Page 35 of Lost Dreams

“I, um…” Aurora’s voice shook. “I need to go. Please.”

But Nico didn’t seem willing to let her go. “Don’t play games with me,” he said.

Just before Nico could corner her, just before he could get his lips over hers, Aurora ducked away from him, threw open the door, and ran out of the restaurant. Luckily, she had her wallet and her phone and her keys in her pocket. She didn’t go back to get anything else.

Down the streets of Rome, she ran, breathless and teary-eyed. When she got back to her room, Nico had texted her to ask why she’d left work.

NICO: You have things to do here. We pay you well, and we expect your respect. That means staying till the end

of your shift. That means telling us if you have to go home.

Her hands shaking, Aurora blocked his number and threw her phone on her bed.

She had to get out of Rome.

By then, it was the end of April, and soon, the White Oak Lodge would reopen on Nantucket Island. Aurora knew that the island was filled with her mother’s ghosts, but Aurora didn’t have a single ghost to speak of in the United States and certainly not on Nantucket Island. She imagined herself falling into the familiar arms of her Grandma Francesca. She imagined herself swimming in the ocean, her arms pumping, her heart surging. She called the airline and changed her flight to be a week early. She then called her business school and told them she was withdrawing from all of her classes immediately.

“You’re going to graduate in three weeks,” the woman on the line said, exasperated.

“Something has come up,” Aurora said. “I can no longer graduate. I can no longer finish my classes or my degree.”

“But…” The woman tried to protest, but Aurora hung up.

Now, Aurora raised her chin and looked at her mother, Lorelei, whose eyes were wet, her lashes dripping. She hadn’t interrupted Aurora during her story, not once. Now, she opened her arms and beckoned for Aurora to come over to her. Lorelei held Aurora tightly and cooed in a mix of Italian and English. “You shouldn’t have had to go through that. He shouldn’t have done that to you. My baby. It’s so wrong.”

Aurora shook violently, maybe at the intensity of finally telling the truth. “I know Papa’s going to be so angry that I quit the internship,” she said. “He’s going to be so angry that I quit business school. I’m supposed to save the Sardinian restaurant.”

Lorelei spread her hand across Aurora’s forehead. “You aren’t supposed to do anything,” she said. “The only thing you’re supposed to do is be our daughter and live the life of your dreams.”

Aurora laughed gently into her mother’s shoulder. “I don’t have dreams anymore.”

Lorelei was quiet for a moment. “What about the documentary you’re making?”

Aurora felt another spasm of guilt and shock. She pulled back a little and explained that, too. It was simpler, a matter of describing Grandpa Benjamin’s devastation at learning about his uncle’s death and how that death mirrored his own brother Ronald’s death.

“I knew we couldn’t tap the Whitmore family for more tragic stories,” Aurora explained. “I tried to explain that to Kenny and Oren. Oren didn’t take it very well. And then…” She bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut, remembering the intensity of her and Kenny’s kiss, remembering how fuzzy with desire she’d been until Oren had spotted them and Kenny had run after him.

“Oren doesn’t care about using our family,” she said finally. “And I think he hates me, because…”

“Because you fell for his best friend?” Lorelei chimed in.

Aurora raised her head to look at her mother, surprised. But it was clear that her mother had been watching her like a hawk since they’d come to Nantucket. She’d sensed the intensity between Oren, Kenny, and Aurora. She’d seen it all like a warning.

“Do you have feelings for him, too?” Lorelei asked.

Aurora nodded, then felt a spike of pain in her chest. “But I don’t want to have feelings for him,” she said of Kenny. “I don’t want to have feelings for anyone.”

“Is that because of what happened to Sebastian?” Lorelei asked. “Because, honey, you can’t keep blaming yourself for that. You can’t let this haunt you forever. What happened was a tragedy. But it wasn’t your fault.”

Sometimes late at night, Aurora could still hear in her head the sound of the car hitting Sebastian in that back alley in Berlin. She tormented herself with that sound. She kept herself awake for hours, telling herself that Sebastian would still be living in Berlin and making art and maybe even loving her if Aurora hadn’t dragged him out of the house that day, or if only Aurora had saved him. Aurora’s life could have been so different. Maybe she would have made something of herself by now.

Maybe she wouldn’t be begging for pieces of an artist pie from Kenny and Oren. Perhaps she would have had her own exhibition. Maybe she would have made herself a beautiful career.

“And if you think your father is going to stop loving you because you stopped attending business school, you’re so wrong,” Lorelei said finally. “Your father is a lot of things. He’s stressed. He can be mean and arrogant and hard to talk to. But he loves you three fiercely. When I first got pregnant, he was overjoyed to bring babies into the world. There was no hesitation.”

As her eyes filled with tears, Aurora was reminded of her mother’s diaries, of how upset she’d been that her high school boyfriend had abandoned her during her pregnancy.

Rather than talk more about herself and her endless feelings and sorrows, Aurora asked her mother, “Are you doing all right?”