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Ella tip-toed down the staircase, locking eyes with Julia, who looked just as surprised as Ella felt. Bernard had made an appearance to greet Danny after his first day. He’d decided that Danny was enough of a reason to leave his study!Did that make the rest of them chopped liver? Maybe. But right then, with Danny’s smile playing out across his face as Bernard recited an old quote from Marcel Proust, Ella didn’t care what had brought her family together. She was just grateful that her father made an effort.
“How was your first day, honey?” Ella asked when Bernard paused for air.
Danny turned and offered his mother one of his fake smiles. Ella would have recognized it anywhere. Clearly, the first day had been difficult, a series of sights, people, and hierarchies that hadn’t existed back in Brooklyn. Teenagers could be cruel.
“It was all right,” Danny tried. “I got my classes scheduled.”
“That’s right!” Bernard spoke with more joy than Ella had seen in over twenty-five years. “Why don’t you sit down with me and outline your schedule?”
“That’s a great idea,” Greta said. “It gives me time to get started on dinner.”
Ella, Alana, and Julia exchanged glances. What had gotten into their parents?
Greta beckoned for her daughters to follow her into the kitchen, where a wide array of vegetables gleamed on the countertop and a pot of water already boiled. She announced, “I want Danny to feel at home here. The first day in a new school is no easy feat. To ease him into it, I figured it was time to show him my cooking chops. What do you think?”
Ella’s mouth already watered with a thousand memories of Greta’s cooking. Alana tugged her luscious hair into a ponytail while Julia headed to the sink to wash the vegetables. Already out on the back porch that overlooked the water, Bernard and Danny were deep in conversation about Danny’s math and science interests and the “impossibly beautiful world around them.”
It was obvious that when Bernard Copperfield spoke about this “impossibly beautiful world,” he also spoke about the twenty-five years that he hadn’t been allowed to live in that world. He was very aware of the time he’d lost.
Over the next three hours, Greta, Alana, Julia, and Ella worked diligently to craft an elaborate French meal: chicken à l’orange. Throughout, they alternated between easy chatting, island gossip, and silence so that they could hear the intelligent conversation between Bernard and his grandson.
Ella allowed herself to imagine what this night might have looked like had they stayed in Brooklyn. Probably, she would have had to stay at work till ten-thirty at night. During that time, there was no telling where Danny would have been or what he would have done.
It was better like this. They were safe. They were with family.
At six-thirty, they sat down together as a family, just as they had countless times throughout Ella’s childhood. Bernard blessed the meal, he blessed their family, and he thanked Greta for the remarkable gift of cooking she shared. Greta’s eyes grew heavy with tears, but she didn’t say anything at all.
After the meal, the shadows beneath Bernard’s eyes grew heavy. It was clear that he’d overdone it in the social world. Ella stepped toward him to collect his plate and said, “Thank you for celebrating my son’s first day.”
To this, Bernard grabbed her wrist and said, “Your son is someone very special. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to know him.”
The words were so precise and so heavy with emotion that they nearly brought Ella to her knees. Before she burst into tears, she hustled herself back to the kitchen, put the plates in the dishwasher, and nearly hyperventilated over the sink. Sometimes, beautiful emotions hurt just as much as sorrowful ones.
Around eight-thirty that night, Ella joined Alana and Julia in the upstairs study, where Julia read through a potential manuscript for the publishing house, and Alana continued to pore over the court documents for Bernard’s case. Ella wanted to roll her eyes at Alana’s continued drive to read through every line of the case, but she held herself back. Just as ever, it was difficult to align the crimes Bernard had done with the man she’d just spent the evening with. Gosh, he was just so lovely. Her heart brimmed with love for him.
“I don’t know how to tell them that fantasy doesn’t sell!” Julia muttered to her manuscript. “This is incredible writing. I just can’t take chances like I used to.”
Alana blinked up to smile at Ella. “Ignore her. She’s been talking to her manuscripts all night.”
Ella giggled and sat on the other side of the long table. There, she pulled out the folder of important invoices and bank files regarding the income for her and Will’s band over the previous two years. Ella wanted to get a sense of how much money she and Will pulled in for things like merchandise, their inclusion on film soundtracks, and any online streams. Probably, it wasn’t that much.
But if she planned to build a life on her own, she had to face the facts. She had to know what was hers and what was his.
Gosh, there were so many numbers. It was difficult for Ella to understand how much of the money they’d been paid went directly to Ella and Will and how much of it went to their agent. Will had always handled that side of things.Was that wrong?Probably, she should have sat with him and learned the logistics of the business. She should have gone beyond what she loved to do, which was craft beautiful lyrics and write songs with Will at her side.
“It’s wild to me that the music that Will and I wrote twenty years ago is still making the rounds in TV shows and films,” Ella muttered to her sisters, who glanced up to acknowledge her.
“That’s crazy,” Alana confirmed.
“Oh, but those first few albums you did were so awesome!” Julia cried, before adding, “And all the others, of course.”
“Ha.” Ella rolled her eyes. “But the first few ones are nostalgic for people. I get that. I guess that’s why they sell so much better.”
In truth, those early songs brought in the majority of her yearly wage, even alongside the two jobs she had worked in Brooklyn. The songs were pieces of her heart at this stage of her life. It felt strange that they were also hot commodities.
Throughout this organizational process, Ella used her phone to Google the films and production houses that had purchased the music. It was mostly out of curiosity, as she hadn’t paid much attention to films in the past few years. Maybe she would see some of these movies in the theater? Why the heck not? She could take herself on a movie date, all by herself. Since she’d met him, Ella hadn’t managed to do anything without Will. Perhaps this would be an expedition into the unknown.
Some of the film production companies were well-known, such as Castle Rock Entertainment, CBS Films, Columbia Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation. Others were lesser known, which intrigued Ella all the more. Who were these people who loved her and Will’s music? How did her music fit into the films’ stories?
