Jack had imagined that now that Tio Angelo was an older man, he’d be less slippery. But it seemed that Tio Angelo improved at his chosen career every year.
Suddenly, Jack was back in his studio apartment. He hadn’t realized he’d been on the way home. He undressed, pulling a pair of sweats and a big T-shirt on, then sat at the end of his bed, his heart thudding. Was he really going to do what he needed to do?
He knew how to find Charlotte’s phone number. He knew that she had a website for her documentary stuff and that she needed to be easy to contact for potential projects. He knew, too, that she still lived on Nantucket, in the house he’d purchased on Madequecham Beach. He liked that he’d offered Charlotte this haven, especially after everything that had happened with her fiancé, with the car accident, and with Jack’s abandonment.
Jack hesitated. What if, in returning to the Whitmore family, he would only break their hearts again? What if he was doomed to repeat what he’d done, over and over again? What if his mother’s heart couldn’t take it? She’d looked weaker. She’d looked years from death.
He felt that he’d wasted his life.
He felt that he’d destroyed everything once sacred to him. And for what?
He typed Charlotte’s number into the phone, closed his eyes, and called. The phone rang across Mexico City, across the continental United States, all the way to that little island in the Atlantic Ocean. Jack nearly worked himself into a full-on panic. He heaved with tears.
And then, Charlotte’s voice came on the line. “Jack?” she breathed.
Relief melted through Jack’s shoulders.He knew that one way or another, he’d be heading home soon.
Chapter Two
Oahu, Hawaii
It was Thanksgiving evening on the island of Oahu. Purple and pink light spilled across the ocean and reflected across the flickering palm leaves. Addison Green was stationed at the head of her parents’ table, slicing a pumpkin pie for her three children and trying to calm her heart’s sputtering. She could be normal. Couldn’t she? Sure, it was the first Thanksgiving Day without her husband, “Seth Green,” the first Thanksgiving she’d spent as a single mother, the first Thanksgiving during which she knew her husband’s true name—but not why he’d lied about it, nor where he’d disappeared to, nor why he’d gone. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t enjoy it. Right? She laughed darkly to herself, pressed the top of the whipped cream, and spread a big sweet cloud over each slice. ’Twas the season to drown your sorrows in sugar.
In the room directly next to the kitchen, Addison could hear her father flicking through the channels, and her mother and the kids playing Sorry, a game that had them in reckless giggles.She brought the plates of pie to the living room and set themdelicately on the carpet before returning for more plates for herself and her parents. Brokenhearted or not, she wasn’t one to miss out on pumpkin pie. Her father was instructing Kennedy, one of her eleven-year-old twins, on Sorry tactics (which seemed silly since it was a game of mostly luck), while Penelope, the other twin, and Gavin, the ten-year-old, made up songs that showed how unfocused and sugar-drenched they were.
When Addison returned to the living room with more pie, her father gave her a nervous smile.
“Uh-oh,” Addison said before he could speak. From his smile, she could tell he needed something. “What’s up?”
“Janie wrote. She needs help with the computer again,” he confessed. “Could you?”
“I’m on it,” Addison said, snapping over to the door that separated their family apartment from the rest of the Golden Sunset Hotel. The hotel had been in her family for generations, ever since a relative, a hundred and fifty years ago or so, had journeyed to Hawaii during the gold rush and started up a hotel for others foolish enough to make that trek. When she was a girl, Addison had worked in the hotel, learning to make beds well from the age of five, learning how to clean in a way that put all kids she knew to shame, and helping to check in and check out guests who’d come from all over the world to enjoy her family’s stretch of the beach. She could do “small talk” with people from Boston to China to South Africa from the age of six or seven. Hospitality was in her blood. It was in Seth’s, too, she knew. Jack’s blood, rather. But he hadn’t told her about the White Oak Lodge, not while they were together. She’d had to find that out through his sisters during her brief yet illuminating trip to Nantucket Island.
She knew her father was too stuffed with Thanksgiving food to perform any duties at the hotel, and she was happy to do anything to get her mind off the missing member of their family.
Addison found their employee Janie scrambling behind the front desk in the lobby, trying and failing to check in a married couple from Indiana. Janie was rather new at the hotel and hadn’t mastered some of the more technical elements of the computer.
“My knight in shining armor is here!” Janie announced to the couple. “I’m terribly sorry about that.”
Addison grinned at the couple. “We’ll get this figured out in no time.”
The couple from Indiana explained they had been traveling all day as she filled in the required forms on the computer and fetched their keys. “It was snowing in Indianapolis when we left,” the husband said with a goofy smile. “It’s incredible what a few flights can do for your mental health! I am so ready for a margarita in the sun.”
“I can’t believe you live here,” the wife said, glancing back at the sunset as it dimmed to its golden-orange over the waves. “I don’t think I’d ever be able to leave!”
Addison laughed. “I’m sure Indiana’s special, too. I haven’t spent much time in the continental United States.” As she set the key down on the counter, she dared to ask them, “Random question. But have you ever been to Nantucket Island?” She wasn’t sure where the question came from, nor why she felt she wanted to ask it.
The husband and wife raised their eyebrows but seemed thrilled to talk about their experiences.
“We went to a wedding there four years ago!” the wife said. “It was divine, truly. I still remember some of the food we ate there! Ralph, remember that clam chowder we had at that little shack?”
“I’ve never had better food at a shack,” her husband said.
“My husband is from there,” Addison said. She felt Janie’s watchful, curious eyes, but she didn’t glance over to explain herself.
“From one island to another!” Ralph said. “I guess you’d get used to having all that water around you.”
“Tell us, what does he think about this business with that lodge?” the wife asked, narrowing her eyes. “We saw it on the news on the way here. It isn’t every day that they haul buried treasure out of the earth, is it?”