“I saw that, yeah.Ella figured it was a family emergency or something.”
“Your wife has good instincts,” Grayson said, touched that Ella had had such empathy.“I ended up bringing my daughter back to Manhattan with me.Maybe, if we find a way to work together down the line, you’ll meet her.”
“You don’t need to worry about the song,” Will said.“Ella and I are okay.”
“No, Will.You don’t understand.”Grayson closed his eyes and thought back to those long-ago days in Manhattan, before he’d gotten the call from Genevieve, the one that had changed his life forever.“Your music, the music of New York in the ’90s, is the soundtrack of my life.I used to rock my daughter to sleep to your albums.I used to write your lyrics down in odd notebooks, wishing I was brave enough to live a life like yours.”
Will was quiet.Grayson wondered if he’d overstepped.
“I appreciate that, man,” Will said finally.“I never tire of learning how our music has affected people.It’s been my life’s work.”
Grayson smiled softly.From where he sat, he could hear his daughter, ruffling through things in the kitchen, maybe searching for a snack.Outside, snow fluttered down, not enough to worry pedestrians or drivers, but just enough to lend that Christmassy feel.
“What are your Christmas plans?”Grayson asked suddenly, surprising himself.He wanted to stay on the phone with Will.
“My mother-in-law is throwing this enormous Christmas party in a few days,” Will said.After that, he explained what the Copperfield House was, what it meant to his wife’s family, and how many artists and writers and musicians had come through its doors over the years.“Many of the artists are coming back to celebrate.The Copperfields think of them as extended family members.And Ella and I are going to perform.”
Grayson closed his eyes and imagined an old Victorian home, stuffed to the gills with electric and fascinating people, people happier and more alive than the ones he’d spent the past three decades of his life alongside.Money didn’t make anyone interesting, although moneyed people tried so desperately to make you think it wasn’t so.
“Actually,” Will said tentatively, “I’d love to invite you.You and your daughter.I don’t know if I officially get a plus-one or a plus-two, for that matter, but I’d like to do it anyway.It’s a big Christmas party.Everyone’s welcome.”
Grayson let out an ironic laugh.“You don’t need to do that.”
“I want to!”Will sounded sincere and young, although Grayson knew he was in his forties, just like him.“Really, it won’t be a problem.Do you have plans in the city?”
Grayson admitted he didn’t.He imagined himself and Camille, sitting quietly in this very apartment, opening a few gifts and watching television.It would be cozy.It would be fine.
“I’ll talk to my daughter,” Grayson said finally.“Who knows?Maybe she’ll be up for it.”
Will laughed.“Tell her my mother-in-law makes divine French food.She’ll feel right at home.”
“I don’t think she’ll feel at home with all that joy and love around,” Grayson admitted.“But I can’t imagine that either of us will turn down any French delicacies.I’ve been back in New York for only a couple of hours, and I’m already missing them.”
“Sounds like you’ve already convinced yourself to come,” Will said with a laugh.
ChapterFifteen
Stevie Franklin sat in her bedroom at the Copperfield House and watched the ocean roll up against a beach heavy with froth and snow.From the opposite side of the house, she could hear the chaos of party setup, the calling out of Copperfield family members as they hurried to fine-tune last-minute decorations and roll out the red carpet for their hundred-plus guests.It overwhelmed Stevie to think that this would be the biggest Christmas party of her life.
In the previous week since she’d arrived, Stevie had experienced creativity like never before.She’d spent countless hours writing lyrics, deep into the night.She’d snuck into the practice room to strum her guitar and sing until all hours of the morning.She’d emerged bleary-eyed and underslept to practice with Ella, always finding new reasons to get excited, to open her eyes wider.All the while, she felt the distance between herself and her daughter widening.Still, she sang every song for Joni.She prayed that somehow, Joni would get the sense that Stevie was thinking about her.That she would always love her, despite everything.
But a couple of days ago, a startling revelation had come to Stevie.Will had mentioned Grayson, and her head had rung with recognition.At first, she’d chalked it up as nothing.Plenty of people in the world were named Grayson.But when she dug deeper, she realized that this was the craziest of all coincidences—so much so that she struggled to see it as a coincidence at all.Was it possible that Grayson had reached out to Will and Ella because of Stevie?Was it possible that he was trying to make contact?
* * *
This was how the story went.It was a story that Stevie had recounted to herself repeatedly, the story that Stevie couldn’t possibly get over.It was the story her daughter needed to hear from her.It was the story that Stevie wasn’t sure how to say aloud.
That night at the burger restaurant, the night when Ella was too sick to work and Stevie covered for her, Stevie met Grayson Harris, the wealthy music lover who was nursing his beer and fries and refusing to go home when the clock said so.He was a David Bowie fan, but he didn’t know the song “Stay.”He called her Stevie Nicks.She told him her mother was dead.
Why had she given him this piece of her soul like that?
She’d never understand that.
In the days that followed their first encounter at the burger place, Grayson returned many times for a burger and a chat about music.Sometimes he brought albums by to show her, vintage ones he’d picked up at a local record store.The other servers at the burger place teased Stevie with jealousy in their eyes.They knew the wealthy guy with the gorgeous smile had a crush on Stevie.They called it her “Cinderella story.”Stevie told them to quit.
The problem was that she could feel herself falling for him.She dreamed of him endlessly.She watched the front door of the burger place, waiting for him to appear.On the nights that he didn’t come in, she was moody and upset.Once, Ella called her out on this, but Stevie denied it relentlessly.After that, Stevie took the stage at a local concert venue and left her heart out there, howling, aching.When she finished, a few promoters approached to ask if she’d perform at other concert venues across the city.Funnily enough, she saw that people liked her heartache.They could feel it through her singing.
The very next day, Grayson came into the burger restaurant.He looked pale and nervous, and he stuttered when he asked if she wanted to get a drink with him after she got off work.She told him she was still twenty and couldn’t drink in bars.She figured he’d leave her after that.But he told her that he had a ton of beer back at his place.Beer and wine and whatever else she wanted.She could come there if she wanted.
