“Dad, we need to know how this might have happened,” Addison said firmly. “We’re trying to track down the person who was blackmailing you. He’s been blackmailing Seth’s family for years.” Now, the name “Seth” felt strange against their tongue.
Hugh continued to sputter with rage and confusion. He couldn’t say.
And then, from the top of the stairs, Beth spoke. “I told a delivery driver.”
Addison’s head rang with surprise. Silence filled the living room. But Beth strode down—just as regally as Francesca ever had—and stood cross-armed and frowning, looking at her husband. “It was early last year that I confessed to a delivery driver in the kitchen that my husband had been having an affair. I couldn’t stop crying. I felt like nobody noticed or cared about me, and I needed some kind of release. That was the only person I told.”
Addison gaped at her mother, realizing that all this time, her father had been blackmailed for something that Beth alreadyknew about. Maybe Beth hadn’t realized the extent of what Hugh was doing, nor what he was paying, until it was too late.
It felt so tragic, the fact that the damage had been done before the money had left their account and before the hotel had been sold. More than that, if this delivery driver was the leak that Angelo had tracked down to blackmail Hugh, it meant that Beth was the reason the information had spilled out in the first place. Addison felt like sobbing. She needed to remain controlled.
“Beth, you don’t know what you’ve done!” Hugh cried, trying and failing to get up from the sofa.
But Beth remained resolute, staring down at him from the third step. Addison had never seen her so powerful.
“Mom, do you remember the delivery driver’s name?” Addison asked.
“It was Ralph,” her mother said. “Ralph Schneider. I can get you his phone number if you like. I have it with my things.”
Beth spun on her heel and hurried upstairs. Addison followed after her, her head spinning. Down below, her father bellowed with rage, but Jack told him to quiet down and compose himself.
“The damage has been done, Hugh,” he told him. “All you can do is apologize and try to get through this.”
But when they reached what had once been Kennedy’s bedroom, the room that Beth had apparently taken as her own without Hugh, Beth snarled, “I’m not going to forgive him. I’m sorry. But I can’t. He gave away everything. He destroyed our lives.”
Addison’s heart felt heavy, but she understood. “You can come back with us, Mom,” she said.
Beth stopped scrabbling through her things and looked up at Addison. For the first time, her face didn’t look hollowed out with shock. “I don’t want to be a burden,” she said.
“You wouldn’t be,” Addison said. “The kids miss you. I miss you. And it isn’t fair to move across the country for one side of the family, only to abandon my mother in the process. It isn’t fair to me, or to you.”
Beth clasped her hands. “Hawaii has always been my home,” she breathed.
“Our home is together,” Addison said. She hated the idea of Beth remaining in Kennedy’s old bedroom, looking at pop star posters and listening to her husband snoring downstairs. She couldn’t handle it.
Beth pursed her lips and told Addison she had to think about it. But it was then she pulled out the notecard upon which, in her scrawl, she’d written Ralph’s handwriting. “Ralph listened when nobody else would,” she said.
Addison wanted to tell her mother that she would have listened, that she would have made her heart open to her mother’s experiences. But she wasn’t entirely sure if that was true.
Sometimes, it was hard to see parents as humans, too. Addison had given them superhuman qualities, especially when she was younger. But now that she had children of her own, she knew how fallible parents were. They were only human.
When Addison called Ralph Schneider that afternoon, he answered on the second ring. “Hello?” He had a vague German accent, proof that he was an immigrant, perhaps one who needed to take the occasional bribe to get by amid the horrendous rising costs in Hawaii.
Addison was on the back porch of the house, basking in the Hawaiian sunlight. Jack was beside her, watchful. They’d spentthe past hour packing up their children’s belongings and taking boxes to the post office to ship back to Nantucket. Expectation bubbled between them. Was it possible to end what had been back in the nineties from here in Hawaii?
“Hi, Ralph,” Addison said, her voice bright. “My name is Addison. Addison White. I’m looking for a delivery driver for my new bed-and-breakfast. You were recommended to me by a previous colleague. I was curious if you’d be willing to meet to discuss the opportunity?”
Ralph said he’d be willing to meet as early as tomorrow morning. Addison felt an urgent desire to say “now or never,” but she knew that everything had to be delicate. She made an appointment to meet Ralph at a nearby coffee shop tomorrow morning. When she hung up, she felt so jittery that she sped out onto the beach and began to pace. Jack hung over the railing overhead, watching her.
“It’s going to be okay, Addy,” he said.
Addison stopped short, her hands in fists. She looked at him. “We’re building a new life for our kids out in Nantucket, Seth. Jack. Whatever. We’re rebuilding the White Oak Lodge. I’ve already lost the Golden Sunset. I’ve already lost you once.” Terror gripped her heart. “I won’t keep losing and losing and losing, not to some stranger I’ve never known. I’m not the type of woman to let this keep happening to me. I’m stronger than that.”
Jack took what she said seriously. He could see it, echoing from his eyes. He came down the stairs and scooped her into a hug, kissing her neck. Addison didn’t let herself cry.
When they went back inside, they found that Hugh had vacated the living room and disappeared into the bedroom upstairs. Beth had taken his place, her hands on her hips as she asked them how it was going, if they’d found Ralph yet.
“We’re going to meet him tomorrow,” Addison said.