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ChapterNineteen
That night around ten-fifteen, there was a knock at Ella’s bedroom door. Expecting no one but one of her sisters, she called out, “Come in,” and continued to stand in only a tank top and shorts, her back to the door.
“Ella?” Will’s voice was raspy and tentative.
Ella whipped around, flipping her dark hair along with her. She said a small prayer of thanks that she hadn’t washed off her makeup yet. “Hi, Will.” She swallowed the lump in her throat, then asked, “Are you okay? Do you need anything?”
Will lifted his shoulder and stepped into her bedroom. As he leaned against the wall, he said that he, Danny, and Bernard had spent the evening talking about life, love, philosophy, and some of the thoughts that Bernard had had while he’d been away. “It was heavy, to say the least,” Will finished.
“It sounds like it,” Ella said. On instinct, she stepped toward Will and placed a hand on his upper back.When was the last time they’d kissed one another? Had they kissed the day he’d left the apartment the last time? Or had their final kiss been random and instinctual, a goodnight kiss or a quick “see you later” kiss?
Ella’s guitar lay across the bed. Since she’d retreated from spying on the guys, all Ella had done was strum it, looking for a sound she couldn’t find. Ella watched Will as he stepped forward, his arms drooping along his sides. Back in the old days, when they’d had a problem that they couldn’t work through, they’d always taken that problem to their music. They’d written some of their best albums that way.
“Come on,” Ella breathed, grabbing the guitar from the bed.
Will followed her wordlessly down the circular staircase and then through the hallway that separated the artist residency from the family house. Ella knew the route to the music practice room like the back of her hand. The room had been her refuge back in her teenage years, as it was padded, and she could play as long and as loudly as she’d wanted to. Often, she’d been mistaken for a member of the artist residency by sound alone until she’d stepped out and revealed herself to be a pre-teenaged girl.
Ella opened the door of the practice room to discover that, miraculously, a drum set remained, along with a collection of drumsticks. Recently, the room had been cleaned, probably by either Julia or a cleaning team she’d hired during her revamp of The Copperfield House. There in the practice room, Ella felt as though she’d stepped back in time.
Above the padding of the wall, Bernard had hung shelves that now carried a number of trophies and photographs from previous attendees of The Copperfield House Residency. One of the photographs also featured Ella, seated on a table in the garage with a guitar across her lap. Ella hadn’t seen that photograph in years.
“Not a bad set,” Will said as he sat and adjusted the drum seat beneath him.
Ella swung the strap of her guitar over her shoulder. They shared a timid smile just as Ella’s anxiety grew. Will and Ella had played thousands of hours of music together. But what would they play next? Perhaps they’d lost their “magic”?
“Let’s play one of the old ones,” Will said suddenly. “I feel nostalgic.”
They agreed to play “New In Town,” a song they’d written during the summer of 2002 when Brooklyn had felt especially stifling with humidity. Ella half-remembered figuring out the chords and the lyrics of the song in a single afternoon. After that, she and Will had played it at nearly every concert, as it had been a fan favorite.
Ella and Will could have played that song in their sleep. As they breezed through it, singing harmonies, Ella’s heart lifted with happiness. This was it; this was the version of them that she’d missed so much.
After “New In Town,” they continued to play the hits from the old days, including some of the songs they’d written in honor of their children’s births: “Laura, Open Your Eyes,” and “Danny In The Morning,” both of which had been adored by fans. Will and Ella had always been very private about their family life, yet their love for their children had always bled through their music.
Forty-five minutes in, Will asked Ella if she wanted to start improvising and “work on new stuff.” Ella, caught up in the moment, agreed and began to fiddle around with new chords and new scales. Will followed along easily. It was like they played as one.
Soon, their music became louder and more frantic. It was as though all the chaos of the past year of fighting came through in their music. Will banged the drums as loud as he could. His eyes were manic. Ella’s fingers made the guitar shriek. It was more intense than any live performance they’d ever played— and it was only meant for them.
It was as though they were finally able to say all the things they’d wanted to say.
But suddenly, one side of a shelf burst off from the wall and swung down against the wall padding. The movement of the solid piece of wood falling made Ella whip around and gape. Will stopped playing, and for a little while, their ears rang and rang.
“Did we just break that shelf by playing too loudly?” Will asked, his eyes twinkling.
Ella laughed and laughed. She felt like a teenager again, overwhelmed with the power of music. She then swung the guitar from her shoulders, locked eyes with Will, and rushed toward him. In a moment, she had her arms wrapped around him, and they kissed as though their lives depended on it. In many ways, they did. Ella’s eyes were closed tightly; all she could feel were his pillow-soft lips and the urgent grip of his powerful hands, and the way his heart thudded against her chest as they pressed against each other.
They kissed like this for a breathless ten minutes, at least. When they came up for air, they locked eyes, totally speechless. Ella had thought they would never kiss again. Now, here they were, lost in one another’s embrace.
“I…” Will began to speak but soon abandoned it. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
“I don’t, either.” Slowly, Ella shifted off of Will’s lap and straightened her hair. Her heart ballooned with love for him.Say something. Tell him you love him.But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She was overwhelmed with fear.
Finally, Ella lifted her eyes back toward the shelf, which pointed down toward the ground. The photographs and trophies on that shelf had fallen to the ground. Ella stepped toward them, picking them up one by one and piling them up on a side desk. Then she glanced up at where the shelf had disconnected from the wall.
There, where the shelf had been connected, was a small hole in the wall.
“That’s weird.” Ella stepped closer, peering into the wall from below. “Will? Can you think of any reason why someone would hang a shelf like this?”
Will’s eyes were at a great distance, as though he remained in shock after the kiss. He strode toward the hole in the wall, which he could peer directly into, given his height. “There’s something in there.” A split second later, he procured what looked like a very dusty book, then handed it down to Ella.
