Nantucket Twilight (Nantucket #15)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

On that blustery Thursday in November, the three extra tables in the dining room were laden with every kind of Thanksgiving food imaginable: glistening turkeys, heaps of stuffing, buttery mashed potatoes, bacon-wrapped brussels sprouts, freshly baked rolls and breads, eight different desserts, and so on.

The enormous Victorian house was packed.

Laughter rang out from the kitchen to the living room, all the way through the family side of the Copperfield House and into the residency side.

Four artists-in-residence had decided to stay in the residency into the new year, and they joined the Copperfield family for each of their holiday parties, including this one, drinking wine and watching the snow flutter past the back window, clouding the gorgeous view of the beach.

Ella, the youngest of all the Copperfields (and the one without a drop of Copperfield blood), was in the kitchen with her sisters, Julia and Alana, and her mother, Greta, chopping the last of a bunch of kale for a salad that, she guessed, not many would eat.

“It’s good to have something fresh on the table.” Greta arched her eyebrow.

“I haven’t seen a fresh vegetable in weeks,” Julia joked, sipping her wine. “Charlie refuses to let them into the house.”

“This is only the beginning,” Ella said. “Christmas is still a month away!”

Greta snapped her fingers and removed a pad of paper from the drawer beside the oven. “That reminds me. Are we certain of the party date? December 19th good for everyone?” Greta’s eyes slid from Julia to Alana to Ella.

The three Copperfield daughters agreed. Ella filled her lungs and told herself not to panic.

An enormous Christmas party at the Copperfield House—one meant to celebrate three and a half years of the Copperfields’ triumphant return to Nantucket Island—was something Greta had pitched as early as February of that year.

It was rare to see Greta so excited about a party like this.

Ella saw it as her mission to help realize her mother’s vision.

The plan was to invite as many of the Copperfields’ friends and relatives as they could, to concoct decadent meals and perform sensational Christmas songs, and find a warm evening in the midst of a bone-cold winter on the island.

More specifically, Ella had agreed to manage the music.

“And Ella,” Greta said, tapping the tip of her pen against the pad of paper, “you mentioned setting up a sort of stage? I’m visualizing performances from all of our Copperfield House residency musicians. I’m imagining…”

But before Greta could continue, to speak more about a vision that she’d assuredly already said aloud, Ella’s husband, Will, entered the kitchen, his cheeks blotchy from wine. “I’m sorry to interrupt!” he said, his grin enormous, “but I need to steal Ella for a moment. Do you mind?”

Greta gave him a look of exasperation that she soon hid away. “Of course not, Will,” she said. But her tone suggested that nothing Will had to say could rival the importance of planning the Copperfield Christmas party.

Ella slid her fingers through Will’s and promised her mother she’d be back soon.

“We’re eating in five minutes!” Greta called as they snaked through the hallway and, mysteriously, up the stairs. “But we’ll talk later.”

It wasn’t till they were safely tucked away in Ella’s childhood bedroom that Will spun around, took her shoulders in his broad, capable hands, and said, “You know that crazy mega-rich philanthropist business guy? The one we saw on the talk show the other day?”

Ella’s thoughts spun. Sometimes late at night, Will watched random talk shows as Ella slowly fell asleep.

“The one who wants to get rid of ocean plastic,” Will reminded her, rubbing his palms together.

“Ah! What’s his name?” Ella furrowed her brow and brought to her mind the image of the man’s face: late forties, shaggy dark hair, and big, golden retriever eyes.

He spoke about saving the oceans in a way that made it seem not only possible but achievable within the next five years.

Ella had fallen asleep with a sense of hope in her belly, one that had died the following morning, when she’d seen fifteen plastic bags breezing across the beach in front of Will’s and her place.

It had seemed impossible that people like Grayson Harris knew how bad the world and its oceans had gotten.

“Grayson Harris,” Will reminded her. “You’ll never believe who contacted Greg last night.”

“What?” Ella’s heart pounded. “Grayson Harris called Greg? Our Greg?”

Greg was Will and Ella’s current agent, the guy who’d been instrumental in helping Will and Ella’s band achieve new productive heights in the previous few years.

It was because of Greg that they’d gone on three tours, cut two additional albums, and sold thousands upon thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise.

“Apparently, he’s a fan,” Will said, his eyes widening. “He was a fan back in the early days, but I guess he likes our newer stuff even more. He told Greg he thought our new sound was sophisticated.”

Ella clapped her hands over her mouth, then erupted into laughter. It wasn’t every day that one of the wealthiest men on earth called to say he liked your art.

“He wants to use our music for a new commercial he’s doing for his clean ocean initiative,” Will declared. “He’s willing to pay, like, more than we’ve ever seen before. More money than we’ve ever known.”

Ella took a staggered breath, then had to turn and collapse on her childhood bed.

Money had always been a difficult thing to earn in the music business.

It had even been a difficult thing to talk about.

Calls like this never came. Now, at the age of forty-five, with both of her children living in Manhattan and her life at an easy course, it felt strange that “success” would fall on their heads in this way.

But she guessed they had to open their arms to it.

She shot back to her feet, screamed, and threw her arms around Will.

“I can’t believe this is happening!” she cried.

* * *

At the dinner table, a half hour later, Ella and Will clutched one another’s hands between their chairs and laughed uproariously along with their Copperfield family members.

Across from them was Bernard, Ella’s formidable and marvelously intelligent father, who was telling an anecdote from Greta’s and his recent spontaneous trip to Paris—the city of their original love story.

“Greta didn’t set out to steal a baguette that day,” he said, throwing his head back, “but when she realized she’d left the bakery without paying, she panicked and took a bite of bread. It’s like her hunger and desire for the perfect baguette outweighed her fear of stealing.”

Greta blushed and took a sip of wine. “I was too embarrassed to go back inside and tell them what I’d done. It was an honest mistake.”

“Sure it was, Mom,” Alana teased, her eyes sparkling. “Our mother, the baguette thief!”

“Which meant it was up to me to go back in and rectify the situation. I couldn’t let your mother’s Paris reputation be besmirched,” Bernard said, puffing out his chest, mocking himself.

“When I tried to pay the poor baker, she looked at me like I was insane. She couldn’t figure out what the euro coin I was waving around at her was for.

My French is now abysmal. I haven’t used it properly in years, and I couldn’t find a way to explain Greta’s theft.

Eventually, I left the euro coin on the counter and ran out.

And you know what this woman said to me when I got outside?

” He turned and widened his eyes at Greta, who wore a funny grin.

“She said, ‘Will you go back in? I think I want a pain suisse, too.’” Bernard erupted with laughter so infectious that everyone at their table laughed along with him.

“I made a fool of myself, and my wife was eager for me to make it worse.”

“Listen,” Greta said, her cheeks inflamed, “when you find the perfect baguette, you know the bakers behind it know what they’re doing. I wanted to try everything they had! Embarrassment or not.”

“You wanted to steal everything they had, Mom,” Julia said. “Admit it.”

Ella smiled down at her mashed potatoes.

She was no longer hungry, or maybe she hadn’t been hungry all day, but that didn’t matter, not on Thanksgiving.

Her father continued telling a Parisian-related story while Will smiled dreamily at her, clearly thinking about the big windfall of Grayson Harris’s attention.

They hadn’t announced anything to their family, not yet.

It felt private and all the more exciting.

At the table directly beside theirs, Ella and Will’s daughter and son, Laura and Danny, sat and chatted to their cousins, Quentin and Julia’s children, and Alana’s stepdaughter.

Laura and Danny were just a year apart in age and incredibly close, always in cahoots and speaking about things that Ella and Will didn’t understand.

Things about their university and their lives in Manhattan.

Now, Danny was in his junior year at Columbia University, where he studied music engineering and learned about brand-new technology in the music studio.

Ella and Will were captivated with that decision—a decision that merged Danny’s love of music with something that could actually make him money.

Laura, on the other hand, had graduated a year early.

She’d majored in philosophy and had decided to pursue a master’s degree with the hope of being a professor of philosophy one day.

She’d never been musical, which Ella and Will had always felt to be a godsend, given how challenging the music business was.

But to Ella, being a professor seemed, at times, equally devastating and underfunded.

Ella knew being a mother meant being perpetually worried about your children. There was never a break in the onslaught of fear.

When it was time for pie, Ella, Alana, Julia, Quentin’s wife Catherine, Catherine’s daughter Scarlet, and Laura got up to clear the table of leftovers and fetch clean spoons and forks.

Ella watched Laura out of the corner of her eye as she scraped dishes clean, removing spare bits of green beans and rolls from other people’s plates.

Now that she was twenty-one, she was allowed to drink wine at family parties, but Ella hadn’t seen Laura take a single sip.

She wondered if she was doing it in solidarity with her brother Danny, who had struggled with alcohol as a teenager and would probably never manage to drink, not like a normal person.

Sometimes Ella wondered what about her “birth family” had been passed down to Danny. But she didn’t like to blame her genes.

Ella touched Laura’s shoulder, making Laura flinch with surprise. “Oh, hey, Mom,” she said, her panicked face falling again.

“Are you having a good Thanksgiving, honey?” Ella asked.

Laura shrugged and gestured vaguely at the mess of food scraps in the trash can. “It’s okay. I mean, it’s nice. Nice to be out of the city for a few days.”

“Do you have a ton to get done before the end of the semester?” Ella asked, thinking of Laura’s philosophy papers, the talks she frequently had to give at school, and the classes she taught to undergraduates, all in preparation for her future as a professor.

Laura shrugged again, her eyes downcast. Something was strange and shadowy about her expression. Ella bit her tongue to keep from pestering Laura. She was allowed to have secrets. She was allowed to have her own life.

“Will you be able to come back for the Copperfield Christmas party?” Ella asked instead, trying to keep her tone upbeat. “It’s on December nineteenth. I was thinking your semester ends on the eighteenth, but I’m not sure.”

Laura’s voice was as thin as a string. “I should be able to make it,” she said, before turning to pick up another messy plate.

She went through her mind, trying to come up with what to say to Laura and how to communicate with her.

But soon, Greta called everyone back to their seats for dessert.

Laura finished scraping her final plate, washed her hands, and watched the snow for a little while.

Ella hovered in the doorway, waiting for her daughter.

For the first time, she reckoned with the fact that “mothering” someone never really ended.

The toddler years were more physically needy, but the early adult years brought their own sense of confusion.

“Honey,” she began, drawing her tongue across her teeth, “you know you can tell me anything, right?” She wanted to add, “I’m not a typical mother.

I was in the music scene. I didn’t marry your father till we’d been together for twenty years.

I’ve met all kinds of people and seen all sorts of things.

Nothing can surprise me.” But she didn’t want to belittle her daughter’s situation.

“Ella? Laura?” Greta called from the Thanksgiving table. “We don’t want to get started without you!”

“But we might have to!” Bernard said.

Laura turned from the window and breezed past Ella, making momentary eye contact. “I’m fine, Mom,” she said, using a tone that suggested she definitely was not fine. “Let’s eat some pie and be normal, okay?”

Ella felt tugged after her daughter, drawn back into the fold.

Upon entering the dining room, her eyes met Will’s.

He was still riding high from the phone call from their agent, the news of their incoming success, an achievement they both felt they deserved after so many years of hard work.

When Laura returned to her seat next to Danny, Danny spooned a huge helping of vanilla ice cream next to her apple pie, making Laura smile.

Ella sat down next to Will, drawing the prongs of her fork over her pumpkin pie.

Something is going on, Ella echoed in her head. But she won’t tell me. She’ll never say.

Something in Laura’s demeanor reminded Ella of friends who’d come and gone, of friends who’d kept secrets and struggled alone, no matter how desperately Ella had wanted to help them.

As Alana raised a glass to toast the Copperfield family and “another sensational Thanksgiving,” Ella’s mind raced with all the things she’d never managed to say—and all the reasons she had to make sure she didn’t let Laura slip through her fingers, like the others.

Laura was her daughter. She was her everything. Ella would do anything to help her.