Page 32 of Lost Dreams

Their kiss broke. They studied one another, sizing one another up.

And then, across the water, they heard a horrible groan. Aurora turned to find Oren on the beach, also with his shirt off. He glared at them. “Is that how it’s going to be?” he called out, smacking his legs. He then turned on his heel and stormed back toward the Lodge, leaving gashes in the sand as he went.

It took a minute for the scene to register, at least for Kenny. All at once, he swam violently toward shore, splashing and calling out Oren’s name. Aurora hung back, sensing that whatever was happening between Oren and Kenny was something ancient, a hangover from their teenage years. Kenny was on the beach, racing after Oren, still screaming his name.

Aurora continued to tread water. She could still taste Kenny on her lips. Her heart still ached for him, although she didn’t know how to call him back to her. She wondered if that was the first and last time she’d ever kiss him.

Back in her room, Aurora lay on her bed in only a towel, wondering what was going to happen next. Beside her was her mother’s journal, still buzzing with all the entries Aurora had yet to read. To get her mind off her own messy life, Aurora opened it to where she’d left off.

July 16, 1996

It’s hard to believe it, but Allegra’s friend Nancy spotted Carter. Apparently, she was on vacation in Manhattan, eating an ice cream cone, when Carter walked by. She called his name, and he didn’t even pretend not to see her or anything. He came over and talked to her, as though everything was normal, as though moving to Manhattan on his own was always in the cards.

To Nancy’s credit, she didn’t let Carter go without a fight. Nancy doesn’t know about the miscarriage – nobody does except Allegra and me—but she does know that Carter took off without telling me where he was going, and she also knows that he took off right before high school graduation, which seems pretty dumb. (Honestly, I still don’t know what to think about it.)

Carter told her that he had an opportunity, an audition on Broadway. That’s why he left Nantucket early. Apparently, he worked something out with our teachers and is going to graduate officially at the end of the autumn semester.

When Nancy asked why he left me like that, Carter shrugged and told her that we wanted different things.

Aurora groaned and closed her eyes. Her poor mother! Abandoned, reeling from a miscarriage, lost in the month post-high-school-graduation. She’d probably thought her life was officially over. Just two years later, the White Oak Lodge would burn, and she’d go to Italy and get a new lease on life. But for two years, Aurora guessed, Lorelei lived in a state of misery.

How she wished she could ask her mother about it. How she wished she knew what Lorelei thought about that time of her life, now—now that Lorelei was forty-nine and on the brink of what seemed to be a divorce. Aurora closed her mother’s journal and closed her eyes.

A half hour later, Kenny called. Aurora answered it tentatively, frightened of what Kenny would tell her. His voice was shaky as he explained that Oren was going to use every bit of footage he wanted. “He thinks it’s his art, not ours,” Kenny said angrily. “He said it isn’t up to us to edit what he does with his documentary.”

Aurora didn’t know what to say.

“That’s how he always thinks about it,” Kenny said. “He always thinks it’s his art we’re making, rather than a collaborative thing. And Aurora, he says he has more dirt on your family. I don’t know what it could be. I don’t know what he’s planning. But tonight, he quit working here at the Lodge, and he told me to stay away from him.”

By the sounds of things, Aurora thought Kenny was going to burst into tears.

“I’m so sorry,” Kenny said. “He gets like this. I don’t know.”

But Aurora knew the real tragedy in Kenny’s life was that, in one fell swoop, with one beautiful kiss to the woman Oren had wanted instead, Kenny had lost his best friend. Aurora’s heart went out to him, even though she wanted to protect the Whitmores, even though she knew all this was partially her fault.

“Are you going back to Rome?” Kenny asked, surprising her.

Aurora felt it like rocks in her stomach. “I can’t go back to Rome,” she whispered. “Something happened there. Something I can’t face.” And then, like Kenny, she burst into tears too.

16

Down the hall, Lorelei was alone in the bedroom she’d taken for herself, trying and failing to read a novel. Carter was blowing up her phone, asking when she was ready for another round of practice, and Lorelei wasn’t sure how to answer him. Yes, it had felt divine to sing and play the piano with Carter again. Yes, it had felt beautiful to pretend that nothing bad had happened between them, that he hadn’t broken her heart in an integral way that had changed everything else.

CARTER: It reminds me of being a young man again, of how beautiful music and life felt. I guess, during my marriage, and as I’ve struggled to make my career work, I’ve lost sight of beautiful things. Can you relate to that at all?

CARTER: I’m sorry. Maybe you don’t want to talk about your marriage?

CARTER: But if you do, I’m all ears. I get it. I know how rough it can be to make things work, year after year. To keep the spark alive.

Lorelei flared her nostrils, reached over, and turned off her phone. “Shut up,” she growled at the screen, at Carter, at everyone.

When Lorelei had first gotten pregnant with Pino, she was twenty-five years old and preparing to perform at the Berlin Philharmonie. She’d already performed on this particular stage a number of times. But now, now that she knew she was pregnant with Roberto’s baby, now that she’d taken yet another pregnancy test and realized the mistake she’d let herself make all over again, she felt jittery and strange in a way that didn’t suit performing. When she told Raffaello that she was too sick to go on, he scoffed at her.

“You must go on,” Raffaello explained. “Hundreds of people have paid good money to see the brilliant Lorelei Whitmore perform. You can’t let a few butterflies get to you.”

Lorelei wasn’t ready to tell Raffaello about her pregnancy. She wasn’t ready to tell anyone. So, she hurried off to the bathroom, where she threw up and gave herself a pep talk in the mirror. “You are going to handle this,” she said. “You are going to go out there and show them how much you’ve mastered this material. You are going to show them what kind of musician you are.”

A few minutes before Lorelei was set to go on, the phone rang with a call from Roberto. He was back at the restaurant in Rome. This was before they’d opened their own. He was frustrated because his boss had different plans for the menu, and he wasn’t listening to Roberto. Lorelei knew this. But Roberto had the good sense not to talk to her about that just now, not right before she went on stage.