Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
C atherine urged Scarlet not to act rashly, not now that they knew Ivy was gone. Whoever these people were, they were dangerous and powerful enough to rip through the Copperfield family. Scarlet’s eyes flashed with anger. She promised she’d keep herself at bay.
Catherine waffled between pride for Scarlet’s purposeful decision to make a documentary on her own and irritation that Scarlet hadn’t let her in. But I didn’t let her in, either, Catherine reminded herself, watching as Scarlet packed up that morning and laced her fingers through Nathan’s. Catherine had suggested they go for a long walk and clear their heads.
“If everything goes to plan, we’ll have a lot on our plate the next few days,” Catherine assured them. “And you’ll have plenty of filming to do for the documentary.”
Scarlet looked too tired to fight. She hugged her mother a final time, and Catherine felt as though a powerful fist was squeezing her heart.
After Scarlet and Nathan drove away, Catherine burrowed her face into Quentin’s chest and tried to re-direct her thoughts. A strategy stitched its way through her mind. But she had to act quickly and appeal to a sensibility she didn’t fully understand, even after living as Quentin’s wife for so long.
How to force the wealthy to do something. How to ask them to stop being so prideful—and pay attention.
Catherine made James a stack of pancakes as thick as a dictionary and escaped into her study upstairs. Quentin called up, saying, “Let me know if you need anything ,” and Catherine knew he meant it. And it was true that his face, his name, his voice would surely be instrumental in looping more of the parents of the girls into her plan.
But first, Catherine called April Fellini.
As the phone rang out from Nantucket to Manhattan, it occurred to Catherine she’d begun to think of April as an extended family member.
I wonder if I’ll ever learn the connection between my Gionnocaro and theirs. But right now, it didn’t matter. All she wanted was to bring their daughters home.
“Catherine?” April sounded stricken.
“Hi.” Catherine pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead and gazed out the window at the white-tinged surf. “I wanted to let you know. My daughter was taken, too.”
April gasped. She had no other words.
“But we know where they are,” Catherine said. “My other daughter tracked them down.”
April’s breathing was chaotic and all over the place. But Catherine knew she listened as Catherine enlisted her for what she hoped would be tomorrow night’s plan.
“But you have to be very, very cagey about this,” Catherine said. “You cannot write anything on social media. We cannot spook them or chase them off the island. Everything is really delicate. Remember, as far as we know, they haven’t broken the law. We just have to appeal to their sense of family; of memory; of time.”
Catherine closed her eyes and remembered what Greta had told her; that memory was slippery and stories were always apt to change.
That history was always fiction.
April’s voice shifted to a deeper tone. “I’m ready,” she affirmed. “I’ll pack a bag right away.”
Catherine flared her nostrils. “We need to find as many parents as we can. I have a couple of other contacts—including myself and my husband. But we need more.”
April was quiet. Catherine felt she could hear the ticking of her thoughts.
“You want me to call around?” April suggested after a pause.
“I know people don’t want to confess that this has happened to them. I know people are embarrassed,” Catherine breathed. “Especially the Manhattan elite. But if you, April, and me—Quentin Copperfield’s wife—call around, maybe we’ll make some headway.”
“Quentin Copperfield’s wife,” April breathed with surprise.
“That’s right.” Catherine raised her chin. She was so many things; she had so many titles. But one of her most important ones was being his wife. She refused to lie about it now.
It gave her power in this world.
April agreed to call as many people as she could. Catherine thanked her and hung up. Her head throbbed, but she was filled with purpose. Scarlet’s footage had done what every brilliant documentary was meant to do. It had enlivened her. It had forced her to reckon with evils in the world—and enact change.
Of course, it was far more personal now that Ivy was involved. But still. Scarlet’s footage had power.
Catherine spent all morning and afternoon calling the Manhattan elite. She rang Ivy’s old friends’ parents, Scarlet’s old friends’ parents, people she’d worked with during after-school bake sales and fundraisers, and the parents of those who’d taken piano lessons with Scarlet’s teacher what felt like a million years ago. The first few parents suggested that Catherine was crazy for her questions, but the fourth mother burst into tears and confessed, “My friend Molly’s daughter left, too. She says she’s fine and keeps in contact, but she asks for more and more money and refuses to come home. They don’t know where she is.”
Catherine gently asked for Molly’s contacts.
And before the hour was through, she had another three sets of parents—all of whom had connected with Molly via another channel.
Their group was growing.
Catherine called Scarlet late afternoon to confirm that Nathan’s parents were coming, too.
“We alerted the parents we interviewed, too,” Scarlet said. Her voice was brash and confident, like that of a documentarian rather than a frightened older sister. “They’re ready.”
She’s going to be somebody, Catherine thought. She can bring people together.
Catherine thanked her daughter and left her study for the first time all day. Her stomach groaned with hunger, but she had no interest in slowing down. She grabbed a sweatshirt and her car keys and fled, headed for the police station. Although she reckoned they couldn’t do much, she wanted to know what they already knew.
It turned out, they hardly knew anything at all.
Catherine found herself at the edge of her seat across from a bumbling police officer who was sunburnt from yesterday’s fishing expedition. When she mentioned a big house in the woods with a fence around it, he laughed and said, “Which one? People like their privacy around here.”
He wasn’t taking her seriously.
Catherine then mentioned the massive bonfires and the young women in long dresses with the men who seemed to have power over them. But when the cop asked if the women were taken against their will, Catherine said no. He rolled his eyes.
“These young women are all between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three, you said?”
Catherine nodded.
“They’re adults,” he said. “They can do what they want. And their parents are funding them!”
Catherine’s heart cracked at the edges. She set her jaw, sure she didn’t want to show him how upset she was.
“We’re going to stage a small protest tomorrow,” Catherine told him. “And it is in my right to request police presence for safety reasons.”
The police officer looked exhausted. His eyes glinted, as though he were sick and needed a twelve-hour night of sleep.
“Yes. It is in your right.” He sighed and picked up a pen. “When do you need us?”
“Tomorrow night right before sunset,” she said. “At Miacomet Beach.”
The police exhaled deeply and jotted it down. “Fine. Yes.” He dropped the pen to the desk with a clatter. “We’ll be there with bells on.”
“I appreciate it.”
Catherine was jittery the rest of the night. Quentin tried to get her to come to bed. He begged her and made her cups of tea. But all Catherine could do was sit on the edge of the sofa, half-watching mindless television and praying that tomorrow would go as planned. If she didn’t, at least the protest would give them more information. But if it didn’t, the group would surely leave Nantucket, and their trail might go cold.
“I don’t have time for this,” Catherine muttered.
She was suddenly terrified that the rest of the year would be consumed with following around these foolish young people. Young people who thought they knew more about the world than their elders. Young people who’d decided to make up their own rules.
Catherine wanted to sit with Ivy in a quiet room and ask her, Why? Why did you leave? Why did you trust them?
But in order to ask those questions, she needed Ivy safe and at home.
Catherine, Quentin, and James met Scarlet and Nathan and Nathan’s parents at the beach next to where the group met for bonfires and late-night celebrations. Nathan’s parents were volatile, speaking in low tones to each other and often bickering. They shook Quentin’s and Catherine’s hands, their eyes traveling up Quentin’s body. Although they were distracted, they still couldn’t get over the fact that Quentin Copperfield was really here.
“My daughter used to be quite impressed by you,” Nathan’s father said. “Maybe your presence will knock some sense into her.”
Nathan’s mother squeezed Nathan’s father’s elbow hard until he winced.
Catherine rubbed Scarlet’s upper back as they waited for the other parents to come. Catherine had dropped a pin via their group chat to tell them where they would be. Parents had taken days off work; they’d called in sick; they’d brought their other children to grandparents and friends. Slowly, luxury vehicle after luxury vehicle parked along the edge of the beach. Catherine had told them to park separate from one another, just in case one of the group members drove along and saw too many vehicles together.
Scarlet gave Catherine a look that meant, I can’t believe this is happening.
But very soon, there were more than thirty-five people in their group. Parents had reached out to other parents; wealthy people had confessed that their daughters had gone.
April and Rainer Gionnocar came not long after that. Catherine’s heart leaped into her throat. I’m not related to them, she reminded herself. But why does it feel like I’ve known them all my life?
Catherine hurried over and threw her arms around April’s shoulders. April shook like a frightened bird. Rainer looked discombobulated. As he took a call, April muttered, “His grandmother Dee told him to brush off his pride and come to Nantucket.”
Catherine remembered the fire in that older woman’s eyes. “She’s really something.”
April tilted her head. “Sometimes it feels bizarre to me that I married into this wealthy family. And then I remember Dee. She came from nothing, too.”
“Like me,” Catherine admitted.
“Maybe none of us really come from anything,” April suggested. “Gionnocaro Fellini supposedly came from royalty. But what do any of us really know about his past?”
“It could all be pretend,” Catherine agreed.
Just before they began their march to the opposite beach, the other Copperfields arrived: Greta and Bernard and Alana and Jeremy; Julia and Charlie; Ella and Will. Catherine hugged them with her eyes closed, listening to the burgeoning beats of their hearts.
There’s so much love here, she thought.
It was nearly time. The police were here, guiding their group from one beach to another. They wore bemused expressions.
Scarlet and Catherine linked arms and led the charge of fifty-plus parents and brothers and sisters and friends to the bonfire that surged in the distance. Catherine squinted to make out a man in black, his arms spread as he spoke his “wisdom” to the crowd of young women and men beneath him.
His voice echoed from the water, and Catherine could just make out what he said, “It’s the pressure of modern society. It’s an endless machine that we must feed and feed and feed. And for what? What if we gave up on all of that? What if we just stopped what they wanted us to do—and lived for ourselves?”
Catherine took a sharp breath. She partially agreed with what the young man was saying. There simply was too much pressure on young people today—especially women. Now that women were allowed to live and work outside the home, and they could carve lives for themselves, they were expected to do absolutely everything. They had to cook and clean and tend to their children; they had to make as much money as men; they had to fill their lives with impossible tasks. It was enough to make anyone feel insane—and underappreciated.
But there had to be a better way than stepping out from society. This act of departure was just as juvenile as the hippie culture of the sixties and seventies.
We have to get better as a society. We have to find a way together.
Suddenly, the young man making the speech stopped talking. He’d seen the crowd approaching with police. He raised both of his hands. All the people who’d been listening to him turned around and gaped. Catherine searched them for Ivy but saw only beautiful, youthful faces she didn’t recognize.
The man who’d been giving the speech raised his hands and called out, “We are peaceful! We have done nothing illegal! There’s no reason for police presence!”
Catherine brought her hands around her mouth to call back, “This is a peaceful protest! But we have a right to have police presence!”
Catherine’s voice rang out across the beach. Do you hear me, Ivy? Do you know how much I love you?
Children never really know, Catherine knew. Not until they have children of their own.
The group of parents was now only fifteen feet from the crowd around the bonfire. The man wearing black was muttering something to the people around him, something that sounded like, “Stay calm. Stay strong. We know what we’re all about. We know we won’t go back.”
But just then, a father stepped out from the crowd. Quietly, he said, “Melanie?” His voice was tender, searching. “Melanie, we just want you to come home. We don’t want anything else. We love you.”
The air was taut.
Then a young woman Catherine recognized from Ivy’s school days burst into tears. Her face was tomato red. She burrowed it into her hands as her shoulders shook. The woman beside her touched Melanie’s shoulder, but Melanie shook it off and ran headlong toward her father. She burrowed against him—her safety net, her original home—and continued to cry.
The man wearing black who’d been giving the speech looked deflated. His eyes flashed with anger.
“Everyone, pack up! We’re going back!” he called.
But it was too late.
A few other girls stepped out of the crowd, peering through the group, searching for their parents, their brothers, their family. One girl picked up her skirt and ran headlong toward her mother, throwing her arms around her.
It was as though a hypnosis was broken.
Maybe they’ve been homesick the entire time.
Still, Catherine searched the crowd for Ivy. It was pandemonium. She linked her hand with Quentin’s and charged forward.
All the while, Scarlet had her camera raised. She was filming as tears rolled down her cheeks.