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Ella’s heart spun with anxiety. Had her mother heard what she’d said?
“I know I wasn’t there for you when you were a teenager,” Greta began.
“Mom…” Ella wanted to beg her mother not to go there. Her heart and mind couldn’t handle it.
“Honey, please. Let me speak.” Greta swallowed. “Back when you were a teenager, I was so lost. I had no concept of anything. I self-medicated. I wasted time. I hardly ate. How stupid I was! How I let you down! I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself. How could I?”
Ella’s lips parted with shock. This was a conversation she had never imagined she would have.
“I’m so sorry to have eavesdropped,” Greta continued. “I heard what you said about Will, about Danny, about all of it. You must feel very alone and very frightened right now.”
Ella wanted to protest, but she couldn’t. It was too true. She was so grateful to hear someone else say it.
“Won’t you let me help you, Ella?” Greta whispered. “You must be the most stubborn woman in the world, if only because you’ve had to be. Let the Copperfield women hold you up, just for a little while. There is no reason that you should have to do this alone. Not this time around.”
ChapterSeven
The freshman dorm at Columbia University swarmed with fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds, hungry to carve out a space in the world for themselves and their future. Ella waddled back behind the masses with an over-stuffed duffel over one shoulder, tugging a suitcase behind her. Laura had another duffel while Alana and Julia struggled forward with boxes of lamps, sheets, toiletries, and other essentials. Somewhere behind them, Danny sulked with his hands in his pockets, refusing to help. Just last night, Ella had broken the news to him that they would return to New York City for one day and one day only— to drop Laura off at college and pack up their things at the Brooklyn apartment. They would be moving to Nantucket for the time being.
Ella knew it was a lot to take in. But she felt she didn’t have a choice. What her sisters and her mother had said was the truth. She couldn’t live her life alone any longer.
“It’s quite different from Rachel’s campus,” Julia said to Laura. “But you’re such a city girl. I guess you wouldn’t want something like a big college campus.”
Laura laughed nervously and tugged at her hair. “Totally. I couldn’t imagine leaving the city.”
Having heard, somewhere behind Ella, Danny groaned audibly. Laura turned and locked eyes with her mother, realizing what she’d done.
Ella understood Danny’s broken heart. Since the age of eighteen, Ella had counted herself a New Yorker, through and through. Now, she wasn’t sure what she was. A washed-up mother of two? A washed-up musician? A woman who’d never married or done anything correctly? Perhaps moving Danny to Nantucket was the first responsible thing she’d ever done.
Laura led Alana, Ella, Julia, and Danny to her floor of the Columbia University Houses, where she would share a room with a girl from Indiana. When they reached Laura’s room, the bunkbed remained empty.
“You can grab the bottom bunk!” Ella whispered excitedly.
Laura laughed and dropped her duffel directly on the mattress, which looked pretty clean despite its life as a university dorm room mattress. She then surveyed the room, which was quite small with cinderblock walls and a small window that overlooked the street.
“I guess this is what they call life experience,” Laura joked. She then stepped toward Danny and pounded her fist against his upper arm. “What do you think, Bro?”
Danny’s cheeks looked sallow. He shifted his weight uncomfortably and eyed every nook and cranny of the little room. “If you and your roommate hate each other, it’s going to be a miserable year.”
“That’s the spirit!” Laura joked, her fists in the air.
“Let’s get you unpacked,” Ella said, her voice strained. She dropped the duffel on the ground and unzipped it to begin removing sweaters, jeans, and sweatshirts, all of which they’d picked up that morning from the apartment she’d raised her children in. She felt like a boat without a shore.
Everyone else set to work, save for Danny, who sat on the top bunk bed, stared at his phone, and swung his feet through the air. Ella wanted to ask him when he was going to “lose the attitude,” but she decided now wasn’t the time. Besides, her heart was dark and shadowed by the weight of this day. This was the day her little family would separate even more. How many thousands of nights had she said “good night” to her daughter? How many thousands of nights had she known precisely where Laura was, all tucked safely in bed?
Bit by bit, the little dorm room filled out into a space that was at least half-liveable. Laura placed her newly purchased second-hand laptop on the desk in the corner to claim it as her own. Ella demanded that they take several photographs: one of Ella and Laura, one of Laura and Danny, and a selfie of Julia, Alana, Ella, Danny, and Laura, wherein Danny frowned.
A few minutes before it was time to leave, Will called Laura. Laura answered it with a frantic and high-pitched, “Hi!” She then hurried to the window to peer out as a way to separate her conversation with her father from her mother. “Yeah, we just moved in. It didn’t take that long. But Aunt Julia and Aunt Alana helped.”
Ella’s cheeks were warm with embarrassment. When she lifted her eyes toward her sisters, both gave her horrifically “empathetic” expressions.
“It’s really small,” Laura continued with a laugh. “My roommate and I will be living on top of each other. Ha, yeah. I hope she likes good music, too.”
Julia squeezed Ella’s elbow and whispered, “Want to wait in the hallway?”
Ella shrugged lightly, grabbed her purse, and stepped out after Julia. Danny and Alana followed suit, just as Laura burst into another round of laughter at something her father said.
“I’m glad he called,” Ella tried.
