Nantucket Heart (Nantucket Sunset #11)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

V ery little frightened you after getting a double mastectomy. For Catherine Copperfield, this fearlessness was often difficult to explain to her dearest friends and relatives. They had all slipped easily back into their regular lives and routines after Catherine’s brief yet all-encompassing breast cancer in the winter and spring of 2023.

But for Catherine, there was no going back to how things had once been. She wasn’t frightened of heights or spiders, nor diving headfirst into projects that had previously riddled her with confusion and dismay. Cancer changes you, she thought, as it should.

Maybe this fearlessness was what led her to start the book. She’d wanted to write it for years and had threatened Quentin and her sister Sally that she would get around to it one of these days for the better part of the past twenty. But now, her youngest kid was in his senior year of high school, her middle daughter was at college, and her eldest daughter was living on her own—so Catherine had more time than she knew what to do with. More time to think.

Had she known what would come of writing that book, maybe she would have been frightened.

But there was no one left to warn her.

“It’s a deep dive into my family’s history,” Catherine explained at a party one night. “How we came to be the way we are; how we got to America; what our past was like.”

She was at The Copperfield House with Quentin’s tremendous family and the current iteration of artists-in-residence. It was early August, not long after Alana and Jeremy’s wedding, and everyone was in good spirits. Spread out across the back porch, they drank wine or light beers as the bright orange sun dunked into the Nantucket Sound. A few of the kids splashed in the waves along the shore, erupting with laughter. Soon, they would be called in to eat—but not yet. They would cling to every bit of summer they could.

Catherine’s mother-in-law, Greta, leaned back in her chair and swirled her wine in its glass. She seemed to be rolling over what Catherine had just said. At least, that was what Catherine hoped. It was often hard to read Greta’s mind. She was a wildly intelligent individual, a few notches ahead of Bernard, and only said what she thought when it suited her. Because Quentin hadn’t spoken to any of his family prior to spring 2022, Catherine was still building relationships and getting to know the ins and outs of the family. She was fascinated with them. But she also dreaded the day Greta Copperfield sniffed and said Catherine’s idea for a book was a bad one. What would Catherine do, then? Greta was a literary prodigy!

“I’ve always found nonfiction difficult,” Greta said. “But I have to imagine that most nonfiction books require a hint of fiction. You have to fill in the gaps that you just don’t know. Do we really know what famous historical figures ate on a given afternoon? Do we really know what they listened to when they got ready for battle? No. But we fill in the gaps based on historical context. We paint a picture of what it might have been like as a way to describe how it really was. As a way to relate to it from where we sit now.”

Catherine felt the intellectual slant of Greta’s tone and stiffened her shoulders. Although she’d already had half a glass of wine, she wanted to be up for this kind of conversation. She wanted to be ready to show Greta her chops.

“So my question to you is,” Greta said, “why not fictionalize the story? Write about you and a version of your family that’s ‘almost’ correct but with flourishes here and there. It’s far more sellable that way.”

Catherine winced, thinking of her mother and her father and the tremendous stories they’d passed on to her. “I want to get the stories exactly right. I want to honor my family. You know, I’m a journalist by trade. Fiction just isn’t in my wheelhouse.”

“But the stories themselves are probably not correct,” Greta pointed out. “Things get lost along the way. I could tell you a story about Bernard and me in Paris many years ago, and the things I told you wouldn’t be one-hundred-percent correct.”

Catherine bristled, thinking of her father’s massive hands, her mother’s kind eyes, and the laughter that echoed in the kitchen of her childhood home. The stories her parents had told her had been true; they couldn’t be anything else. They belonged to them. They were their currency.

Catherine resented that Greta said they weren’t true, although she understood what Greta meant. Catherine wet her lips. What could she say now?

Suddenly, Scarlet appeared on the porch in a red swimsuit and a pair of cutoffs. Her hair was salty and curly and wild, and she wore a shade of red lipstick that spoke of the carefree nature of her twenty-four years on earth, her startling bravery as she built her career as a documentarian, and the clear fact that she now lived on her own in Nantucket—in an apartment she rented herself. Catherine had never even been inside it before. Scarlet had insisted on doing everything herself.

It was never clear to Catherine how much longer Scarlet would live in Nantucket. She had wonderful connections via her father, of course, and Catherine knew Scarlet adored working alongside her father on his numerous projects. But the problem was clear. If Scarlet remained here, she would forever work and live in her father's shadow. And if she went somewhere else—back to New York City or Los Angeles or Seattle or Atlanta—she could build a career on her own merit. She would stand on her own name.

“There’s my darling girl,” Greta said, reaching for Scarlet’s hand. “Your mother was just telling me about her latest project.”

Scarlet’s eyes shimmered. She glanced up at her mother with a secretive smile. Catherine had only shared bits and pieces of her family history with Scarlet, as the immensity of the stories often overwhelmed even Catherine. But that was one of the reasons she wanted to write the book. She wanted everything out in the open. She wanted Scarlet and her other children to know the ins and outs of it. If it were published for a wider audience, that would be great. But Catherine couldn’t have cared if the only bookshelf the novel ever saw was her own.

“We’re going to Ellis Island soon,” Scarlet announced to Greta. “Mom wants to search for her family’s signature.”

Greta cocked her head. “For the book, I presume?”

“Yes,” Catherine said.

“And you know what you’re looking for?” Greta asked.

“Yes,” Scarlet answered for her mother. “Mom’s grandfather came to the States in the early forties. Right, Mom? And he was really important. Back home in Italy, he’d owned swathes of land and a couple of castles.”

Greta’s eyes sparkled with intrigue. Catherine cursed herself. I should have started with the castles. I bored her earlier. Scarlet has a better handle on how to entice her audience—just like her father.

“My goodness! Why haven’t you mentioned this?” Greta asked.

“What’s going on?” Quentin approached with a negroni and a cube of cheese and looked from his mother to his wife to his eldest daughter. It was clear from his expression that he was pleased they were all together, three of the people he loved most in the world.

“Your wife just shared that she’s related to Italian royalty,” Greta said. “I can’t believe I never knew!”

Quentin bent to plant a kiss on Greta’s cheek. “Can’t you see it written all over her face?” he asked. “She’s my Italian queen.” Suddenly, Quentin switched into an Italian-inspired Super Mario accent and said, “That’s why she demands nonstop pasta and cheese and focaccia! It’s never-ending! I’m constantly cooking, Mama!”

Catherine whacked him on the shoulder. Greta and Scarlet giggled.

“If only you cooked me nonstop Italian food,” Catherine said. “I’d love it.”

“You know my limitations,” Quentin pointed out. “I know my way around the microwave, and that’s about it.”

Bernard announced it was time for steak: bloody and gorgeous slabs of well-spiced meat, grilled onions and zucchini, potato salad, and fresh bread. Catherine hurried over to grab a plate and joined her three children and Quentin at a picnic table stretched across the sand. From inside, someone turned up the speaker system, and The Doors’ Jim Morrison crooned across the beach.

Greta called to everyone with her glass raised, “One more month of summer! Let’s make the most of it, Copperfields! We love you!”

Everyone raised their glasses happily. Catherine’s heart jumped into her throat. It was times like these—times of joyousness with family, times when she was seated with her three children and her husband, times that felt so normal—that Catherine remembered how close she’d been to death. It had shadowed her for months. Sometimes Catherine had been so frightened to leave her children and husband behind that she’d stayed up late, staring into the darkness over her and Quentin’s bed, fearful that if she fell asleep, she wouldn’t wake back up.

That had been before her surgery and before they’d come to Nantucket. Something about Manhattan had pressed in on her from all sides. It had suffocated her.

It had been a city she’d adored for decades. It had been home.

Then very suddenly, it was not.

Once, during that very dark time of chemotherapy, trauma, and hair loss, Catherine reached out to a therapist. She didn’t want to burden her children or her husband with too many of her horrible emotions; she didn’t want to worry them. So she told the therapist everything that was on her mind.

“This is a good start,” the therapist had said after an hour. “But we need to do this once a week to make any real progress.”

“Once a week?” Catherine hadn’t been able to believe it. She’d thought she would die soon. She didn’t have time to fix her mind.

Now, a year and a half later, she wasn’t frightened of anything. But she wasn’t fully mentally healed either.

More than anything, she wanted answers to her family’s great questions.

She wanted to live.

And she felt as though this book would cure her far more than any therapist might.

After dinner, they cleared the plates, moved aside the picnic tables, and had an impromptu Copperfield dance party along the beach and the bright green lawn. Catherine laid her head on Quentin’s shoulder and swayed in time to “It Had to be You,” watching the other couples do the same: Greta and Bernard, Alana and Jeremy, Julia and Charlie, Ella and Will, Aurora and Brooks. Scarlet was off to the side, whispering in Ivy’s ear. What is she talking about? Catherine wondered. My children are mysteries to me.

“How do you think our girl is doing?” Catherine breathed into Quentin’s ear.

“Which one?”

“Your protegée,” she answered.

Quentin’s eyes widened. “She’s been brilliant.”

“Does she ever talk about getting bored here?”

Quentin sighed. “I know you want our kids to grow up as soon as possible. But I like that she’s here. I have plenty of work for her to do, and she comes to all of James’s games, and she knows her grandmother, and—”

Catherine cut him off. “I hope she knows she has just this one life to do everything she wants to do.”

Quentin arched his eyebrow.

“I just don’t want her to be frightened of change,” Catherine said, backing down. “I regret every day I was frightened as a young woman.”

“You? You were never frightened of anything!” Quentin said. “I still remember how difficult you were in the newsroom. You were so argumentative. If you thought you had a killer story, it didn’t matter what the editor said. You were going to write it. And he always, always published it. Even if he’d said no during the pitch round.”

Catherine giggled at the memory. It was true that when she’d met Quentin, she’d been incredibly aggressive, bright, and quick on her feet—all elements required for a gig in the field of journalism. When he’d first come along, she’d been in the midst of cracking a case about corporate greed. The case itself had gone national, and the corporation in question had fired their CEO and tripled their efforts for equal pay between the sexes, better treatment of mothers and fathers, and even better pay for entry-level positions. With those frantic few weeks of work, Catherine liked to think that she’d changed the trajectory of hundreds of people’s lives.

Ten years after the story broke, the corporation had gone under. Catherine hadn’t known what to feel. Had she been instrumental in destroying that corporation and thus many, many jobs? Or was there too much toxicity at the root of the company in the first place? Maybe the new CEO still demanded too much. Perhaps there was no room for generosity in a place built like that.

Still, Catherine ached to think of the workers who’d had to re-enter the endless process of applying and interviewing and hoping.

Would it have been better for them to keep their jobs, even if the workplace wasn’t fair?

Catherine was plagued with questions.

More than anything, she was overwhelmed with guilt for their tremendous wealth. She tried to remember to be grateful. Despite her past as an “Italian princess,” her family had lost everything upon coming to America, and she’d grown up quite poor. Perhaps that was another reason she wanted to dig into her family’s backstory. So much trauma passed down.

Because Catherine was Catherine Copperfield—and, therefore, Quentin Copperfield’s wife—she hadn’t worked straight through her career the way other journalists had had to. She’d dipped in here and there with a freelance assignment; she’d never let her writing chops rust.

But now that she had the time and the fearlessness and the open heart to finally try, she was eager to get to the bottom of her family history and write about what they’d left behind in Italy.

She couldn’t wait to get her hands dirty in the mess of her family’s life.

And she was so thrilled that Scarlet wanted to help her, too.

Maybe they would bond all over again, the way they had during the chemotherapy.

Maybe Catherine would find a way to impart to Scarlet how essential these years were. You’re descended from Italian royalty. You’re not just a Copperfield. You need to meet your destiny.

Later that night, as Catherine tugged on her cardigan and hugged Greta goodbye, Greta whispered in her ear, “I can’t wait to read your book, darling. Good luck at Ellis Island. Not all of us are lucky enough to understand the dramatic stories of our roots. But you’re a brilliant researcher. Whatever there is to know, you’ll find it.”

Catherine’s heart felt like a balloon. She’d thought Greta didn’t approve of her book. Later, Quentin said, She just likes to have an opinion. That’s my mother for you.

Catherine tugged Scarlet’s hand along with her. She was thrilled that Scarlet had agreed to spend the night at the family home in Siasconset rather than return to her dinky little apartment to eat potato chips and watch YouTube. Catherine liked nothing more than having all her children under one roof.

Safe in the car, Quentin turned the key and drove them back through an impenetrable dark night. The garage door went up, and very soon, they were all nestled on the sofa and chairs, and the blue glow of the television fell over them. James cracked open a soda, Scarlet painted her toenails, and Ivy made popcorn. Quentin drew his arm around Catherine’s shoulders and held her close.

Catherine’s heart thudded with gratefulness. I still have my life. I still have my life.