Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
The island of Oahu was rainy and shadowy on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.
Standing at the front desk of the Golden Sunset Hotel, Addison felt morose, her heart dark and strange.
When guests checked in to their rooms, she forced herself to make small talk.
The couple from the West Coast weren’t entirely pleased about the weather and the great distance they’d traveled to get rained on.
Addison apologized for the weather, feeling ridiculous.
But she knew that most tourists were eager to blame hospitality for things that hospitality couldn’t control.
After she’d sent the new guests to their room, Addison checked her phone and saw a few texts from Charlotte Whitmore.
Charlotte continued to beg Addison both to come to Nantucket Island and to allow Charlotte to tell Jack the truth—that Addison already knew about his true identity, so he didn’t have to maintain his secrets any longer.
Charlotte wanted everything to come out into the open.
Charlotte: He keeps talking about his wife and kids, and my parents are so eager to meet you. I can see how much he loves you. It’s in everything he does! But I imagine that he’s too scared to reach out to you, for fear of what you can’t forgive. Can you forgive him?
Addison wasn’t sure, so she didn’t respond.
Another rain cloud dumped a torrential downpour on them.
Addison spent the afternoon sweeping the lobby and trying to reorganize the front desk.
Her kids had after-school programs today, so Addison wouldn’t need to pick them up till seven that evening.
Maybe she’d get them takeout for dinner.
She didn’t feel much like cooking. It had been this way since Seth—Jack, whatever—had left.
At five thirty, Addison dipped into the back office, searching for a new box of blue pens.
As she opened the top drawer of her father’s desk, she heard a horrible cry coming from upstairs.
Her father was sobbing. She knew it intuitively, although she’d hardly ever heard him cry before.
The sound was awful. Forgetting the box of pens, she tiptoed out of the office and went upstairs to the apartment her parents had raised her in, the apartment where they still lived.
From the sound of things, her father was sobbing in the living room.
Where was her mother? Addison vaguely remembered Beth mentioning a sewing meetup with other women in the area.
It meant that her father was home alone, thinking he was crying in privacy.
But there was no privacy in the Golden Sunset Hotel. Didn’t he know that? He’d grown up here, too.
Maybe it meant he didn’t care who heard him.
Addison took a breath, willed herself to handle this, and entered her parents’ apartment. Her father abruptly stopped crying.
He blinked at her, nonplussed, then got up, scrubbed his cheeks, and tried to force a smile.
Addison closed the door behind her and crossed her arms. It was strange to try to console her father, given that he’d always been a formidable force of nature. He’d always been a “father knows best” type. She’d hardly ever argued with him before.
Maybe a part of her was afraid of him.
“Hi, Dad,” she said meekly.
“Hi. Um. What can I help you with?” her father asked, turning on his heel to enter the kitchen and pour himself a glass of water. “Are things in order downstairs?”
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “We’ve had a few check-ins, but no drama.”
She watched her father drink an entire glass of water as though his life depended on it. He set the glass back on the counter and took many deep breaths. Was he going to break down again?
“Dad, are you all right?” Addison asked, hating how afraid she was. She didn’t want to step on his toes.
Her father flinched, then looked over at her. “I’m fine,” he quipped. “I’m fine.”
Addison didn’t believe him, not in the least. But how could she get through to him?
“Is someone at the front desk?” he demanded. “Have you left the lobby empty?”
Addison flashed her phone between them. “I have an alert set on my cell. It’ll tell me when someone walks in.” Why had he forgotten that? She’d set the same alert on his phone last year.
Her father groaned and pressed against his heart with his hand. Was he having a heart attack? Addison flinched at the thought of calling an ambulance to handle things. But she waited, unsure of what to do or say.
And then, he warbled with, “It’s over, Addy.”
Addison furrowed her brow. “What’s over?”
Her father gestured vaguely around them—at the coffee maker, the window, and the paintings on the walls. “It’s all over. The Golden Sunset. Our tenure here. It’s over.”
Addison gaped at him. He wasn’t making sense.
“We’re out of money, Addison,” her father continued. “We have nothing left.”
Addison coughed with surprise. It didn’t make sense. She knew how good her father and mother were with money and how steady the guests had been over the years. They made no enormous purchases. They did nothing that would have destroyed their financial standings.
“That can’t be right,” she said, drawing breath. Hadn’t she just looked over the books a month or two ago? Everything had been in order.
Her father turned and glared at her, as though she’d made a grave error. “You’ve never understood this business,” he said. “I know that now.”
Addison felt as though she’d been smacked. “Tell me how in the world you’ve lost all the money you had a month ago,” she said. “Tell me how I misunderstood what I’ve always known.”
But her father turned his back to her, went to the window, and began to sob again.
Rage simmered in Addison’s chest. Again, a text came through her phone, this time from Charlotte, telling her how important it was that the entire Whitmore family come together.
Addison couldn’t take it. She stomped through the apartment door and returned to the front desk, praying that her father was having some kind of minor breakdown from which he’d recover before nightfall. Maybe they’d laugh about it.
A little while later, Addison greeted the next employee—a woman named Mona—with a hurried goodbye and headed to the school to pick up her kids.
As they piled into her car, they were red-cheeked and slightly sweaty, telling her about what had happened at their various practices and how hungry they were.
Addison drove them back to the house she and Seth had purchased all those years ago, the house they’d planned to get old in, and asked that everyone shower before dinner.
Standing at the kitchen counter, listening to her children turn on the water and scamper to and from their rooms, Addison felt her heart pounding.
Before she knew it, she’d called the pizza place down the road and ordered enough for all four of them, grateful she didn’t have to cook.
Throughout the evening, as she filled her children’s plates with pizza, monitored their screen time, and got everyone ready for bed, she kept wondering what on earth her father had meant. She couldn’t make sense of any of it.
When Addison’s children were tucked away in their beds, Addison checked her phone to find another string of texts from Charlotte. Annoyance shot through her. Maybe because of her stress levels right now, she wrote back.
Addison: Seth lied to me for years and years. I don’t know if I want him back in my life. And I have too much to take care of here in Hawaii to deal with all that.
She sent it, her ears ringing.
And then she called her mother, praying that Beth would tell her what had happened with her father earlier. The phone rang just twice before Beth answered. “Honey?” Beth’s voice wavered. “Honey, your father said he told you?”
Addison collapsed on the sofa and pulled her knees to her chest. “He told me that we’re going to lose the hotel? But it doesn’t make any sense.”
Her mother’s voice shook. “He told me we have to sell. We have to sell.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Mom,” Addison said. “You know the state of our finances just as well as I do. You’ve been doing this longer than I have. We’ve been more than conservative over the years. We’ve raised the prices along with inflation. We’ve—”
But her mother interrupted her. “None of that matters now. Your father wouldn’t lie about something as important as this. It’s over, Addison. Our life here is through.”
Beth hung up the phone, leaving Addison in the silence of her living room. From the photograph on the television, a much younger version of herself in a wedding dress beamed down at her, arm in arm with her handsome husband, Seth Green. They seemed to mock her.