Laura pulled out her phone and showed Grayson Harris on social media: a photograph of him wearing an expensive-looking suit and designer sunglasses, striding alongside a private plane, sunlight glinting on his shoes.The headline under the photo read:So-Called Environmentalist Takes Private Plane to Paris for Vacation.
Ella grimaced.“I guess they’re destroying him for this, huh?”
Laura nodded and pocketed her phone.“And I get it.His whole clean-water agenda is super beautiful, sure, but if he promises to stop flying, stop taking cars, go vegan, or whatever, he needs to keep those promises.Only then can the world actually take him seriously.We aren’t our words.We’re our actions, right?”Laura turned to look at Ella, quoting something Ella remembered telling her children when they were young.
A gust of wind blasted across Ella’s face.She felt the cold deep into her bones.But Laura, who’d been complaining of overheating since her return to the island, seemed content to remain outside, sipping her probably now lukewarm latte and watching the few boats shift against the frozen docks before them.
“I get what you’re saying,” Ella said finally.“I do.”
“But you don’t agree with it?”Laura looked frantic, her eyes flashing.“Is it because he’s going to pay you and Dad so much money?”
Ella was caught off guard at the accusation.Will’s excitement about the commercial spot was sometimes all he talked about, especially lately.It was something he could fixate on besides his eldest daughter dropping out of grad school and having some random guy’s baby.But did Laura really think that her parents would throw their morals out at the first sign of money?
“Do any of the articles say where he flew to?”Ella asked, raising her chin despite the blasting winds.
“It says it right there.Vacation!”Laura pointed it out in the heading.
“How do they know?”Ella asked.“Don’t headlines lie to get people’s attention?”
“Sure.But why else would he fly to Paris?”
Ella thought back to everything Will had told her about Grayson Harris since the deal had fallen into their hands.Something niggled in the back of her mind.“I think Grayson has family in Paris,” she said.“Maybe there’s an emergency?Something that demands he fly across the ocean as soon as he can?”
“If he needed to fly, he should have flown commercial,” Laura shot.
Ella sighed, sensing she wouldn’t find her way through Laura’s moral superiority.She wondered, too, if the fact that Vinny was in Brussels, living his beautiful and exciting new life, working his “dream” job and slowly but surely forgetting about her, was reason enough for Laura to be angry with people like Grayson.
“Listen, I can’t pretend to understand the super-wealthy people of this world,” Ella said tentatively.“When your father wanted to meet up with Grayson to talk about the commercial, I was surprised at how excited he was.People like Grayson make me nervous.I don’t think anyone should be that wealthy.But the thing about Grayson is, he’s trying to do something with that wealth.He’s putting his money into something he believes in, something that will benefit all of us—especially people on this island.Our ocean is our lifeblood.It’s the reason people came to Nantucket in the first place.It’s an extension of our weekends of cleaning up trash on the beach, but to a much larger and grander scale.”
Laura furrowed her brow contemplatively.Ella was surprised at how sure she sounded, although not everything she said felt believable.
“I guess.”Laura shrugged.
“Come on,” Ella said, throwing one arm around her daughter and tugging her back to the car.“Your grandmother told us to come by for pie and hot cocoa, and I don’t want to miss it.”
“She’s going to make us work on the party again,” Laura groaned into a smile.
“We owe her,” Ella said.“She’s been looking forward to this party for years.”
What Ella didn’t remind Laura was that Greta had spent twenty-five years alone in that house.The idea of hosting such a grand Christmas event thrilled her.Ella imagined that she’d dreamed up the party on a long-ago solo Christmas and prayed for a glittering future like this.
* * *
That night, Ella sat at the edge of her bed and listened to the soft, soothing sound of Will brushing his teeth.His electric toothbrush had conked out, and he’d returned to his classic bristle brush, which offered a sound that reminded Ella of being nineteen years old, wild and in love on the streets of New York City.She remembered coming home around three or four in the morning, exhausted from whatever gig they’d performed in, and standing in big T-shirts to brush their teeth.They’d usually slept till noon or later, dismissing daylight as something for other people.
When Will emerged, he brushed the bangs from her eyes and kissed her forehead.“Penny for your thoughts?”
Ella rubbed the remaining lotion into her thighs.“Laura told me that Grayson Harris flew in a private plane.”
Will groaned into his hands.“Yep.I thought about texting him to ask what’s up, but I don’t want to bother him.He looked grim in those photographs, didn’t he?”Will pulled the photo back up on his phone and showed a handsome and stylish man in his late forties, his face drawn and pale.“Maybe something happened.It isn’t like him not to text me.”
Ella laughed and rubbed Will’s shoulder.“You two are getting pretty close, I guess.”She always found it cute when Will made a new friend.It reminded her of when Laura and Danny first went to kindergarten and came back to tell them about their new friends or enemies, naming names and describing people Ella and Will didn’t know.
Will puffed out his cheeks.“I hope the company doesn’t explode because of this.Everyone’s watching him, making sure he doesn’t make a mistake.But here it is.His first mistake.I don’t know if he’ll recover from it.”
Ella watched as Will swiped his thumb through his social media, searching for something else to stare at before they went to sleep.Something that would help him forget that their commercial song might go belly-up.
It was then she saw something that floored her.“Wait a second!Scroll back up!”
