“But it’s not like our music was going to help that happen,” Ella said, her voice tender.
Will sighed and sat in front of the drums, adjusting his sticks in his hands.“I know that.It’s just a song.It’s just a commercial.You know, I was thinking about when we were younger.Stupidly, I really thought music could save the world.I thought if I wrote the perfect song, everything would change.But then you get older, and you realize how young and idealistic you were.You realize music is just music.”Ella had never heard Will talk like this before.
Silence rang out in the practice room.
“I still think a great song can change things,” Stevie said quietly.“Does that make me naive?”
“No,” Ella assured her, although she wasn’t sure if that was true.“I can think of some songs that transformed my outlook on things.They certainly changed my heart.”
Will flipped his drumstick in his hand, contemplative.It was clear he needed to bang his drums, to get out of his own head.“It’s weird,” he went on.“I didn’t hear from Grayson at all.Just this Calvin guy.I don’t get a good feel for him.He seems slimy.Not like Grayson.”
“I’m sure Grayson’s busy.He’s in Paris, remember?He’s got a life we don’t know anything about,” Ella said.“And you said that you guys really bonded.Maybe he’s embarrassed that Water Works can’t go forward with the contract.But business is business, Will.”
“Grayson?”Stevie’s voice cracked.
Ella and Will turned to look at their friend, wavering next to the microphone.Her eyes were enormous platters.
“Grayson Harris,” Will supplied.“I’m sure you’ve heard of him.”
Stevie folded her lips.“Maybe.”
Ella felt as though the air in the room tightened.Ella studied Stevie’s face, searching for clues.But Stevie fixed her smile almost immediately.
“Should we get started?”Stevie asked.
Ella nodded.She swiftly walked Will through the alterations they’d made to the songs so far and how they planned to play them for the Christmas party.Will caught on to everything quickly, just as he always did.
Soon after, Greta appeared in the doorway, smiling.She told them that she couldn’t wait to hear their set at the party.“Everyone’s counting on you!”she cried, before disappearing.Maybe she’d decided on another fifty-odd jobs she needed to do before the party.
After they finished rehearsing the next song, Stevie staggered from the microphone.“I need a break,” she said, giving them a false smile.
“You okay?”Ella’s head rang with confusion.During the last few takes, Stevie’s singing voice had been especially powerful, as though she were experiencing heartbreak all over again.
“I’m fine,” Stevie assured her.“Just tired.I was up late, writing and rehearsing.”
“That’s the way of the Copperfield House,” Will said.“People come here and get obsessed with their craft.There’s an energy.It’s infectious.”
Stevie said she felt it.“It’s scary,” she agreed, turning the knob and disappearing.
Ella and Will sat in silence for a few seconds.Ella studied the door, listening for Stevie’s return.“Something’s going on with her,” she said.
“She’s just excited,” Will affirmed.“And everyone gets weird around Christmas.”
Ella laughed and pressed a kiss to his cheek.He wasn’t always so aware of the unsaid, of what circled in the air between people.But she loved him anyway.
* * *
Their rehearsal finished for the day, Ella and Stevie parted ways and promised to meet up again as early as tomorrow to practice and walk on the snowy beach.There was a darkness in Stevie’s eyes, something Ella couldn’t fathom and felt too frightened to ask about.
“The more we play together, the more I wish I had stayed in New York,” Stevie said before walking down the hall.
Ella’s head rang with possible answers.She imagined saying, “Everything happened the way it was supposed to!”or “We’re here together now!”But she knew that Stevie was swimming with regret.She didn’t want to force her to feel anything she didn’t want to.
Back in the kitchen of the Copperfield House, she found Laura and her cousins, Scarlet and Anna, decorating Christmas cookies like their lives depended on it.
“Grandma says we have to do three hundred before the end of the day,” Scarlet said, grimacing into a smile.
Ella assessed the stack of frosted cookies and sighed.“I guess you need help,” she said, sitting next to Laura and picking up a reindeer cookie.As she sat and smeared frosting, she listened to her daughter, her brother’s and sister’s daughters discuss the intricacies of being a twentysomething in a world so different from Ella’s.The three of them were quite impressive.Scarlet was a documentarian who helped her father, Quentin, make hard-hitting pieces.She also helped her mother, Catherine, with difficult-to-carry journalistic pieces, some of which touched on family secrets from generations ago.Anna was a young mother who’d lost her fiancé right after he’d proposed and subsequently discovered her pregnancy.Now, she was happy and in love with someone new, a guy she’d met right here at the Copperfield House.
