Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Addison’s husband, Jack, appeared beside her, knocking on the doorframe of Kennedy and Penelope’s room right before he hollered, “Thirty seconds and counting, guys.” He turned to wink at Addison, then pressed a kiss onto her lips. Warmth flooded through her.
“Are you coming, too?” she asked.
“Of course!” Jack said, hurrying around her to grab his winter coat. “I wouldn’t want to miss my kids’ first day at their new school.” He said this last part with a booming voice, reminding the three kids scrambling in the next room that it was time.
Addison smiled with surprise. Back in Hawaii, back when her husband had been named Seth Green, he’d usually had to run off and repair someone’s plumbing or fix someone’s boat long before school began, which had left Addison with the brunt of the childcare.
Jack’s smile melted, albeit briefly. “This is how it’s going to be in Nantucket,” he told her, drawing a scarf around and around his neck.
“I’m going to be there for you and the kids, no matter what.
” Implied in what he was saying was that he was sorry for any time in the past that he’d failed them.
He’d failed them so desperately, so often. Addison hoped he was telling the truth.
On the drive to school, Kennedy, Penelope, and Gavin were quiet, reflective, gazing out the window at the frigid world that was now their own.
Addison and Jack kept their voices light and melodic, trying to build their children’s excitement.
But Addison knew how frightening it was to start at a new school.
The decision to move to Nantucket full-time was not one she’d taken lightly.
Throughout the Christmas season and as New Year’s Eve grew closer, she and Jack had spoken about it endlessly.
They’d made pro-con lists, and they’d outlined their ideas of the future.
Jack told her that he’d do whatever she felt was right.
In the end, Addison felt that being close to this enormous, bubbling Whitmore family so soon before the White Oak Lodge reopened after nearly thirty years was too good to pass up.
She’d called her new job back in Hawaii, thanked them for the opportunity, and explained that her circumstances had changed.
She’d also called her mother and told her that she needed to stay in Nantucket for now. Beth had sounded brokenhearted and confused. “But Seth is there,” her mother had said gently. “I suppose I can understand that. You have to be together as a family.”
Addison still wasn’t sure how to explain Seth’s real identity to her mother. That was a problem for another day.
Jack parked the rental car in the elementary lot, and the five of them got out and crunched through the snow.
Addison’s anxiety roiled in her stomach.
Suddenly, something cold and hard hit her in the back, and she whirled around to find Gavin, standing there with a funny grin.
A moment later, another snowball landed on her stomach and splattered.
She gasped with laughter and hurried to make her own snowball.
Jack joined in on the fun, throwing a snowball onto Kennedy’s shoulder and cackling.
By the time the Whitmore-Green family entered the building, they were red-faced and their hair was speckled with snow.
Addison and Jack were introduced first to Kennedy and Penelope’s teacher, followed by Gavin’s.
Both were kind-hearted women in their forties, women who remembered Jack Whitmore from “all those years ago.” They peered at him curiously, as though he’d really come back from the land of the dead.
Addison recognized how strange this was for everyone.
But she hoped they understood how strange it was for her, too. Every day was a learning experience.
Addison and Jack kissed their children goodbye and wished them good luck on their first day.
But before they left each classroom, their children had turned around to join their new classmates, all of whom pestered them for details about Hawaii.
“Do you know how to surf?” One little boy gasped, “Go, Gavin,” as though he were a celebrity.
Addison floated out of the school beside her husband, clasping his hand. Tears filled her eyes, but she fought them, telling herself that everything would be okay. It had to be.
On the way to the White Oak Lodge that morning, Jack and Addison bought a big box of local donuts—some filled with vanilla cream, others with chocolate, others with a maple frosting that Addison was newly addicted to.
Entering the lodge, they found the Whitmores hard at work.
Amos sped past in a hard hat, chatting with a construction worker that Addison hadn’t met yet.
Nina was in conversation with another anthropologist who’d come to research the tunnels beneath the lodge, with the hopes of publishing an article about both the treasure and the lodge’s history in an anthropology magazine that Addison had never heard of.
Benjamin and Charlotte were busy interviewing potential candidates for a social media position, since they knew they needed to begin marketing the hotel before the big May reopening.
There was a bustling joy to the place, Addison felt. There was an expectation that, together, they could make this new reality a reality.
Janie, Alexander’s wife, appeared with a mug of coffee and took a chocolate-glazed donut.
“You’re lifesavers,” she said. “Alexander dragged me here this morning at the crack of dawn. I’ve been starving.
” Janie took a bite, closing her eyes. “These donuts are insane, aren’t they?
We don’t have anything like them out in LA.
I swear, the diet revolution damaged that town. Out here is where I belong.”
Addison laughed. She’d been eating her fill since she came out east, that was for sure.
But because of all the chaos and movement and business at the lodge, and because of the freezing-cold air and the constant snowfall, she’d felt she needed the extra calories.
She was trying to listen to her body, to open herself up to whatever was going on.
“How did it go at school?” Janie asked.
Addison said she liked both teachers and that the kids seemed okay. “They’re well-adjusted,” she said. “I worry it’s been too fast for them. I mean, we left so much of their lives back in Hawaii. Seth, I mean Jack, and I need to make arrangements to transport more of their things over here.”
Janie squeezed her arm. “It’s a process. Be kind to yourself. Take things one day at a time.”
That morning, energized by her donut and coffee, Addison helped Nina in one of the upstairs rooms, painting the baseboards and making plans for which furniture could go inside when the time came.
Nina was bright, funny, and easy to talk to.
Addison asked her numerous questions about not only her opinion of Nantucket’s school system but also about her move from Princeton and how she felt about her career, now that she’d thrown so much of her energy into refurbishing the White Oak Lodge.
Nina looked contemplative, a shell of sunlight flashing across her cheek. “I don’t regret any of it,” she said finally. “I feel open to whatever happens next. And I’m endlessly excited about spending an entire summer on Nantucket with my kids!”
Addison remembered meeting Nina and Charlotte last summer, how anxious and terrified she’d been. Nina’s kids had been at summer camp, nursing their wounds after Nina and their father’s divorce. But Nina explained that she never wanted to spend so much time away from them ever again.
From downstairs came calls of welcome. Curious, Nina and Addison hurried to find that Francesca and Allegra had come for lunch, Francesca moving slowly but regally, her brand-new wig shining.
Allegra was planning to go back to Italy soon, and Lorelei had already left.
But Francesca would remain. Nina still wasn’t sure who she planned to live with.
Maybe Charlotte would move into that vacation home for the time being?
Oh, but if they were all going to stay on Nantucket, if they were all going to commit to this life, didn’t that mean that most of them needed to buy houses and actually settle down?
It was a lot to think about. Addison thanked her lucky stars that Jack had bought a house on Nantucket decades ago, when the market had been a bit better. She couldn’t fathom spending what houses required now.
But the joyousness that had come with Francesca’s arrival dried up in an instant when, with a shaking hand, Francesca pulled a letter from her purse and set it in front of Benjamin. “This was in the letter box of my house last night,” Francesca explained, raising her chin.
The letter was unmarked. Addison and the rest of the Whitmores watched anxiously as Benjamin removed the note from within and read it.
His cheeks went pale. Without saying anything, Benjamin passed the notecard around to the rest of the Whitmores so they could understand what was happening.
When it reached Addison, she read Mark my words.
If you continue returning the lodge to its former glory without offering me what you know I’m owed, my colleagues and I will see that it burns once more. Yours, A.
A sickly feeling overtook Addison. She thought of her father, back in Hawaii, nursing his wounds and sleeping in front of the television.
She thought of the Golden Sunset Hotel, its refurbishment that had pushed it farther and farther from her family’s vision.
She thought of Angelo Accetta, that arrogant and heinous Italian man, who’d torn not only the Whitmores apart, but also her mother and father.
He wouldn’t hesitate to destroy everything.
“Is there any video footage?” Benjamin asked Francesca. “Any record of who dropped this off?”
Francesca shook her head and said she didn’t believe in video surveillance.
Nobody was willing to say that video surveillance was maybe their only way to understand Angelo’s movements.
Addison wasn’t even convinced that it was Angelo himself who’d delivered the letter.
Her stomach roiling, she hurried outside to calm herself, inhaling cold air.
When Jack came to find her, he wrapped his arms around her and said, “It’s going to be okay. ”
But how could Jack know if it was going to be okay?
Addison steeled herself before saying, “I want to track him down myself. I want revenge.”
Jack’s eyes were clear. Before he could convince her of any other tactic, Addison told him what she wanted to do.
She wanted to return to Hawaii and follow the trail that had ended with the dissolution of her family’s life.
“Maybe he doesn’t know that we’re back together,” she suggested.
“Maybe he’s been lazy on my end of things. Maybe we can catch him.”