Chapter 5 #2
“And then one afternoon, out of the blue, I came back to my hotel and found Angelo waiting for me on the balcony. He was drinking a scotch and smiling in that awful way of his. It made me think he’d gone insane from all these years of being in hiding, of doing whatever he was doing to make money.
I tried to remain very calm. I told him that I wanted nothing to do with him, that the past was over.
But Angelo soon revealed how paranoid he was.
He told me that the cops were sniffing around him again and wanted me to come clean about my involvement in all the drug dealing and everything that happened back in the late nineties in Nantucket.
I told him that was out of the question.
He threatened to go to the police and tell the cops he witnessed me killing you, killing my son.
I didn’t know what to do. I was stunned into silence. He told me I had a week to do it.
“After that, he left the hotel. I nearly lost my head.
But I kept it enough to grab my things and follow him.
He entered a bar not far from the hotel, which I staked out until I realized I would never be able to get close enough to learn his next steps.
I needed someone to talk to him, someone with no obvious connection to me.
So I went back to the hotel and asked the woman at the front desk if she wanted to make some extra money.
It was a relatively dead night, and she had a coworker who could cover for her, so she agreed and came down with me to the bar.
I told her to sit beside Angelo and strike up a conversation.
You know how Angelo was about women. He could never resist them. He was and ever is Italian.
“I waited for ages, watching them. Angelo went to the hotel clerk immediately. He was exuberant, talking to her about the grand adventures he had planned. When she managed to slip out—just barely—he’d just ordered them another round of Negronis and had invited her to go to Hawaii with him.
This very island. He was shameless. When she asked what he planned to do there, he said he had an important meeting with his nephew Seth Green. ”
Jack stood in stunned silence, not sure he wanted to believe his dad’s story.
He’d come to Hawaii in 2010 and had never once heard from any member of his family.
He hadn’t imagined that they’d be able to track him down.
His name on all his paperwork was Seth Green.
Thanks to his father’s connections, Jack Whitmore was legally dead.
“How?” Jack whispered. “How did he find me?”
Benjamin shook his head. “I don’t know. But you haven’t seen him?”
Jack shook his head. He couldn’t fathom this.
And then, he thought of Addison. He thought of the family he’d built with Addison. He thought of their brilliant children—Kennedy, Penelope, and Gavin. His heart felt as heavy as a stone. He sank into the chair opposite his father and put his head in his hands.
“I wanted to warn you so you could make plans,” his father explained. “It seems likely that he wants to turn both of us in. He wants to undo all the work we’ve done, the safe lives we’ve built.”
Jack shook his head. “He can’t. He can’t take this away from me.”
Benjamin sighed and got to his feet. “The biggest mistake I ever made was underestimating your uncle. Don’t be like me.”
Jack watched his father walk to the door. “Where are you going?”
“We can’t stay together,” his father said. “We’ll be more conspicuous that way.”
Jack’s heartbeat quickened. “You should stay here. We can make a plan together. We can…”
But Benjamin shot him a look that said he was being unreasonable, then walked out the door and was gone.
Jack sat for a long time, staring into space, thinking about his wife, his children, as well as his Whitmore family, the family who lived only in his dreams—and his nightmares.
His father had been here, right here in his office. And now he was gone.
Jack shook it out of his head. He couldn’t fathom the idea that Tio Angelo was here, that he was going to blow up his life as Seth Green. He couldn’t imagine Addison turning to him and saying, “You betrayed me, you betrayed all of us. You never told me the truth about who you are.”
Jack shot up, grabbed his keys and his wallet, and locked up his office.
Before he knew it, he was in his car, driving.
He didn’t know where he was going. Sweat poured down his forehead.
At a nearby diner, he pulled over, got out, and ordered himself a bowl of vanilla ice cream, which seemed so juvenile and stupid that he hardly ate it.
He looked around the diner, watching the locals eat their tuna melts and drink their strawberry milkshakes.
He couldn’t remember if he had any meetings planned that afternoon with clients.
He couldn’t remember what the kids were doing after school. He felt like he was going insane.
Maybe his father was the one who was insane. Maybe all this would pass as though it had never been. And wouldn’t that make sense? Benjamin and Jack had undergone enormous trauma. Neither of them would probably ever really get over it. But at least Jack had his children, his wife.
But five minutes after the vanilla ice cream had melted to the bottom of the bowl, the server approached and placed an envelope on his table. “This is for you, apparently,” she said cheerfully, winking. She probably thought it was his birthday or something.
Jack glared down at the envelope. He didn’t want to open it. But it felt as though someone was watching him. The sensation crawled up the back of his neck. With a burst of energy, he grabbed the envelope and ripped it open.
Inside was a single notecard with a single sentence, a sentence that changed everything.
Tio will tell your family everything you did and who you really are.
Jack shot to his feet, petrified. He saw red. Twisting his head back and forth, he searched for signs of his uncle in the parking lot, out the window, or sitting at another booth nearby. But he couldn’t see him anywhere.
Jack paid for his ice cream and returned to his car.
He felt violently ill. Again, he imagined Addison and the kids learning about his real identity—learning that he’d had to fake his own death as a teenager and flee.
He thought of all the terrible things he’d done in his life; he thought of all the guilt he’d thought he’d abandoned in taking on a new name.
But the guilt remained in his stomach.
He couldn’t live like this. He couldn’t keep this up.
He couldn’t let Addison and the kids learn the truth about him. He knew they wouldn’t be able to love him when they discovered who he really was.