AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Ella couldn’t sit. She paced the office, blinking back tears. Childhood memories rushed through her mind. Bernard and Greta, who she’d once considered “the world’s greatest parents,” had seemingly adopted her. But why? And why hadn’t they bothered to tell her? Ella began to connect other dotes, like Bernard’s crimes. Liars were always liars, no matter what. Ella had learned that in the music industry; she’d also learned it within her “family.”
“Hi, buddy!” Ella sounded insane as she greeted Danny, who looked petrified.
“Mom, is everything okay?” Danny placed his textbooks on the office desk and dropped down to hug his shorter mother.
Ella couldn’t help it. She shook in her son’s arms.I gave birth to this baby. I remember the moment I first held him in my arms. That moment changed my life. Who, then, was Joni Blackwood?Did she still remember the first moment she held Ella?
“I’ll explain later,” Ella said as she jumped out of Danny’s embrace. “You have everything?”
Back in the station wagon, Ella donned her cat-eye sunglasses and thrust her foot on the gas pedal so hard that the tires squealed. Danny buckled himself in a split-second too late and said, “Mom? What’s gotten into you?”
Ella’s smile stretched from cheek to cheek. In a flash, they were at the Nantucket Harbor, where a ferry awaited to swallow up their car. This was perfect timing.
“Mom, I’m going to miss football practice,” Danny pointed out.
“Jeremy said you could miss a day or two,” Ella responded simply.
Danny seemed to know better than to bicker with his mother. As they inched up the ramp and into the belly of the ferry, Ella’s phone began to buzz. As it was out between Danny and Ella, Danny was able to say, “You want me to get it? It’s just Grandma.”
“No. Don’t.” Ella swallowed the lump in her throat as Danny gave her a dangerous side-eyed glance. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong,” Ella tried to explain. “I’ll call her back later. That’s all.”
Danny rolled his eyes slightly, clearly confused. Ella parked the car deep in the ferry, grabbed her phone, and then popped out into the dank air beneath the upper decks of the ship. Once there, her phone began to buzz again, this time with a call from Julia.
Ella’s ears rang. Had they all been in on it? Had everyone known that she wasn’t “one of the Copperfields”? Had this been why she’d always felt like such an outsider as a kid?
Oh, but how ironic that they’d all left her behind. The only non-Copperfield child, left back in the rotting Copperfield House to care for Greta alone. She should be angry! She should never speak to these people again!
Was she being rash? Her heart was shattered, and her brain seemed to latch onto an infinite number of possible, horrible realities. Just then, Alana began to call her, and Ella made a gut-wrenching decision to turn off her phone. She knew the drive back to the city like the back of her hand. It wouldn’t be a problem.
Up on the top deck, Ella gripped the railing and stared back at the rock in the middle of the ocean, the one she’d planned to call “home” again. According to her birth certificate, she’d been born there, at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, just like her siblings. Why had Greta and Bernard brought her back to The Copperfield House?
Why couldn’t Joni have taken her with her? Perhaps then, she would have avoided all that heartache. Then again, perhaps she never would have met Will, had her music career, or given birth to her own beautiful children. Gosh, her head and her heart couldn’t make sense of anything. She pressed her palms against her eyes and willed herself not to scream.
Throughout this time, Danny had remained in the station wagon. When Ella returned to the driver’s seat, he said, “I really don’t mind missing practice. I just wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”
To this, Ella answered brightly, “We haven’t seen your sister in ages. I thought we could surprise her.”
Ella’s only instinct was to draw her loved ones close and hold them until the pain went away. Surely, the pain would go away once she had Danny and Laura in her arms again.Wouldn’t it?
“I hope you’re ready to show me all your favorite new songs,” Ella said to Danny as they raced back toward Manhattan, where Laura now lived in university housing.
Danny shrugged, clearly grateful to play DJ. He flipped through his Spotify until he came up with a post-punk band that Ella thought was vaguely cool and maybe something she would have liked back in the old days of her music career.
“Hey, bud?” Ella asked as they continued to race. “Would you mind Googling a name for me?”
“Sure. Is it a musician or something?”
“Yeah. I think so,” Ella lied. “Joni Blackwood? Joni spelled like Joni Mitchell.”
Ella held her breath as Danny typed the name into the search engine. “Huh. There are a lot of Joni Blackwoods. Any other information about her to narrow it down?”
“Nah. It’s okay. I can look later.”
Danny’s eyes glittered with curiosity. “A really obscure musician, I guess?”
“You know me, bud,” Ella tried to joke. “I only like bands that nobody has heard of.”
“We know how pretentious you are,” Danny quipped. “Laura calls you the first hipster.”
