“Sure it was, Mom,” Alana teased, her eyes sparkling.“Our mother, the baguette thief!”
“Which meant it was up to me to go back in and rectify the situation.I couldn’t let your mother’s Paris reputation be besmirched,” Bernard said, puffing out his chest, mocking himself.“When I tried to pay the poor baker, she looked at me like I was insane.She couldn’t figure out what the euro coin I was waving around at her was for.My French is now abysmal.I haven’t used it properly in years, and I couldn’t find a way to explain Greta’s theft.Eventually, I left the euro coin on the counter and ran out.And you know what this woman said to me when I got outside?”He turned and widened his eyes at Greta, who wore a funny grin.“She said, ‘Will you go back in?I think I want a pain suisse, too.’”Bernard erupted with laughter so infectious that everyone at their table laughed along with him.“I made a fool of myself, and my wife was eager for me to make it worse.”
“Listen,” Greta said, her cheeks inflamed, “when you find the perfect baguette, you know the bakers behind it know what they’re doing.I wanted to try everything they had!Embarrassment or not.”
“You wanted to steal everything they had, Mom,” Julia said.“Admit it.”
Ella smiled down at her mashed potatoes.She was no longer hungry, or maybe she hadn’t been hungry all day, but that didn’t matter, not on Thanksgiving.Her father continued telling a Parisian-related story while Will smiled dreamily at her, clearly thinking about the big windfall of Grayson Harris’s attention.They hadn’t announced anything to their family, not yet.It felt private and all the more exciting.
At the table directly beside theirs, Ella and Will’s daughter and son, Laura and Danny, sat and chatted to their cousins, Quentin and Julia’s children, and Alana’s stepdaughter.Laura and Danny were just a year apart in age and incredibly close, always in cahoots and speaking about things that Ella and Will didn’t understand.Things about their university and their lives in Manhattan.Now, Danny was in his junior year at Columbia University, where he studied music engineering and learned about brand-new technology in the music studio.Ella and Will were captivated with that decision—a decision that merged Danny’s love of music with something that could actually make him money.Laura, on the other hand, had graduated a year early.She’d majored in philosophy and had decided to pursue a master’s degree with the hope of being a professor of philosophy one day.She’d never been musical, which Ella and Will had always felt to be a godsend, given how challenging the music business was.But to Ella, being a professor seemed, at times, equally devastating and underfunded.
Ella knew being a mother meant being perpetually worried about your children.There was never a break in the onslaught of fear.
When it was time for pie, Ella, Alana, Julia, Quentin’s wife Catherine, Catherine’s daughter Scarlet, and Laura got up to clear the table of leftovers and fetch clean spoons and forks.Ella watched Laura out of the corner of her eye as she scraped dishes clean, removing spare bits of green beans and rolls from other people’s plates.Now that she was twenty-one, she was allowed to drink wine at family parties, but Ella hadn’t seen Laura take a single sip.She wondered if she was doing it in solidarity with her brother Danny, who had struggled with alcohol as a teenager and would probably never manage to drink, not like a normal person.Sometimes Ella wondered what about her “birth family” had been passed down to Danny.But she didn’t like to blame her genes.
Ella touched Laura’s shoulder, making Laura flinch with surprise.“Oh, hey, Mom,” she said, her panicked face falling again.
“Are you having a good Thanksgiving, honey?”Ella asked.
Laura shrugged and gestured vaguely at the mess of food scraps in the trash can.“It’s okay.I mean, it’s nice.Nice to be out of the city for a few days.”
“Do you have a ton to get done before the end of the semester?”Ella asked, thinking of Laura’s philosophy papers, the talks she frequently had to give at school, and the classes she taught to undergraduates, all in preparation for her future as a professor.
Laura shrugged again, her eyes downcast.Something was strange and shadowy about her expression.Ella bit her tongue to keep from pestering Laura.She was allowed to have secrets.She was allowed to have her own life.
“Will you be able to come back for the Copperfield Christmas party?”Ella asked instead, trying to keep her tone upbeat.“It’s on December nineteenth.I was thinking your semester ends on the eighteenth, but I’m not sure.”
Laura’s voice was as thin as a string.“I should be able to make it,” she said, before turning to pick up another messy plate.
She went through her mind, trying to come up with what to say to Laura and how to communicate with her.But soon, Greta called everyone back to their seats for dessert.Laura finished scraping her final plate, washed her hands, and watched the snow for a little while.Ella hovered in the doorway, waiting for her daughter.For the first time, she reckoned with the fact that “mothering” someone never really ended.The toddler years were more physically needy, but the early adult years brought their own sense of confusion.
“Honey,” she began, drawing her tongue across her teeth, “you know you can tell me anything, right?”She wanted to add, “I’m not a typical mother.I was in the music scene.I didn’t marry your father till we’d been together for twenty years.I’ve met all kinds of people and seen all sorts of things.Nothing can surprise me.”But she didn’t want to belittle her daughter’s situation.
“Ella?Laura?”Greta called from the Thanksgiving table.“We don’t want to get started without you!”
“But we might have to!”Bernard said.
Laura turned from the window and breezed past Ella, making momentary eye contact.“I’m fine, Mom,” she said, using a tone that suggested she definitely was not fine.“Let’s eat some pie and be normal, okay?”
Ella felt tugged after her daughter, drawn back into the fold.Upon entering the dining room, her eyes met Will’s.He was still riding high from the phone call from their agent, the news of their incoming success, an achievement they both felt they deserved after so many years of hard work.When Laura returned to her seat next to Danny, Danny spooned a huge helping of vanilla ice cream next to her apple pie, making Laura smile.Ella sat down next to Will, drawing the prongs of her fork over her pumpkin pie.
Something is going on, Ella echoed in her head.But she won’t tell me.She’ll never say.
Something in Laura’s demeanor reminded Ella of friends who’d come and gone, of friends who’d kept secrets and struggled alone, no matter how desperately Ella had wanted to help them.As Alana raised a glass to toast the Copperfield family and “another sensational Thanksgiving,” Ella’s mind raced with all the things she’d never managed to say—and all the reasons she had to make sure she didn’t let Laura slip through her fingers, like the others.
Laura was her daughter.She was her everything.Ella would do anything to help her.
ChapterTwo
Los Angeles: Thanksgiving 2025
Across the continent, Stevie Franklin was stopped in her Chevy at a red light when, directly in front of her, a broad-shouldered truck rammed into a black Toyota.The crash blistered her eardrums.The Toyota flew sideways, curving around in such a way that Stevie thought it would smash into her car as well.Her life flashed before her eyes.But, miraculously, maybe because someone on high was watching out for her, the Toyota stopped a good two feet from her car’s nose, leaving Stevie’s heart racing and her vehicle untouched.
Silence filled the air immediately after the crash.Stevie’s hands shook.But when the driver of the Toyota got out, grumbling to himself and swatting at his jeans, the driver of the truck scampered down from her seat.Neither of them was limping.They met in the center of the intersection to assess the damage and exchange disgruntled looks.Along with the others at the intersection, Stevie breathed a sigh of relief.It was hard to believe that such a massive crash had ended with no injuries.It had looked much worse.
It’s a Thanksgiving miracle, she thought, watching as the cops helped clear the intersection and get everyone on their way again.
As Stevie drove away from the site of the accident, she flicked through the radio stations, searching for a song to fit her mood.It was the first Thanksgiving when she had nothing to do and nowhere to be.She’d left her apartment, gotten into her car, and decided to drive around to keep her mind off things.But I could have been hurt, she thought glumly.It went to show that nothing, not even a simple drive around her city, was safe.
