Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Oahu, Hawaii
It was Thanksgiving evening on the island of Oahu.
Purple and pink light spilled across the ocean and reflected across the flickering palm leaves.
Addison Green was stationed at the head of her parents’ table, slicing a pumpkin pie for her three children and trying to calm her heart’s sputtering.
She could be normal. Couldn’t she? Sure, it was the first Thanksgiving Day without her husband, “Seth Green,” the first Thanksgiving she’d spent as a single mother, the first Thanksgiving during which she knew her husband’s true name—but not why he’d lied about it, nor where he’d disappeared to, nor why he’d gone.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it.
Right? She laughed darkly to herself, pressed the top of the whipped cream, and spread a big sweet cloud over each slice.
’Twas the season to drown your sorrows in sugar.
In the room directly next to the kitchen, Addison could hear her father flicking through the channels, and her mother and the kids playing Sorry, a game that had them in reckless giggles.
She brought the plates of pie to the living room and set them delicately on the carpet before returning for more plates for herself and her parents.
Brokenhearted or not, she wasn’t one to miss out on pumpkin pie.
Her father was instructing Kennedy, one of her eleven-year-old twins, on Sorry tactics (which seemed silly since it was a game of mostly luck), while Penelope, the other twin, and Gavin, the ten-year-old, made up songs that showed how unfocused and sugar-drenched they were.
When Addison returned to the living room with more pie, her father gave her a nervous smile.
“Uh-oh,” Addison said before he could speak. From his smile, she could tell he needed something. “What’s up?”
“Janie wrote. She needs help with the computer again,” he confessed. “Could you?”
“I’m on it,” Addison said, snapping over to the door that separated their family apartment from the rest of the Golden Sunset Hotel.
The hotel had been in her family for generations, ever since a relative, a hundred and fifty years ago or so, had journeyed to Hawaii during the gold rush and started up a hotel for others foolish enough to make that trek.
When she was a girl, Addison had worked in the hotel, learning to make beds well from the age of five, learning how to clean in a way that put all kids she knew to shame, and helping to check in and check out guests who’d come from all over the world to enjoy her family’s stretch of the beach.
She could do “small talk” with people from Boston to China to South Africa from the age of six or seven.
Hospitality was in her blood. It was in Seth’s, too, she knew.
Jack’s blood, rather. But he hadn’t told her about the White Oak Lodge, not while they were together.
She’d had to find that out through his sisters during her brief yet illuminating trip to Nantucket Island.
She knew her father was too stuffed with Thanksgiving food to perform any duties at the hotel, and she was happy to do anything to get her mind off the missing member of their family.
Addison found their employee Janie scrambling behind the front desk in the lobby, trying and failing to check in a married couple from Indiana. Janie was rather new at the hotel and hadn’t mastered some of the more technical elements of the computer.
“My knight in shining armor is here!” Janie announced to the couple. “I’m terribly sorry about that.”
Addison grinned at the couple. “We’ll get this figured out in no time.”
The couple from Indiana explained they had been traveling all day as she filled in the required forms on the computer and fetched their keys.
“It was snowing in Indianapolis when we left,” the husband said with a goofy smile.
“It’s incredible what a few flights can do for your mental health!
I am so ready for a margarita in the sun. ”
“I can’t believe you live here,” the wife said, glancing back at the sunset as it dimmed to its golden-orange over the waves. “I don’t think I’d ever be able to leave!”
Addison laughed. “I’m sure Indiana’s special, too.
I haven’t spent much time in the continental United States.
” As she set the key down on the counter, she dared to ask them, “Random question. But have you ever been to Nantucket Island?” She wasn’t sure where the question came from, nor why she felt she wanted to ask it.
The husband and wife raised their eyebrows but seemed thrilled to talk about their experiences.
“We went to a wedding there four years ago!” the wife said. “It was divine, truly. I still remember some of the food we ate there! Ralph, remember that clam chowder we had at that little shack?”
“I’ve never had better food at a shack,” her husband said.
“My husband is from there,” Addison said. She felt Janie’s watchful, curious eyes, but she didn’t glance over to explain herself.
“From one island to another!” Ralph said. “I guess you’d get used to having all that water around you.”
“Tell us, what does he think about this business with that lodge?” the wife asked, narrowing her eyes. “We saw it on the news on the way here. It isn’t every day that they haul buried treasure out of the earth, is it?”
Addison cocked her head. A lodge? Was it a coincidence? “I haven’t heard about it!”
Ralph and his wife were terribly pleased to inform Addison.
“There was this old hotel on the island. It burned down in 1995,” the wife explained.
“It was 1998, I think. And it didn’t burn all the way down,” Ralph said.
“Sure, but it’s condemned, or it’s been condemned over the years,” the wife said, trying to get the facts together.
“In any case, there were always whispers about buried treasure beneath the hotel. Apparently, they always called it the White Treasure. That’s how it was known on the island.
But the White family never knew about it.
They always thought it was an old wives’ tale.
Can you imagine living over the top of all that treasure and not knowing? ”
“I don’t think they were called White, dear,” Ralph said.
“Maybe it was Whitley.” The wife shrugged.
“Maybe it was.” Ralph nodded.
Addison was speechless. “That’s quite a story,” she said.
“Does your husband know the Whitleys?” the wife asked.
“I’ll have to check with him,” Addison said. “I’m sure he does. On islands, everyone knows everyone.”
“It’s sort of like our town in Indiana!” Ralph wore a goofy smile.
Because Janie was too weak to help, Addison hauled their luggage to their room, showed them a list of restaurants and bars in the area, and told them to have a good night. Her thoughts raced around her head. She struggled to make sense of them.
Before she returned to her parents’ apartment, she pulled out her phone and googled the treasure at the White Oak Lodge.
Sure enough, Nina was being interviewed by a major news organization.
They called her a “renowned anthropologist.” Addison remembered that Nina had been a professor at Princeton, that she’d been up for tenure, but her cheating anthropologist husband had gotten it instead.
She remembered that her husband’s tenure, plus his affair, had been part of the reason Nina had escaped to Nantucket Island, why she’d decided to change her life.
That, and her long-held suspicion that her brother Jack was still alive, that things that had always been told to her about the night of July 4, 1998, were lies.
Addison returned to her parents’ apartment, where she found Kennedy, Penelope, and Gavin leaning against the hallway wall, watching an iPad.
Addison was too exhausted to limit their screen time right now.
She padded past them, touching their heads gently, then found her slice of pumpkin pie on the coffee table and sat beside her father, Hugh, on the sofa to enjoy it.
Her mother, Beth, was reading, her glasses pushed down to the tip of her nose, and her father continued to flick through channels. Addison felt outside of herself.
“How did it go?” her father asked.
“It was fine,” she said. “They’re from Indiana. Nice couple.”
“Indiana,” her father repeated, as though that meant anything to him.
“Could we check the news?” Addison asked, trying to sound casual.
“You want to watch a bunch of political mumbo-jumbo?” Her father raised his eyebrows but clicked over to the national news station, his finger still on the button to change it.
But there it was: the White Oak Lodge, up in flames.
The photograph had been taken back in 1998 and made the damage to the old hotel look far worse than it actually was.
If Addison remembered correctly, Charlotte and Nina had even spoken about refurbishing the old place and reopening it for a new generation of guests.
“That’s quite a conflagration,” her father said. “You think they burned it for insurance purposes?”
“No,” Addison was too quick to say.
Her father cleared his throat, as though he didn’t believe her, as though he thought she was too naive to know the truth about the world.
And then the video of the White Oak Lodge shifted to show an older woman, maybe seventy, a gorgeous olive-skinned Italian in a regal black dress, with arched eyebrows and a dangerous glint in her eyes.
The name beneath her read: Francesca Accetta.
Jack’s mother. Jack’s gorgeous, Italian mother.
When she spoke English, her accent hinted at years in Italy, though her mastery of the language showed she cared how she was judged and seen. It took a moment for Addison to fully wrap her mind around what Francesca was saying.
She was imploring her son, Jack Whitmore, to return home. She was using his real name—Jack—rather than his false one, Seth. Addison was on her feet. She nearly let the plate of pie fall to the floor. Her mother and father gaped at her.
“What’s gotten into you?” her mother chirped. “Are you feeling all right?”
But just as soon as she’d come on, Francesca was taken off-screen again, and the news cut to a commercial.
Addison made an excuse that she could hardly hear and took the rest of her pie to the guest bedroom, where she sat on the made-up bed and stared at the wall, willing herself not to cry.
This felt like the worst kind of proof. None of the Whitmores knew where Jack was, either.
She didn’t know what to think about that.
When she’d found the paperwork that had linked “Seth Green” to that house on Madequecham Beach, when she’d hired the investigator that had linked Seth to Charlotte Whitmore, she’d thought that she’d drag Seth back home within the span of a few weeks.
But it had been months and months since his disappearance.
She wondered if something had happened to him.
She wondered if whatever or whoever he’d been chasing had turned around and hurt him.
“Oh, Seth,” she murmured, because she still struggled to call him by his true name in her head, “why didn’t you explain yourself?
Why didn’t you trust me enough to carry your real name? ” Tears streamed down her face.
There was a knock on the door. Without waiting for her to answer, Addison’s mother entered, wearing a pained expression on her face. “Honey, are you all right?” she murmured, coming over to sit next to Addison on the bed.
Addison nodded, although her cheeks were probably blotchy with sorrow.
“You’re thinking about Seth, aren’t you?” Her mother touched Addison’s hand and sighed.
Addison was quiet. She didn’t want to betray all the chaos in her head.
“You know, honey, I think you should really talk to a lawyer,” her mother said quietly.
“He’s been gone since summer, and I hate to admit it, but I don’t think he’s coming back.
I never imagined he had it in him to act like this.
You know as well as anyone how much your father and I loved him.
” Her mother hesitated, her eyes glassy.
“But we have to find a way as a family to move on from this. We have to do it for Kennedy, Penelope, and Gavin. And as your mother, I want you to be able to love again one day. I want you to find space in your heart for new stories. Does that make any sense?”
Addison could hardly move. She didn’t want to lie to her mother. She didn’t want to say that she still felt that Seth—Jack—was doing everything he could to return to his family. It didn’t sound logical.
“Why don’t you come back out?” her mother urged gently. “We’re going to watch a movie. All six of us. How does that sound?”
Addison sniffed and said it sounded nice. Her mother got up, pressed a kiss to her forehead, and said she was going to pour herself a glass of wine. “I think it’s about time. You want one?”
Addison said she did. She smiled until her mother left the room, then let herself sob for a full minute before pulling herself together again. But when she got up, she realized that she had several missed calls and a text on her phone. They were all from Charlotte Whitmore.
Charlotte: Call me. We need to talk.