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“He should have been here,” Julia interjected.
Danny puffed out his cheeks, clearly just as embarrassed as Ella felt.
“It’s really okay.” Ella met Alana’s, then Julia’s gaze. “We’re enough.”
Ella’s heart remained cracked open and bleeding with love for Will. She wasn’t sure that feeling would ever go away. She didn’t have to translate that to anyone, though. That could remain lodged deep inside. Perhaps inevitably, it would wither and die.
After another minute more, Laura whisked back into the hallway to give everyone a hug. Her eyes were tinged with red, but her smile was electric and optimistic— the stuff of eighteen-year-olds and big dreams. Ella closed her eyes and allowed a few tears to fall as she hugged her daughter close.
“You take care of yourself,” she told Laura simply. “I love you to pieces. You know that?”
Laura nodded. Her chin wiggled threateningly, as though she was about to burst into tears. Ella then stepped back, flung up her hands, and said, “Call me if you need anything at all. I can be here in just a few hours. All right?”
Afterward, Ella, Danny, Alana, and Julia piled back into Julia’s SUV and returned to Manhattan traffic, which chugged them slowly southeast toward Brooklyn. En route to the apartment where Ella and Will had raised their children and slowly bickered themselves into a separation, Ella received an email from a family man who’d agreed to sublease Ella’s apartment. The arrangement went like this: Ella and Danny would pack up their things. Any and all items they wanted to keep but not bring with them to Nantucket would go into storage. The furniture would remain for the subleaser and his family as it was nearly September, and Ella, Danny, Laura, and Will’s leftover things needed to be out stat.
“At least the rent is taken care of,” Julia said from the driver’s seat after Ella explained the terms.
“And you finally called both bosses and quit your jobs, right?” Alana asked.
This had been a relief. Ella’s work in food and retail hadn’t been thrilling in the slightest. Mostly, her co-workers had been twenty-somethings with dreams to build music, art, or writing careers. To them, Ella’s music career was respected, yet still very much over. Each and every day, Ella had felt their waves of pity for her. She’d resented them yet ached with jealousy for them.
Now, she would never have to see them again.
Back at the apartment, Ella gave out tasks. Alana was in charge of cleaning and organizing the kitchen. “The subleaser will use all the plates, cutlery, and kitchen gadgets. Kitchen staples, such as flour, sugar, and oatmeal, can all stay. Just make sure that everything is spick and span, that there is nothing perishable in the fridge, and that there are no personal items in any random drawer,” Ella instructed. Alana took over the music room and study while Danny set out to pack up his life into a couple of suitcases.
Ella took over the bedroom she’d shared with Will. When she’d asked him to leave in May, he’d packed up no more than two suitcases and fled to a buddy’s place. This meant that the majority of his clothing and odd gadgets remained. Some of his guitars still hung on the wall, and his wide collection of science fiction, literary fiction, and horror novels spread out across the bedroom bookshelves. For more than three months, Ella had lived amongst his things as though pretending that he was on his way home.
They’d brought boxes for the packing. Bit by bit, Ella piled Will’s things into boxes and then taped them up. She marked each with a W, feeling as though she was physically “closing” that chapter of her life. When she finished with Will’s things, she started on her own, grateful that she’d never been particularly materialistic.
At five that evening, Julia, Alana, Ella, and Danny carried boxes and suitcases into the small storage unit Ella had rented further east in Long Island. After that, they returned to the apartment for a final inspection before they loaded up the rest of Ella and Danny’s things and fled the city. They’d decided to drive straight on through the night to get out of the chaos of partying city revelers and expensive restaurants and miles and miles of city blocks that contained too many memories to name. They would stay at a hotel in Hyannis, Massachusetts, and then take the first ferry back to Nantucket the following morning.
Throughout the drive, Danny’s mood was ominous. Ella hadn’t heard him say a single word in hours. As she sat beside him in the backseat of the SUV, she frequently fought the urge to reach over, grab his hand, and tell him everything was going to be all right. In truth, she had no idea if anything was going to be all right. It was better not to lie.
Julia parked the SUV at the Hyannis Plaza Hotel at ten-thirty that night. The four of them entered the air-conditioned foyer like zombies. Julia, who had the majority of the money just then after the influx of cash from her publishing company, stepped up to the counter and asked for four separate rooms. Ella’s heart burst at the show of love and support.
That night, alone in the sterile hotel room, Ella lay facedown and tried to drum up the strength to go to the bathroom and wash her face. Her first thought:“What’s the point?”was a terrifying one, as it was probably the same question Greta had asked herself during those years that she’d neglected both her and Ella’s life. Ella didn’t want to be like that.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. Ella willed whoever it was to go away; she wasn’t in the mood. But another knock, then a “Ella, are you still up?” forced her to hobble toward the door. There, on the other side of the doorframe, stood her gorgeous sisters. Neither wore makeup. Julia carried a bottle of wine, while Alana had three glasses.
“Up for a nightcap?” Alana asked.
Both of their eyes said the same thing:We know you’re miserable. We don’t want you to be miserable alone.
“All right. But just one,” Ella insisted as she stepped back, her eyes filling with tears.
The three of them sat cross-legged on the stiff bed with their glasses of wine. From her phone, Alana played music that she’d loved in the nineties, the self-titled album from Shania Twain.
“Oh my gosh. I hated when you played this!” Ella cried, surprised at how hilarious this story was to her now.
Alana danced on the mattress so that it bobbed around beneath her. “You were so pretentious about music, Ella. You never knew how to have fun with it.”
“Ha!” Ella dropped her head back, remembering similar conversations that she and Alana had had back in the old days. Things had been so simple back then. It had been “before” so many things had gone wrong.
“Ella may have been pretentious about music, but look how well that worked out for her,” Julia said. “Neither of us became professional musicians.”
“Sure, sure. But did you ever have fun with music, Ella?” Alana teased. “Real fun?”
Ella’s shoulders dropped forward. Her heart felt hollowed out. “For the past thirty years, all I’ve done is music. It definitely wasn’t always fun. But it was like eating or getting enough sleep or drinking enough water. It was what I had to do to survive.”
