Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Ahalf-hour later, the entire Whitmore family was gathered around the television at the lodge to watch the evening news.
Nobody could speak. The dinner, already cooked, remained in the kitchen, cooling as time passed.
Maybe someone would think to put it in a Tupperware later, but maybe they wouldn’t.
It took a really strange event for an Italian family to forget to eat.
Francesca stood closest to the screen, bending forward, as though she wanted to crawl into the television.
She didn’t look weak any longer. Jack hung back, his heart pounding.
He couldn’t believe what Detective Bronson had told him: they’d arrested Angelo.
They’d gotten the evidence they needed to finally corner him. It was over.
“He isn’t feeling as smart as he once did,” Detective Bronson had said proudly over the phone. “Thanks again for your help. It went a little bit faster, although I know it wasn’t fast enough for all of you.”
“There he is,” Benjamin whispered now, just as a camera panned to show two detectives shoving Angelo into the back of a cop car.
Just before he dropped down, Angelo seemed to make eye contact with the camera, as though he could see directly into the White Oak Lodge.
It was as though he knew they were all watching him.
It was as though he wanted to tell them that this was all a part of his grand plan, as though it were a game that he’d begun in the nineties only to complete now.
The newscasters went on to list everything that Angelo had been arrested for, including drug trafficking, blackmail, and conspiracy. His mug shot appeared, showing him to be just as handsome and mischievous-looking as ever, despite his age.
“There’s my brother,” Francesca whispered in Italian. She sounded mystified, as though a part of her had thought she’d never see him again. “Look at how handsome he looks!”
“He really does,” Charlotte agreed, throwing an eye roll back to Jack, who smiled.
But it was true. Nobody could accuse Angelo of being ugly, not this late in life, not this deep into criminality. He still looked like he could smooth-talk his way out of prison. It was terrifying.
Chaos broke out after that; at least there in the White Oak Lodge.
Francesca insisted that she wanted to go to Manhattan to see him.
Benjamin thought that sounded like a bad idea.
Some of Jack’s siblings suggested that Francesca should focus on her health first. Maybe she could see him later, after the trial.
“You just finished chemotherapy, for goodness’ sake,” Alexander said, glowering.
“And that’s exactly why I have to go,” Francesca shot back. “It’s given me clarity on life that I’ve never had before. I need to look Angelo in the eye and say what I’ve always needed to say. I need him to know how he broke my heart. I need him to hear me.”
Nobody knew what to say to that. It seemed perfectly reasonable. That, and nobody was accustomed to telling Francesca that she couldn’t have exactly what she wanted.
Arrangements were made for Jack to drive Francesca to Manhattan the following morning, as Francesca didn’t want to wait, and after a brief call, Detective Bronson suggested this was a good time to come.
“After he’s processed into one of the bigger prisons, during and after the trial, things will get more complicated,” he said.
Jack didn’t know what that meant. He felt as though Angelo dangled over a big, dark pit called the criminal justice system. He shivered.
That night, wrapped in bed with Addison, Jack confessed that he couldn’t believe it. All he could see of Addison was her glinting eyes in the darkness. She kissed him and whispered, “He didn’t win. I can’t believe he didn’t win.”
“We didn’t let him,” Jack said. But then he added what he knew was true. “We couldn’t have done it without you, Addison. Really.”
He could see Addison smiling in the moonlight.
In the car the following morning, Francesca was quiet, watchful.
She didn’t say a thing till they’d been in the car for nearly two hours, long after they’d boarded and then disembarked from the ferry.
Jack knew better than to interrupt her thoughts, although he was dying to know what was on her mind. His mother was a complex person.
“You know,” Francesca said finally, speaking in a slow and poetic Italian, “when Angelo was young, my father was sure he was going to be famous. He was sure that Angelo would go on to make famous films, that he had the personality for the bright lights and famous people. That he’d get an Oscar one day.
I was the one who wanted to be a filmmaker, but our father didn’t care.
He thought Angelo had the right temperament.
I guess he was right. Angelo was ready for fame.
But he came at it in a completely different way. That’s putting it lightly, I suppose.”
Jack tried to read sorrow in his mother’s voice, but he heard nothing but nostalgia—and, bizarrely, kindness.
It was as though she knew how her brother had suffered through the years, as though she knew that at the core of his heart was loneliness.
She knew the origin story of Angelo and, therefore, maybe, could forgive him—to a point.
But could she really forgive him for splitting apart her family for so many years?
Jack knew that he never could. Nor could he forgive him for pulling Jack into a criminal world, for ruining his life all those years ago, for poisoning his heart.
If it weren’t for everything that happened, Jack knew, he never would have met Addison and he never would have had his three kids.
But still. Some pains you never got over. Some bruises never healed.
Francesca stopped talking after that, as though she felt she’d already said enough. That, or she had to conserve her energy for what came next.
At the facility where they were keeping Angelo prior to his trial, Jack and Francesca were told that Angelo was something of a celebrity there.
“They love him,” the security guard said as he led them back to the visitation room. “Apparently, he’s very charming. He can get anything he wants from everyone. But don’t worry about it. We have everything locked tight back there. He won’t find his way out.”
Francesca looked sort of pale, as though she didn’t believe him.
But all at once, the big iron door was opened, and they were shown to two chairs in front of a wall of glass.
A full minute passed during which Jack struggled to breathe.
Only then did another guard bring Angelo into the room on the other side of the glass.
In Italian, Angelo opened with a joyous, “My sister!” His eyes were like a child’s.
When he sat down, he began to speak in a rapid Italian that Jack almost couldn’t understand.
He said, “My darling Francesca, I never imagined you’d come to this place.
I never imagined you’d want to see me again.
But it means so much to me. It makes me open my heart to your understanding. It—”
But Francesca interrupted him with a tilt of her head. Jack felt as though she were a lion, taming her prey before she ate him. Angelo stalled, his smile faltering. Soon, they were two much older siblings, looking at one another from either side of a thick pane of glass.
“Angelo,” Francesca said delicately. “Angelo, what have you done to my family?”
Angelo was frozen, maybe with surprise, maybe with sorrow. Jack guessed that he’d never sat with someone who genuinely loved him, not since he’d left Nantucket. Maybe the fact of Francesca’s love made Angelo understand all he’d lost through the years.
Angelo didn’t have anything to say to his sister's question.
“I opened my home to you,” Francesca went on.
“When Mama and Papa didn’t want you anymore, after everything you’d done in Italy, I brought you here.
I introduced you to my children. I gave you responsibilities at our lodge.
What did you do to repay me, my brother?
You burned my lodge. You sent my husband and my son to the four winds.
You forced me to lose decades of my life. ”
Angelo interrupted, if only briefly. “I’m sure you didn’t do too badly in Italy, Sister—”
“No. Don’t. Do not equate me making the best of a bad situation with me having a beautiful life,” she shot back. “Tell me, Angelo. Why should I ever forgive you? How can I?”
Angelo flared his nostrils, as though for the first time in his life he was stumped. Jack tried to relish the moment, but it almost felt too emotional. He could feel how brokenhearted his mother was.
“I have cancer, Angelo,” Francesca added.
“And throughout my treatments, I’ve thought about you endlessly.
I’ve thought about what I would say if you were in front of me.
And now that you’re here, I still don’t know what to say.
Unfortunately, I still love you, my brother.
I suppose I always will. I don’t know what to do about that, either. ”
For the first time in Jack’s life, he watched his uncle wipe away a tear. Jack couldn’t believe it. Francesca put her elbows on the desk between them, which was also something Jack had never seen. Usually, she sat properly, like a lady.
“I understand that you don’t want to confess to burning the White Oak Lodge,” she continued. “Which still puts my family at stake. We need to close that case, Angelo. We need to say it once and for all. Angelo Accetta set fire to the White Oak Lodge. Say it.”
Angelo flared his nostrils and shook his head.
“I need you to say it, Brother.”
Angelo’s hands were in fists. He’d lost his cool. “What do I get out of confessing?”
Francesca laughed gently. “What do you want?”
Angelo took many staggered breaths. “I want you to visit me.”
Francesca was taken aback. “Is that all? After all these years, you missed your sister?”
Angelo didn’t say anything. Jack recognized how frightened he was. For decades, he’d been running, and he’d finally been caught. Maybe it had been because of Jack and Addison; maybe it hadn’t. But the fact remained that it was over for him, while the Whitmore family could rebuild.
“I’ll visit you,” Francesca said gently. “But it’s only because I love you, and I’ve worried about you over the years. Despite everything. Despite every horror you brought into my life.”
Angelo closed his eyes. Jack’s stomach pounded.
“Once a year,” Francesca affirmed. “I’ll come wherever you are.”
“And you’ll write me,” Angelo pushed it.
“Only if you confess,” Francesca finished.
Before Angelo could answer, the guard entered to say it was time to go.
Angelo was led out of his little room, pale-faced, his eyes searching.
He looked like a child. Jack followed after his mother, winding behind her down the hall and into the clear light of the parking lot.
He kept waiting for her to break down and cry, but that wasn’t Francesca’s way.
When she turned to look at him, she looked prettier than he’d seen her since the chemo had begun.
What she said should have been obvious to any Italian American kid. “What shall we have for dinner tonight? I’m already starved.”
In the days that followed their visit with Angelo, the Whitmore family threw themselves into last-minute preparations for the reopening of the White Oak Lodge.
Every room in the place was fully booked for the first weekend.
The chefs were primed and ready with their specially made menu, every painting was hung straight, every banister was shining, and every blade of grass on the lawn was glistening green with vitality.
Standing with Addison on the back porch, watching his family gather on the beach for a picnic, Jack was overcome with disbelief.
He couldn’t believe that he’d made it this far.
“Come on,” Addison said, laughing as she laced her fingers through his and tugged him across the lawn, past the horse stables, and onto the sand.
They could hear the horses neighing, awaiting the opening weekend.
Sometimes he wondered what his mother felt about the horses, about the stables, as he knew that was where she’d first met Jefferson Albright all those years ago.
But as they approached his parents on the beach, he noted Francesca’s face as she gazed at Benjamin; she looked at him with all the love in the world.
She looked at him as though everything in the past could be fixed.
Maybe fixing anything so far in the past was impossible, Jack thought.
But if anyone was made for the task, it was the Whitmores, as they were ready and waiting for the future.