When Ella opened the practice room, she found Stevie hunched over the table, scribbling lyrics on an old notepad, her hand shaking, tears staining her cheeks.Stevie froze and burst up to see Ella, then quickly wiped her cheeks.
“Sorry,” she said.“I was suddenly so inspired.I had to come, um.Write everything down.”
Ella frowned and hurried over to hug her friend.Into her shoulder, Stevie breathed, “I’m going to stay down here until we perform.Is that all right?”
“You can do whatever you want!”Ella said.She pulled back and looked Stevie intently in the eyes.“Are you sure you want to go on at all?It’s just a silly performance for my mother and her friends.There are no stakes.I promise.”
Stevie stiffened her jaw.“I want to.It means everything.”
Ella couldn’t fathom what she meant.
ChapterSeventeen
Grayson Harris drank his first scotch of the party with Will and Will’s father-in-law Bernard, his heart fluttering from how joyful it felt to be in that old Victorian home.He hadn’t seen Camille in a while, but miraculously, he could hear her laughter, ringing out from one place or another.He hadn’t heard her laugh like that since she was a teenager, or maybe sometime before.It did his heart good to know she was here, that she was warm, that she was eating enough.
Meeting Ella Copperfield again after so many years had been a funny thing.As Bernard told a story about his long-ago years in Paris (a time when he’d met his wife Greta), Grayson could hardly pay attention, as his thoughts traced back to those long-lost months in Manhattan.That was when he’d been in love with Stevie Franklin.
What he remembered from that time was his fear that he’d never feel this way again.
Stevie had been endlessly fascinating to him.When he’d first heard her voice, he hadn’t believed it.He’d liked it much more than Stevie Nicks’s voice and thought for sure that she was headed somewhere, that she was going to be one of the most prominent voices in rock within the span of five years.Night after night, he’d gone to the burger place where both Stevie and Ella worked, listening intently to the music they played on the speakers and writing down albums and artists and songs he didn’t know.He felt he had a lot to learn from these very cool girls.They were nothing like the Parisian girls he’d dated.They were nothing like Genevieve.
When Grayson and Stevie began dating, Grayson was naive enough to believe that they could overcome their different upbringings and become a real couple.Sometimes, when he told a story from his childhood, he caught a strange look in Stevie’s eye, one that suggested she didn’t understand his wealth or his family.Sometimes she told a story about her childhood in West Virginia that shocked Grayson to his core.Her family had had very little money.Sometimes she’d gone to bed hungry.He couldn’t imagine what that was like.
But despite himself, Grayson was in love with Stevie.During their time together, he never once thought about Genevieve, save for the fact that he liked Stevie much more than he’d ever liked Genevieve.Genevieve wore designer everything.She took pleasure in cruelty.She hated modern music.She even seemed to hate Grayson.
When Grayson learned that his father was visiting Manhattan to “check on him,” Grayson panicked.He told himself that he’d find a way to introduce Stevie and his father.But on the very first night of his father’s trip, his father sat him down, poured him a whiskey, and told him the truth.“Genevieve is about to have a baby.It’s yours.”
Grayson nearly fell out of his chair.It was true that he’d been away from Paris for nearly nine months.Had Genevieve known she was pregnant when they’d broken up?Oh, but hadn’t their breakup been mutual?Hadn’t Genevieve wanted to see other people just as much as Grayson had wished for some other kind of life?
Grayson was immediately launched into feelings of self-doubt and fear.During conversations with his father, he found himself nodding along to his father’s plans to take Grayson back to Paris, marry him off to Genevieve, and promote him within his company.Grayson felt boxed into the life he’d thought he’d escaped.When he tried to reach out to Stevie, he found that she was out most nights, playing at concert venues he couldn’t attend because his father was always watching him.Depression encircled Grayson’s heart.
When Grayson finally realized he needed to let Stevie go, he was in Central Park, walking in the rain.He heard Stevie’s voice in his head, that wonderful voice, and reminded himself of the message of Stevie’s music.Life is a strange thing that we’ll never understand.You have to go where the love is.You have to love as well as you can.
He felt sure that he would love his baby with Genevieve.Being that baby’s father was the very best thing he could do, given what he knew.
When he boarded the private plane to return to Paris with his father, Grayson gazed out the window and watched Manhattan sweep away from him.All the way across the Atlantic, he couldn’t sleep.He was petrified about what was happening to him.He couldn’t stop it.
When he saw Genevieve for the first time, she burst into tears.At first, he thought she was angry with him.But when she finally spoke, she confessed she was so grateful he was there.“I didn’t want to do this on my own,” she said.He’d never heard her say anything like that before.
When Camille was born, Grayson stood by Genevieve’s side through it all.He held her hand, even when it felt like his fingers were going to break.And when he first carried Camille in his arms, his heart shattered with a love he couldn’t really understand yet.“I’ll protect you,” he told her in English, although he knew she was mostly French and would always be French.
After that, Grayson’s life had its way with him.
He and Genevieve got married.They raised their daughter.They bickered.They said things they shouldn’t have said.Privately, they thought they’d made a mistake in marrying one another, yet they decided to hold on as long as they could.
And now, so many years after his daughter’s birth, Grayson was at the Copperfield House, sipping a whiskey with Will and Bernard Copperfield.His divorce would be finalized in the new year.He wondered if Ella remembered him from the burger restaurant.He pondered if, when she saw his face, she remembered how he’d gazed after Stevie, waiting for her to give him the time of day.He guessed she didn’t.Life had happened to Ella, too.It was almost too much to remember your own life.How was she supposed to recall someone else’s?
* * *
Soon, Camille appeared before Grayson, surrounded by a team of Copperfield-esque ladies with dark brown eyes and glossy hair.It seemed she’d made friends with Ella’s nieces and Ella’s daughter, Laura.“Papa,” she said, blushing, “they’re going to show me the library!Did you know this incredible place has a library?”
Grayson laughed and said he didn’t know.He watched his daughter disappear through a door and down a long hallway.Will explained that that was the entry to the artist residency.
“Plenty of these people spent time at the residency,” he said, nodding at musicians and writers and artists who passed them by with drinks and cookies in hand.“That’s Aurora,” he said, speaking of a red-haired beauty cozied up next to a handsome islander.“She’s a really great singer-songwriter.Apparently, her mother came to the residency back in the old days.But that’s the same story as Ella.”His eyes grew cloudy as he explained that Ella’s real mother had been a guest at the residency, that she hadn’t been able to care for Ella and had left Ella with Greta.“They never made her feel that she was anything but a Copperfield,” he explained.“But I think it was a big thing to learn.She’s still grappling with it.”
Will went on to say that he was thinking a great deal about parenting, about children, about what we leave to the people we bring into the world.“My daughter is pregnant,” he said, “which has been a mind-bending experience for Ella and me.Her boyfriend isn’t in the picture, at least not yet.”
“Has she told him?”Grayson asked, thinking of himself all those years ago, learning about Genevieve’s pregnancy.He wouldn’t have liked to be left in the dark.
