Chapter 3
Greta got ready for her coffee with Celeste with the nervous adrenaline she’d once associated with meeting an important editor or a famous celebrity. She tried on numerous outfits like spring dresses and slacks with nice blouses, and she redid her hair several times, pursuing a look she’d once been able to pull off. It took her more than an hour to figure out that she was attempting to look the way she had back in 2004, as though she wanted to turn back time and be the woman Celeste had known twenty years ago. But it wasn’t like Greta had many photographs from that time. Her family had gone away; she hadn’t bothered to record memories. Celeste was the only living memory of Greta during that time.
Bernard entered their bedroom a few minutes before she left. “You look pretty,” he said as he stretched out on their bed for a nap. “Where are you going again?”
“I’m meeting a friend for coffee.” Greta stretched out beside him to kiss his cheek. “Have you been writing?”
“Frantically,” Bernard said. “And I think every word of it is terrible.”
Greta laughed. “I doubt that, Bernard Copperfield.”
“I’m not you, darling. Not everything I write is lined with gold.”
“You’re the one who wrote the award-winning bestseller last year.”
“I had all that time in prison to perfect it,” Bernard said. “Now I’m just tired and old.”
“You’re not,” Greta assured him. “Take a nap, and then go back upstairs and keep working.”
“Aye, aye, captain.” Bernard’s eyelids fluttered closed.
Greta left the house a few minutes later and walked to the French café she’d adored since it opened in the early nineties. She could only count on one hand the number of times she and Celeste had gone there together. In 2003 and 2004, Greta hadn’t enjoyed being seen in public. Too many Nantucketers had been angry with the Copperfields. They’d whispered about her in the corner—thinking they knew that Bernard had cheated on her with Marcia Conrad and stolen money from their dearest friends. “Don’t listen to them, Greta,” Celeste had urged her. “They don’t know anything.”
As Greta walked, she returned to that first night when Celeste had arrived in Nantucket. It had been violent outside. A storm made the Nantucket Sound froth like a big green cauldron. Greta had latched the windows and doors and hunkered in her bedroom alone with her television and her DVDs. At the time she’d been working through the entire filmography of Federico Fellini. She’d been swept up in surrealist films from the sixties and seventies. She’d been eating predominantly rice cakes slathered with bad cheese and pretending she’d never eaten anything delicious in her life.
That’s when she heard a knock at the door. It was like something from a horror movie. Greta remained in her room, rigid as a stick, waiting for whoever it was to go away. But the knocks just kept coming. It sounded as though whoever it was shook the entire house—such was their desire to get in.
Finally, Greta wrapped herself in a robe and stomped downstairs. The knocks kept coming, and a flash of lightning splintered the night sky. She thought maybe a serial killer was on the other side of the door. Maybe someone had come to finish off the final Copperfield. But when she opened the door, she discovered a young woman in her early twenties. She was completely soaked to the bone, shivering. She had her fist raised as though she planned to knock all night.
“Hi! I saw your light on!” The young woman raised her chin.
Greta balked. Who was this? One of her daughters’ friends, perhaps? A straggler? A hitchhiker?
And then she asked, “Is this The Copperfield House?”
Greta’s knees shivered beneath her. Nobody had come looking for The Copperfield House on purpose since 1997. Six long years. She steeled herself. “It used to be The Copperfield House. But it’s just an old abandoned haunted house now.”
The girl started shivering. Greta’s heart melted at this young woman, who was around the same age as all of her daughters, wandering through this dark and stormy night. Where were her parents?
“Do you mind if I come in for a second?” the young woman asked. “I’ve been traveling all day, and I’m frozen.”
Greta opened the door wider and let her in. The young woman clutched her elbows and dripped across the foyer’s hardwood floor. Greta hesitated. Her mothering instinct was fighting to the surface. Finally, she burst into the living room to drop logs in the fireplace, which she had up and running in just a few minutes. As the fire crackled through the tinder, she asked, “What’s your name?”
“I’m Celeste. Celeste Harding.” Her voice wavered.
“Why don’t you go to the second floor to take a hot shower, Celeste?” Greta turned to look the young woman in the eye. “Use the clean towel beneath the sink. I’ll have some hot food ready for you down here when you get out.”
Celeste’s lips parted with surprise. Perhaps she hadn’t anticipated such kindness from a stranger. Greta hadn’t anticipated giving it. But as she went up and the staircase creaked, Greta was transported back to a time when owning and operating The Copperfield House had meant being a caretaker for all sorts of people. Her heart ached at the memory.
And suddenly, she’d been struck with the thought, I won’t be able to take it when she goes away.
* * *
Greta reached the French café a few minutes before the time she and Celeste had agreed upon. She sat in a shard of sunlight toward the back of the large room with its wooden walls and square wooden tables that featured wooden vases filled with lilies. She ordered a cappuccino and sat nervously until she heard footsteps to her left. She was on her feet. But when she turned, she found a meek-looking woman with ratty hair and a bad hot pink sweater approaching her. She didn’t look anything like Celeste. Greta sighed and sat back down. But the woman continued to approach her. Was she planning on sitting at the table beside her? The room was empty save for Greta. It didn’t make sense. But now, the woman stood over her table, smiling at her. Greta flinched and forced her eyes to hers. It couldn’t be. Could it?
“Greta,” the woman said.
Greta was on her feet. She peered into this woman’s eyes, searching for her darling Celeste. But this woman looked so tired and withdrawn. Her cheeks were hollow, her skin was ghoulish, and her clothing decisions were atrocious. Greta opened her arms and said, “Celeste! It’s you!” She hugged her with her eyes open as her head throbbed with surprise. Even in her arms, Celeste didn’t feel the same. It was a strange contrast to seeing Julia, Alana, and Ella again. They’d been almost identical to their teenage selves. She’d known them to their core.
Celeste ordered a decaf coffee and sat next to Greta with a smile that showed how yellow her teeth had gotten. Greta’s heart flipped over.
“You look wonderful,” Celeste told her. “Just the same as ever.”
Greta wasn’t sure what to say. “You look great. I couldn’t believe it when I heard from you. It had been so long.”
Celeste furrowed her brow. “Too long. You’re right.”
There was a strange pause. Greta couldn’t remember any pauses between her and Celeste during the year and four months they’d spent together twenty years ago. Their conversations had burned with fire, light and creativity.
“What brings you to Nantucket?” Greta asked.
“A short vacation,” Celeste explained. “My husband and I are here for some sailing and sightseeing.”
Just like everyone else, Greta thought.
“Your husband?”
“Brad,” Celeste said. “He’s an accountant.”
Greta’s heart seized. How could Celeste have married an accountant who took normal vacations? Provocative and artistic and wild Celeste? Celeste, who’d arrived in the midst of a storm that had turned the Nantucket Sound green?
But Greta was polite. She had to be. She asked questions about Brad, which inevitably led to a conversation about their children.
“I have four,” Celeste said. “Didn’t you have four?”
“Yes.” Greta was having trouble keeping her smile up. This was such a boring, everyday conversation. She could have had it with the woman at the grocery store. “They all came back to Nantucket two years ago. It’s been a thrill to get to know my grandchildren. The Copperfield House is all filled up again. We even restarted the residency.”
Celeste sipped her coffee. “And how has that been?”
“Great. We’ve had a few dramas here and there. My granddaughter Anna fell in love with one of our writers recently. That was chaotic. She’d just had a baby.”
Celeste kept smiling, an easy smile that Greta found difficult to read. Greta had to stop herself from bursting with the question she burned with about what Celeste had done professionally. What had happened after she’d gone to New York City in 2004? But Celeste seemed unwilling to talk about that. She spoke at length about her children, about her eldest son’s belief in good attendance, about her youngest son’s desire to be an accountant like his father. She spoke about the birds in their garden and about a trip they’d taken to Florida last year. The conversation was easy and uncomplicated. It provided the dullest of information.
“You should have seen my husband and me last summer when we decided to get the garden going again,” Celeste was saying. “We argued for hours at a time about what kind of tomatoes to put in!” She laughed easily.
Greta tried to join her. But her heart felt cracked around the edges. They’d been at the coffee shop for more than an hour, and Celeste hadn’t brought up her writing career once. Greta had always assumed she was her number-one protégée, that her skills rivaled even Greta”s, and that Celeste would have the career that Greta had always longed for.
When Celeste finished her coffee, she admitted she had to meet her husband at their hotel shortly. “But it’s been lovely to see you,” she said.
Greta wanted to demand answers. Why had Celeste wanted to see Greta if all she planned to talk about was her daughter’s favorite type of sandwich? Why hadn’t they gotten down to the root of their relationship? Why hadn’t they mentioned anything about their time together? And already she planned to go!
“Okay,” Greta said. “It’s been good to see you, too.”
Greta stood to hug Celeste. The hug was slightly longer than she would have liked; it seemed to represent a different kind of relationship. Celeste turned and whisked out of the French coffee shop and back out of Greta’s life. Greta had a hunch that she would never see her again, and she was usually correct about these sorts of things. She had whiplash. She sat back down and ordered a cup of tea.