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Ella pressed a hand on Danny’s shoulder. She wanted so desperately to say the “right” thing, whatever it was that would take the pain from Danny’s eyes.What had led him to drink so much? Was it the separation? His father’s departure?Or something uniquely “teenager” that Ella couldn’t fully understand anymore, as she was too far away from those experiences herself?
“I packed some snacks,” Ella said instead, removing her hand.
“Oh. Awesome.” Danny sniffed and leaned back to turn off his speaker and retrieve his phone from his unmade bed. “Do you know if Aunt Julia’s kids are coming?”
“I believe they are,” Ella replied, grateful that Danny showed the slightest interest in her family.
Ella’s older sister, Julia, had three kids: Anna, twenty-two, Henry, twenty, and Rachel, who was about to start her sophomore year at University of Michigan. It was remarkable that Ella and Julia’s children had hit it off so well during their visits to Nantucket Island, especially given Julia and Ella’s decades apart. Alana had no children, and Quintin’s children were in that upper echelon of Manhattan-ites, which meant that they were inherently different from Ella’s own children. Plus, Quintin wanted nothing to do with the Copperfield Family, which was all right with Ella. Quintin, who worked as a nightly news anchor in the city of New York, was well-recognized across the country, well-respected in the field of journalism, and generally unliked by the rest of the Copperfield siblings. This was life.
The drive from Brooklyn to Hyannis took approximately four hours and forty-five minutes. Throughout, Danny and Laura were seamless in their music choices, crafting a playlist that thrilled Ella with its commitment to many decades of music and many different genres.
“I have to say, I think your father and I handled your music education really well,” Ella said, shimmying her shoulders.
Laura nibbled on a Twizzler in the front seat and said nothing. In the backseat, Danny ruffled his hands through his hair nervously. Maybe it was better not to talk about Will. Maybe her children weren’t sure what to say; maybe they didn’t want to hurt her or remind themselves of their own pain. Ella could understand that. Will had been the only person in the world she’d been able to open up to regarding her father’s prison sentence, her siblings’ abandonment, and her mother’s depression.
You had to pick your words carefully in life. Ella knew that.
Nantucket Island spun with life. A hearty sun beat heavily in an eggshell blue sky, and tourists rushed across the road with panicked eyes, as though they’d forgotten any concept of “slowing down” and wanted to find a way to experience as much joy as possible, as quickly as possible. A little girl in the center of a crosswalk lost the top of her ice cream cone and blinked cartoonishly large eyes toward the ground as she wailed.
“I get it,” Laura quipped. “Summer can be a heartbreaking time.”
Ella chuckled. “There will be other ice cream cones.”
“She doesn’t want to hear that right now,” Laura said. “She wants that one.”
This conversation was clearly not about ice cream cones. It was about regret and sorrow and wanting a life you could no longer have. Ella bit down on her lower lip and then whispered, “Aren’t you a poet, Laura.”
Since April, Julia had flung herself full force into the repair of The Copperfield House. The once-dilapidated old Victorian home now stood re-painted and stately. Its shutters were thrown open to the gorgeous August day.
“It looks so good,” Laura breathed as she pressed open the front door of the station wagon. “Worlds better than those summers Danny and I spent here.”
“You got that right,” Danny chimed in. “As a kid, I was genuinely terrified of whatever ghosts lurked in there.”
“Me too,” Laura admitted. “But I always tried to be brave for you.”
“Ha. My hero,” Danny mocked playfully.
“Who do I hear out there?” A gorgeous and stately Greta Copperfield appeared at the front door. Since Bernard’s return in April, she’d gained probably fifteen healthy pounds and now stood tall and powerful, her cheeks flashing with pink and her legs muscular from long walks on the beach. She had no relation to the Greta of Ella’s teenage years, the one Ella had had to cook and clean for.
“Grandma! Hi!” Laura scampered forward and wrapped Greta in a hug. Danny followed close behind and did the same.
“You look gorgeous, Gram,” Laura complimented, stepping back to inspect Greta’s red-and-while polka-dotted dress.
“Oh, this old thing,” Greta said. “I pulled it out of the back of my closet.”
“Vintage!” Laura cried.
Ella grabbed her backpack from the back trunk of the station wagon and followed her children up the porch steps. There, she fell into the warm embrace of her mother, who smelled of lilacs and sunshine with the faintest hint of salt from the sea.
“Oh, Ella.” Greta leaned back and stitched her eyebrows together. “You look quite tired.”
Ella scrunched her nose. “I’m fine, Mom.”
“The city must be terribly stressful,” Greta said. “Your sisters have really taken a liking to Nantucket. Why don’t…”
“Uh oh.” The iconic Alana Copperfield appeared in the downstairs living room with her hands on her hips. “Has Mom already started asking you to move to Nantucket? How long has it been, Mom? Thirty seconds? Forty-five?”
Greta waved a hand. “You can’t blame me for wanting all my children back. I’ve gotten greedy.”
