Chapter 7
Greta hurried into the streets of Little Italy with her heart in her throat. Alana had sent a link of the hotel name and address, and she waved her arm to try to grab a taxi before giving up and walking all the way there. She shimmied through crowds of New Yorkers and tourists, hurried along grimy sidewalks and paused at crosswalks as her thoughts swirled and threatened to bring her to tears. She couldn’t believe this. Celeste Harding was dead.
Greta reached the front desk of the hotel and checked in with a young woman who sensed Greta was upset. She fetched her a glass of water and said she was sending a glass of champagne to her room “on the house.” Greta could barely see her; her tears had begun to fall. When she reached the room upstairs, she collapsed on the bed and stared at a crack that wound its way across the ceiling. On her phone were twelve missed calls from Alana, and she texted:
“I’m fine. I just need to rest.”
How could she explain herself?
Greta had packed her lightweight laptop just in case the mood struck her to write. Her agent was after her for a new book because the Copperfield name was especially famous right now; she wanted to ride that wave. Greta propped herself up on pillows and googled Celeste Harding for the second time in two weeks. This time, an obituary popped up.
The photograph they’d used was taken from Celeste’s years at the Winsome Theater Company. She glowed with a smile that spoke of many years of future prosperity and tremendous intellect. This was the young woman Greta had known and loved. But the obituary was brief and mysterious. “Celeste Harding Green passed away on May 23, 2024, after a brief illness. She is survived by those who loved her the most: her husband, Dan, and her four children, Vincent, Bailey, Lyla, and Kyle.” It offered no information. It filled in no gaps.
Greta closed her computer and got under the covers. She brought herself back to that day at the French café with Celeste on May 14th. She remembered how judgmental she’d been, how she’d looked at Celeste’s clothes and sniffed with confusion. She remembered wondering why on earth Celeste had reached out to Greta if all she wanted to talk about was her son Vincent’s perfect school attendance and her recent trip to Florida.
Why hadn’t Celeste told her what was happening?
Greta felt as though she floated through the ocean without a life raft. She felt frustrated at times and terribly sad at other times.
She wondered why a woman on the brink of death wouldn’t have wanted to say exactly what was on her mind. Celeste had had nothing to lose. But she’d spoken about mundane things, then gone to meet her husband, the accountant, for dinner. Now, she was dead. It didn’t add up.
Greta had gone into “hiding” in 1997, but she hadn’t really been in hiding because everyone had known where she was. She was at The Copperfield House. She’d locked her doors and locked her heart. The reasons had been clear. Bernard was in prison. Her children hated their family. The daydream of her life was over.
Something had happened to Celeste, too. Something before the cancer. Something that had blotted out her light. Did anyone know what that was?
Before Greta knew what she was doing, she had her agent on the phone. Cynthia was a woman in her early forties who regularly sold books for six figures but hadn’t allowed her success to go to her head. Greta liked her because she could run ideas past her without judgment. Cynthia was very clear if something was a bad idea or not. She knew what she could sell.
“Greta! This is a surprise,” Cynthia said.
“I wanted to call you right away,” Greta said, “because I have an idea for a novel. And I don’t want to follow it too far down the rabbit hole if it’s a bad one.”
“What a pleasure. Shoot.”
Celeste’s face floated in Greta’s mind’s eye as she said, “I want to write a mystery about loss of ambition. I want to write a story of an American woman with talent and brains, a young woman set to go the distance who ultimately fails because of the extenuating circumstances of her life. It’s really a story about everyone in America. About how difficult it is to overcome your past and your family and your decisions.”
Greta could feel Cynthia’s smile over the phone.
“That sounds like a huge undertaking,” Cynthia said. “And incredibly vague.”
“I know. I know. I have a lot to flesh out,” Greta said as a blush crawled up her neck. “I just lost a dear friend of mine. And I want to uphold her memory as best as I can. I want to understand her.”
“You want to write her biography? I don’t know if I can sell something like that.”
“It won’t be a biography,” Greta assured her. “More of a memoir of my own life, what she meant to me, and how our paths deviated.” She stuttered. “I’ll be talking about my years of exile, too. During the years Bernard was in prison. I know people are endlessly curious about that.”
Cynthia brightened. “I’ve been asking you to write more about that for over a year. The answer was always no. Why the change of heart?”
“I need space and time to think about my life and my past and why things end up the way they do,” Greta said with a sigh. “And the only way I know how to figure that out is through writing a book.”
“Then it’s settled,” Cynthia assured her. “Let me know when you have pages for me to read. I can’t wait to dig in.”
There was silence save for the sound of a vacuum cleaner somewhere in the hotel.
“I’m sorry about your friend, Greta,” Cynthia said.
“Thank you.” Greta’s throat was almost too tight for speech. “I loved her. But I’m beginning to question if I ever knew her at all.”
* * *
The drive back to Nantucket was tense. Greta opted to sit in the back by herself, which meant that Alana turned around every half an hour or so to ask if she was all right. Greta wanted to scream back that she was okay. That she was always okay. But that was clearly a lie, so she said, “I’m not ready to talk about it. Can we leave it at that?”
It was a distraction to listen to Alana, and Jeremy talk up front. Greta imagined she was their ten-year-old kid, listening to her parents as they drove her home safely. Jeremy was talking about how beautiful Sarah’s neighborhood was and how proud he was, and he choked up a few times as he mentioned memories he had of Sarah from when she was a girl. Greta empathized. It was heinous to watch your children move through life without you. At least he knew Sarah would come home for a visit soon.
Greta got home a little past two to find many of her grandchildren strewn across the beach in front of the house. Scarlet, James, Ivy, Rachel, Anna and baby Adam, Laura, and Danny were decked out in their swimsuits, stretched out on towels, applying suntan lotion, and listening to a speaker that played a song Greta had never heard and hoped to never hear again. She put on a pair of sunglasses and sat on the patio behind them, trying to distract herself with how happy they looked. Eventually, Scarlet noticed and popped up to beg her to come swimming with them. Greta couldn’t think of a reason not to. She wanted to feel something besides this dull ache. She hurried upstairs to change into a swimsuit, then returned to charge into the waves hand-in-hand with Scarlet and James. James dove deep beneath the surface and came up twenty feet away from them. Greta’s laughter echoed over the waves.
“How was the city, Grandma?” Scarlet asked, swimming over to her.
Greta treaded water. She was grateful for the strength of her muscles, grateful for a body that still hadn’t failed her. Celeste had been in her forties. She should have had a resurgence. She should have had time to return to poetry and playwriting. It wasn’t fair.
“Grandma?” Scarlet asked.
“You know how the city is, honey. You grew up there.” Greta smiled and dunked herself into the water, where all she could hear was her own heartbeat. When she came back up, Scarlet looked at her with a mix of fear and curiosity. She wasn’t used to Greta dismissing her like that.
“Sarah has a wonderful apartment,” she said. “I think she’ll be happy. We have to go see the play when it starts up.”
“I’d love that,” Scarlet said. She smiled in a way that proved Greta had fooled her into thinking all was well.
Was that another thing about getting older? Did you have to pretend to feel good all the time for the sake of everyone else?
Greta got out of the ocean and stretched out on a towel as her grandchildren frolicked. She knew someone was going to ask her what was for dinner soon. She wasn’t sure she had the energy for it.
Suddenly, James started yelling. Greta burst to her feet and peered out at him. He was splashing and waving his hand. What was he saying?
“I found something!” he called again.
Greta’s heartbeat calmed. Together with her grandchildren, she swam out to see what he had. On the sea floor was a very old anchor from a very old sailboat or smaller vessel. It was rusted and spoke of a potentially terrifying expedition. What was a sailor without an anchor? Lost.
“Should we pull it out?” James asked Greta.
Greta shook her head. “It belongs to the ocean, now,” she explained. The ocean had swallowed it up.
Greta retreated to her kitchen to see what she could scrounge up for the grandkids. People padded in and out in various stages of clothing, swimsuits and towels. Everyone looked like a scraggly dog. Greta’s heart swelled with love for all of them. It was the kind of love that would soon tip her over the edge. Before long, she’d have to hide upstairs and cry again. She was just so grateful for what she still had.
Greta agreed to meet Alana for lunch a few days later. Alana was pale and jittery and kept looking up from her menu to stare at Greta with confusion.
“You don’t have to treat me like I’m fragile,” Greta said. “I know I acted strangely in the city. And I’m not over it. But I’d appreciate it if you treated me normally.”
Alana’s shoulders slumped. The waiter arrived to take their orders. Greta went with the fish of the day and broccoli, while Alana opted for a salad with steak. They handed over the menus, and Alana tried to keep Greta’s gaze.
“You don’t want to talk about it?” Alana asked. “Some of the kids said you were really upset the other night.”
“I lost someone I loved.”
Alana furrowed her brow. “Who was Celeste Harding, Mom? I’ve never heard of her before.”
“You should have heard about her. Everyone should have.”
Greta knew she was being willfully obtuse, but she wasn’t sure how else to be. How could she come out and say it?
“I’m writing about her,” Greta went on. “About the friendship we had back in 2003 and 2004. About the intensity of her mission to become a poet and playwright. And about why she might have failed.” She shook her head as tears sprung to her eyes. “She was in Nantucket just a couple of weeks ago. We had coffee. I couldn’t get over how strange she was acting. I felt like she was a shell of her former self. In reality, she was dying. Why didn’t she tell me? She must have known I was judging her all that time! She knew me better than anyone for a while.”
Alana gaped at her. Greta wasn’t sure she’d ever shared so much of herself with her eldest daughter. The one who couldn’t possibly understand.
“There’s just so much I don’t know about her,” Greta said. “After she left Nantucket in 2004, I hardly heard from her until she sent me a letter last month.”
Alana folded her lips. “She stayed at The Copperfield House in 2004?”
“She got here in 2003.”
Greta watched Alana put together the pieces of this mysterious puzzle. Everyone was trying to figure everyone else out all the time. It was impossible to fill in the gaps.
“She was like a daughter to you, wasn’t she?” Alana said quietly.
Greta crumpled into herself and stared down at the menu. It was painful to drop back into those old memories, painful to remember just how black her soul had been. “For a little while, we were all the other had,” she answered. “I wanted so much for her. I got all of my real daughters back, thankfully. And it should be enough. But Celeste was like a lighthouse for me in the darkness. I thought I gave her everything I could. And then one day—she was gone. And I blame myself for her failure and, stupidly, the fact that she died so young. I have to understand what happened.”
Alana sucked in her cheeks and watched Greta quietly for a few seconds. “You should talk to Ginny,” she suggested, taking a notepad from her purse and writing down her phone number. “Maybe she has a clue of what happened to her after Winsome closed.”
Greta took the piece of paper and placed it gingerly between the pages of her journal. “Thank you,” she breathed, although she still felt lifetimes away from filling in the gaps. It was true that Ginny had heard through her network that Celeste had died. That put her in a better position than Greta, who’d known nothing at all.