, Elaine, Jefferson Albright, and several other members of the staff who stayed on for the autumn and winter seasons were waiting for them in the dining hall.
When Benjamin walked in, most everyone erupted with excitement for his return.
Charles and Elaine hurried to greet their son, weeping.
Only Jefferson’s face was difficult to read.
It flickered with contempt. Francesca could hardly look at him. Her stomach thrashed.
Alexander threw himself on his father, asking, “Daddy, where did you go? Daddy, what happened?” Lorelei and Allegra acted similarly, their faces cherry-red with emotion.
At that moment, Francesca knew that she couldn’t leave Benjamin.
She couldn’t tear her family apart. Her affair with Jefferson Albright—an emotional bright light during a heinous and dark year—had to be over.
She would also help her mother return to Italy, return to her father, and her life.
She would hire another babysitter. The Whitmores would move on from this era. They would find relief.
In the lead-up to Christmas, Francesca threw herself into preparations for the White Oak Lodge holiday party.
Benjamin slept in their bed every night, ate their dinners, played with their children, and seemed relatively healed, all things considered.
They’d only kissed once. Their romance felt icy at best. A part of Francesca wondered if Benjamin sensed she’d fallen for someone else.
Maybe he’d had a romance elsewhere as well.
Maybe he’d allowed himself another story to get over the story of his brother’s death. She decided immediately to forgive him.
A few days before the Christmas party, Francesca put on her bravest face.
She met Jefferson Albright in the stables to discuss the horse-and-carriage rides they were offering guests.
Jefferson was professional and sharp, answering her questions and providing detailed information about the event and its safety protocols.
Twice, Francesca felt a wave of nausea, perhaps proof of how confused her body felt in Jefferson’s presence.
The way Jefferson looked at her sometimes felt like the sun shining down upon her.
Sometimes their affair felt like the most wonderful of dreams.
As they closed their conversation, Benjamin entered the stables to ask Jefferson something.
He stopped short in the doorway, looking at Francesca and Jefferson with questions in his eyes.
Francesca wondered if her attraction to Jefferson was plain as day, if Benjamin could feel it pulsating in the air.
She made a quick excuse and cut across the grounds, her heart pounding.
You left me first, she imagined saying to Benjamin, but it felt weak. Upstairs in her bedroom, she wept.
It wasn’t till a few weeks after Christmas that Francesca realized she was pregnant.
Panic shot through her, for she knew in her heart of hearts that this was not a proper Whitmore baby.
This was Jefferson’s. She wondered who she could talk to about this, who she could call.
She considered her old friends Rosa and Barbara, but they were far and away in Italy, managing their own households, and probably unable to support her. They wouldn’t know what to say.
Francesca tried to imagine herself telling Benjamin about the baby.
She tried to imagine telling Jefferson, too.
But each time, her mind got tangled in Italian and English expressions that felt meaningless.
And as she thought about it and became increasingly anxious, the baby continued to grow and grow.
It was the week she discovered her pregnancy when Benjamin came to bed late, grunting with annoyance. He collapsed on their mattress and gazed through the darkness. It was clear that he wanted Francesca to ask him what was wrong, so she did.
“I found Jefferson in the tunnels,” he said after a dramatic pause.
“Okay?” Francesca knew they kept plenty of random supplies down there. Jefferson might have been fetching horse feed or something like that.
“You don’t understand,” Benjamin said, turning onto his side. “He was deep in those tunnels. Looking for something.” His eyes lit up. “Baby, I think he was looking for the Whitmore treasure, if you can believe it.”
Francesca’s heart burned with nausea and fear. “No,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like him.”
But Benjamin made a pretty good case. “Jefferson came out of nowhere. He said he heard about the Lodge from people in, what, Denver? I’m sure they told him about the treasure.”
“But why would he wait till winter to look for it?” Francesca demanded.
Benjamin thought for a moment, rolling his bottom lip beneath his teeth. “Maybe he’s realized there’s nothing left here for him. He wants to run.”
Francesca felt the words like a knife in her stomach. She rolled away from him and stared through the darkness, listening to her own heart thud.
“I let him go immediately,” Benjamin said softly. “He’s out of our hair, now.”
Lying in the dark, Francesca felt her eyes smart.
Although she’d longed for Jefferson to leave the White Oak Lodge, to make things easier on her heart and her mind, she understood that Benjamin was, in a sense, sending him away from her.
He didn’t trust them alone. She had no idea if he guessed that something had happened between them.
She wondered if he’d made up the treasure story.
She wondered if it was fair to her baby to send its father away.
Not long after Jefferson left, Francesca announced her pregnancy, hired a new babysitter, and bought a plane ticket to send her mother back to Italy.
Benjamin was overjoyed to extend their family and seemed none the wiser about the baby’s father.
But Francesca’s mother seemed to get it.
At the airport, after she covered Francesca in kisses and wept into her shoulder, her mother breathed, “I hope you know what you’re doing. ” Francesca didn’t know if she did.