Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Grayson Harris drank his first scotch of the party with Will and Will’s father-in-law Bernard, his heart fluttering from how joyful it felt to be in that old Victorian home.
He hadn’t seen Camille in a while, but miraculously, he could hear her laughter, ringing out from one place or another.
He hadn’t heard her laugh like that since she was a teenager, or maybe sometime before.
It did his heart good to know she was here, that she was warm, that she was eating enough.
Meeting Ella Copperfield again after so many years had been a funny thing.
As Bernard told a story about his long-ago years in Paris (a time when he’d met his wife Greta), Grayson could hardly pay attention, as his thoughts traced back to those long-lost months in Manhattan.
That was when he’d been in love with Stevie Franklin.
What he remembered from that time was his fear that he’d never feel this way again.
Stevie had been endlessly fascinating to him.
When he’d first heard her voice, he hadn’t believed it.
He’d liked it much more than Stevie Nicks’s voice and thought for sure that she was headed somewhere, that she was going to be one of the most prominent voices in rock within the span of five years.
Night after night, he’d gone to the burger place where both Stevie and Ella worked, listening intently to the music they played on the speakers and writing down albums and artists and songs he didn’t know.
He felt he had a lot to learn from these very cool girls.
They were nothing like the Parisian girls he’d dated. They were nothing like Genevieve.
When Grayson and Stevie began dating, Grayson was naive enough to believe that they could overcome their different upbringings and become a real couple.
Sometimes, when he told a story from his childhood, he caught a strange look in Stevie’s eye, one that suggested she didn’t understand his wealth or his family.
Sometimes she told a story about her childhood in West Virginia that shocked Grayson to his core.
Her family had had very little money. Sometimes she’d gone to bed hungry. He couldn’t imagine what that was like.
But despite himself, Grayson was in love with Stevie.
During their time together, he never once thought about Genevieve, save for the fact that he liked Stevie much more than he’d ever liked Genevieve.
Genevieve wore designer everything. She took pleasure in cruelty.
She hated modern music. She even seemed to hate Grayson.
When Grayson learned that his father was visiting Manhattan to “check on him,” Grayson panicked.
He told himself that he’d find a way to introduce Stevie and his father.
But on the very first night of his father’s trip, his father sat him down, poured him a whiskey, and told him the truth.
“Genevieve is about to have a baby. It’s yours. ”
Grayson nearly fell out of his chair. It was true that he’d been away from Paris for nearly nine months.
Had Genevieve known she was pregnant when they’d broken up?
Oh, but hadn’t their breakup been mutual?
Hadn’t Genevieve wanted to see other people just as much as Grayson had wished for some other kind of life?
Grayson was immediately launched into feelings of self-doubt and fear.
During conversations with his father, he found himself nodding along to his father’s plans to take Grayson back to Paris, marry him off to Genevieve, and promote him within his company.
Grayson felt boxed into the life he’d thought he’d escaped.
When he tried to reach out to Stevie, he found that she was out most nights, playing at concert venues he couldn’t attend because his father was always watching him. Depression encircled Grayson’s heart.
When Grayson finally realized he needed to let Stevie go, he was in Central Park, walking in the rain.
He heard Stevie’s voice in his head, that wonderful voice, and reminded himself of the message of Stevie’s music.
Life is a strange thing that we’ll never understand.
You have to go where the love is. You have to love as well as you can.
He felt sure that he would love his baby with Genevieve. Being that baby’s father was the very best thing he could do, given what he knew.
When he boarded the private plane to return to Paris with his father, Grayson gazed out the window and watched Manhattan sweep away from him. All the way across the Atlantic, he couldn’t sleep. He was petrified about what was happening to him. He couldn’t stop it.
When he saw Genevieve for the first time, she burst into tears. At first, he thought she was angry with him. But when she finally spoke, she confessed she was so grateful he was there. “I didn’t want to do this on my own,” she said. He’d never heard her say anything like that before.
When Camille was born, Grayson stood by Genevieve’s side through it all.
He held her hand, even when it felt like his fingers were going to break.
And when he first carried Camille in his arms, his heart shattered with a love he couldn’t really understand yet.
“I’ll protect you,” he told her in English, although he knew she was mostly French and would always be French.
After that, Grayson’s life had its way with him.
He and Genevieve got married. They raised their daughter. They bickered. They said things they shouldn’t have said. Privately, they thought they’d made a mistake in marrying one another, yet they decided to hold on as long as they could.
And now, so many years after his daughter’s birth, Grayson was at the Copperfield House, sipping a whiskey with Will and Bernard Copperfield.
His divorce would be finalized in the new year.
He wondered if Ella remembered him from the burger restaurant.
He pondered if, when she saw his face, she remembered how he’d gazed after Stevie, waiting for her to give him the time of day.
He guessed she didn’t. Life had happened to Ella, too.
It was almost too much to remember your own life.
How was she supposed to recall someone else’s?
* * *
Soon, Camille appeared before Grayson, surrounded by a team of Copperfield-esque ladies with dark brown eyes and glossy hair.
It seemed she’d made friends with Ella’s nieces and Ella’s daughter, Laura.
“Papa,” she said, blushing, “they’re going to show me the library!
Did you know this incredible place has a library? ”
Grayson laughed and said he didn’t know. He watched his daughter disappear through a door and down a long hallway. Will explained that that was the entry to the artist residency.
“Plenty of these people spent time at the residency,” he said, nodding at musicians and writers and artists who passed them by with drinks and cookies in hand.
“That’s Aurora,” he said, speaking of a red-haired beauty cozied up next to a handsome islander.
“She’s a really great singer-songwriter.
Apparently, her mother came to the residency back in the old days.
But that’s the same story as Ella.” His eyes grew cloudy as he explained that Ella’s real mother had been a guest at the residency, that she hadn’t been able to care for Ella and had left Ella with Greta.
“They never made her feel that she was anything but a Copperfield,” he explained.
“But I think it was a big thing to learn. She’s still grappling with it. ”
Will went on to say that he was thinking a great deal about parenting, about children, about what we leave to the people we bring into the world. “My daughter is pregnant,” he said, “which has been a mind-bending experience for Ella and me. Her boyfriend isn’t in the picture, at least not yet.”
“Has she told him?” Grayson asked, thinking of himself all those years ago, learning about Genevieve’s pregnancy. He wouldn’t have liked to be left in the dark.
“No,” Will admitted.
But before Grayson could explain to Will how important this topic was and how much it had changed the trajectory of his life, Greta appeared before them, her hands clasped.
“Everyone must follow me! We have a very special performance,” she said.
“Bring your drinks! There will be more food in the concert hall.”
Will laughed and sipped down the rest of his whiskey. “That’s my cue,” he said. “We’re performing a mini-set.”
Grayson’s heart lifted. “It’ll be just like old times.”
“Hopefully, we’re a little bit better than we were in 2000,” Will joked. “We’ve had twenty-five years to practice. If we’re getting worse, you have to be honest with us. Maybe it’s time to pack it in.”
Grayson laughed good-naturedly. He couldn’t imagine anything further from the truth.
Will split off to find Ella for their performance, leaving Grayson to mill along with the crowd, through the long hallway and into the residency.
At the far end of the residency was a sort of ballroom, grand and empty save for a mini-stage upon which sat a drum set, a guitar, a bass, and a microphone.
Grayson spotted Camille in the corner, gossiping with the younger sect of Copperfield women.
One of Ella’s sisters approached, and Grayson heard that she could speak French, as well.
It seemed the Copperfields were full of mysteries of their own, lifetimes within each family member.
Grayson went to the long table near the wall to grab a glass of wine and a Christmas cookie, which he ate with his eyes closed, surprised at how charmed he was by the flavor.
It reminded him of his grandmother’s mini Christmas parties in New York when he was a boy.
There was a hush in the crowd. Grayson turned to find Ella and Will on stage, Ella with the bass and Will fiddling with his drumsticks.
Usually, Ella played guitar. Who was playing tonight?
Grayson searched the crowd until, finally, a beautiful blond woman appeared, mounted the stage, and strung the guitar strap around her torso.
When she strummed the strings, electricity coursed through Grayson’s body.
At first, it was just a hunch. But as their first song began, the blond woman opened her mouth and began to sing, using a voice that Grayson could have picked out anywhere.
His heart dropped into his stomach. For a little while, he thought he was dreaming.
But as time went on, and as one song went to the next, he knew he wasn’t.
The singer was Stevie Franklin. She couldn’t be anyone else.
Grayson tried to fathom what had brought Stevie here to the Copperfield House.
He’d known that Stevie and Ella were friends.
But in the years after his relationship with Stevie, he’d never heard or seen any sign that Stevie’s music career had continued.
She’d never been featured on any of Ella and Will’s famous albums. She’d never toured with them.
When Grayson had dared search for Stevie online, he’d discovered nothing.
His deepest fear had been that she’d died, but he’d never found a record of that either.
Yet here she was: forty-five years old after all this time.
Like always, Stevie’s voice had an incredible effect on Grayson.
Tears filled his eyes. Unable to stay in the back of the hall, he walked slowly through the crowd until he appeared before her, reminding himself not to fall over.
Stevie’s eyes were closed, as though she wanted to continue to avoid him.
Had she already seen him? Or had she caught wind of his arrival and put two and two together?
He remembered when he’d first gotten the idea to reach out to Will and Ella, to feature their song on the Water Works commercial. He’d wanted to link his new life with the one he’d had to leave behind. He’d wanted to feel like that time mattered.
He’d thought of Stevie, of course, because she’d been closest to his heart. But he’d reached out to Ella and Will because they were the ones who’d “made it” in the fame sense.
It felt as though fate had delivered Stevie back to him.
As she strummed her guitar and belted out song after song, he couldn’t help but notice that she wore no wedding ring.
He wondered if she’d ever gotten married or if she was divorced or nearly divorced, as he was.
He pondered if she’d had a child. He wondered where life’s many roads had taken her.
He questioned if he’d have the strength to go up and talk to her after this.
His instinct was to run out of the Copperfield House and back to the hotel to hide.
When their set finished, Ella thanked the audience. She blushed with happiness.
“We’re so grateful to have our old friend Stevie Franklin joining us today,” she said.
“It’s been my pleasure, Ella,” Stevie said, her eyes scanning the crowd.
Grayson was terrified when those gorgeous eyes landed on him. When they did, they stuck, just as he’d known they would. He stared back. He didn’t want to let her go.