Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Jack’s plane landed at one thirty Eastern Standard Time.
Out the windows was a strange mix of snow, rain, and a mist that made Jack think of the old fairy tales his mother told them before bed.
A shiver went down his spine. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been cold.
Around him, other passengers were putting on their coats and wrapping scarves around their necks.
All he had were the clothes in the backpack he’d shoved in there when he’d left his family to chase his uncle. He’d have to do something about that.
Once inside the Boston airport, Jack walked slowly, feeling like a man in a dream.
There were numerous clothing shops, places that reminded him of his East Coast youth.
He tried on a few jackets and coats, barely glancing in the mirror and going by feel instead.
Everything felt overwhelmingly thick, as though he were wrapping himself in marshmallow fluff.
Around him, everyone’s accents made him want to laugh and cry at the same time.
Bostonians, New Englanders, they all sounded so funny and charming in his ears.
They sounded like his father, Benjamin, from whom he hadn’t heard since he’d left his repair shop in Hawaii.
How was it that Benjamin had ended up on Nantucket?
Charlotte mentioned that Benjamin was taking the fall for the fire so Alexander wouldn’t get arrested.
Apparently, Tio Angelo had also been busy blackmailing Alexander numerous times over the years.
Benjamin had decided that his love for his son outweighed his freedom.
He’d returned to Nantucket and faced his past. Now, Jack had to face them all.
Jack bought a coat, gloves, a hat, and a scarf, then headed to the rental car company nearest baggage claim and got the cheapest one available.
When he handed over his license—his Seth Green license, of course—he realized that it was nearly expired.
Addison was usually the one who reminded him to do things like that, to organize the little details in his life. He felt crushed with love for her.
The rental car was a cream-colored Chevy with a stick shift.
Jack hadn’t driven stick in years, but it came back to him easily and took his mind off his troubles, albeit briefly.
As he drove away from the airport, headed for Hyannis and the ferry that would take him to the island, he thought back to the long-ago days when he’d first learned how to drive stick.
His father had thought he’d been teaching Jack, but the truth was that Tio Angelo had already taught Jack how to drive, long before it was legal to learn.
Tio Angelo had needed him to deliver various “products” around the island.
His uncle needed Jack to be everywhere he needed Jack to be, whenever that was.
Shame made his cheeks burn. He didn’t like to think about how susceptible his uncle had been.
He didn’t like to think about how eager he’d been to make money as a teenager, at any cost.
Jack parked the car in the belly of the ferry, then went up to the mid-deck to grab a cup of coffee and watch the island come closer and closer.
Around him, people were talking about their Thanksgiving dinners, who had won the football games the day before, and how Christmas would be here before we knew it.
Jack looked at everyone, wondering if he’d met any of them in some other era of his life, but he didn’t recognize anyone.
When he drove off the ferry, he half-expected his entire family to be waiting for him in the parking lot.
He imagined them all as they’d been in the nineties, his mother so beautiful and still young, his father still strong and arrogant and sure of himself, Nina still eleven years old and following him around like a little pet.
But it had begun to snow, and anyone in the parking lot now scampered to their cars and fled to the warmth of their homes.
Jack remembered the route to Madequecham Beach like the back of his hand.
It took fifteen minutes to drive there from the ferry, and throughout, his heart banged hard in his chest. He wondered what Charlotte would say when she saw him.
He remembered what she’d said just last night—that she hoped he wasn’t abandoning anyone as he returned to them. She knew what kind of man he was.
He remembered, now, why he’d bought the house in Madequecham Beach in the first place.
He’d been obsessed with his anger toward his uncle, obsessed with revenge.
In his twenties, he’d known that Tio Angelo maintained druggy connections in Nantucket, that he continued to sell right under the noses of the Nantucket police.
With the name Seth Green, Jack had purchased the house, eager to keep an eye on things and wait for Tio Angelo to make a mistake and reveal himself. But life had had other plans for Jack.
Jack pulled into the driveway in front of the house on Madequecham, cut the engine, and got out.
Before he reached the porch, the front door burst open to reveal his older sister, his marvelous Charlotte.
She stood there, coatless, in a pair of jeans and a sweater.
Her dark hair swept back behind her like a flag in the wind.
She looked at him as though she couldn’t believe he’d really made it.
Jack staggered up the steps and wrapped his arms around his sister. He felt old and young at once.
Charlotte ushered him inside, where she poured them coffee.
She was quiet, as though she didn’t know what to say.
Jack didn’t either. He took off his shoes and sat on the sofa.
He was wrapped in a blanket because he couldn’t stop shivering.
The ocean looked the same as it always had in winter: frigid and terrifying and apt to swallow you.
Charlotte remained standing, her hands around her mug of coffee, her eyes alight.
“You look like yourself,” she said quietly.
Jack laughed, in spite of everything. “I look old.” He didn’t add: I look like I’ve been holed up in an anonymous hotel in Mexico for the better part of the year, chasing our uncle.
“I don’t want to think what that makes me,” Charlotte said.
They shared a smile. Jack thought about the last times they’d shared, both before and after the car accident that had nearly killed her fiancé. Oh, that felt like a lifetime ago. He couldn’t believe that her fiancé had left her after that, that Charlotte had lived so much of her life alone.
Because he couldn’t think of what else to say, he asked her how her documentaries were going.
Charlotte’s voice was like a string, but she explained that things had been really “hit or miss,” that she couldn’t always get funding for the projects she wanted to pursue.
“But I think it’s getting better,” she said.
“I mean, now that we’re all together, things feel easier.
I can’t explain it.” She told him that she’d begun seeing her high school boyfriend again, Vincent, whom Jack had always liked back in the old days.
“He’s a chef now,” she explained, smiling in a way that made her look like she was floating.
“Running into him again made me feel crazy, but in a good way, for once. I never imagined I’d actually get married.
I never imagined I’d actually do anything you were ‘supposed’ to do. ”
“What is anyone supposed to do?” Jack asked.
Charlotte laughed at herself. “It’s funny. The more I learn about our family, the less I believe that conservative people raised us.” She wet her lips. It seemed she had a thousand secrets behind them. Would she tell him everything if he asked?
“But I need to know, Jack,” she whispered. “Where have you been? What happened to you?”
And so, there in the house he’d purchased so many years ago, a house that felt both homey and new at once, Jack decided he had to tell her what he’d been up to, how sure he’d been that he could end things himself, and what a failure he currently was.