Nantucket solstice, p.1
Nantucket Solstice, page 1
Nantucket Solstice
A Nantucket Sunset Series
Katie Winters
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 2024 by Katie Winters
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. Katie Winters holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
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Chapter One
The letter came out of nowhere with no return address. It was addressed to Greta. She found it on the kitchen table at a quarter past four when she was busy making a snack for her grandson James and his troupe of high school friends—all of whom had appetites like mountain lions and appreciated Greta’s cooking more than anyone. With the homemade mozzarella sticks in the oven and a guacamole and hummus dip on the counter, she washed her hands and inspected the letter further. It just said her name and “The Copperfield House.” It was suspicious and just the sort of mystery Greta craved.
Greta reached for a knife to tear open the envelope just as her eldest daughter, Alana, entered the kitchen. At nearly forty-seven, Alana was still the most beautiful woman Greta had ever seen, and she seemed to become happier and more graceful by the day. Greta had been a pretty younger woman but never a knock-out like Alana. But Greta had long felt that Alana’s beauty had been more a curse than anything. Alana had worked as a model for many years, but those years had dried up as soon as she’d hit the latter part of her twenties. And her acting career had disintegrated after a few commercials. Greta was a writer. She liked to sit in rooms alone and rely on her intellect. This was part of the reason she could never fully understand Alana and part of the reason why she pitied her.
But Alana didn’t look pitiable right now. “I’m so nervous about later,” Alana said. She opened the fridge and sighed as she searched the compartments for a snack. She closed it a few seconds later.
“It’s going to be great,” Greta assured her. “I know what a brilliant cook you are.”
“Yeah. Right.” Alana rolled her eyes and sniffed. “What are you making, anyway?”
Greta told her.
“James is so spoiled,” Alana teased.
“You were spoiled, too,” Greta reminded her. “And you know I’ll make you homemade mozzarella sticks whenever you want. Just because you’re moving in with Jeremy doesn’t mean you aren’t welcome here.”
“Thank you for saying that.” Alana laughed and pulled her hair into a ponytail. “The girls should be here soon. I’d better get up there.”
Alana hosted an acting school for teenage girls at The Copperfield House. It was remarkable to watch her mold teenage girls, build their confidence, and help them fall in love with theater. Alana didn’t have children of her own, but she called all her students her “kids.” Greta knew how much it meant to her. Alana had also been instrumental in helping them accept and love their bodies, which was a difficult feat during their teenage years. That was how she’d initially met her boyfriend Jeremy’s daughter, Sarah. Sarah had struggled with anorexia, whittling herself down to eighty or ninety pounds. Jeremy hadn’t known what to do. However, Alana’s background in modeling and her revaluation of what matters in life had been a masterclass in helping Sarah get through the darkest period in her young life.
“What’s that?” Alana asked about the envelope in Greta’s hand. She was poised in the doorway.
“Just a bill,” Greta lied.
Alana disappeared upstairs and left Greta to stew in the stupidity of her lie. Why hadn’t she told Alana she didn’t know? Why did she want to hide this? Who did she think it was from? The handwriting could have been anyone’s, male or female. She racked her memories for clues but found nothing. In her life, she’d only had two real loves—one of whom she’d married and the other of whom never wanted to see her again (and vice versa). That meant the letter was probably from an old friend.
Greta shivered as she tore open the envelope and removed the letter.
Immediately, she had to sit down.
The letter was from Celeste Harding.
Greta,
It has been too long. I hate that it’s been so long. I think of a poet we both adored, Maya Angelou and the poem she wrote about friendship. About how none of us will make it in this world alone.
I think about our year of loneliness in Nantucket. I often reflect on it and wonder how you are and if you ever found your path away from loneliness.
I will be in Nantucket mid-May. I would love to meet you. Find my phone number written at the end of this letter. Only write me if you feel up to it. I will not bother you otherwise.
Yours,
Celeste
The beeper sounded on the oven, and Greta burst up to remove the mozzarella sticks. The front door of The Copperfield House screamed open to bring in six teenage boys—James and his friends—and they ambled into the kitchen for snacks and sodas. Greta touched James’ head and mussed his hair as they breezed back out.
“How was school?” Greta asked, feeling like she’d had the wind knocked out of her. “How are you?”
“We’re good, Grandma. Thank you for the food,” James said as he led his friends to the back patio. A few seconds later came the sound of the speaker they always carried around. It was music Greta now recognized—rap and hip hop—and nothing she would have ever picked for herself. But it warmed her heart, as ever, that The Copperfield House was bustling again.
Celeste had lived here for a little more than a year. If Greta wasn’t mistaken, it was between May 2003 and November 2004—six years after Bernard Copperfield had been taken to prison and a few years after Ella had left the nest. Greta had been like a ghost haunting The Copperfield House. She’d hardly gotten dressed and meandered from one floor to the next, reading and playing the piano and hardly ever putting pen to paper or her fingers on her keyboard. She felt dried-up. Sadder than any woman in the world. And that’s when Celeste had darkened her door.
With James on the patio and a few hours left before she had to leave for Alana and Jeremy’s, Greta hurried upstairs to google Celeste. It amazed her she hadn’t considered doing this before. She’d always told Celeste, “You’re the most talented person to ever enter The Copperfield House. You’re on your way somewhere. Mark my words.” But she hadn’t heard Celeste’s name anywhere, hadn’t read it on any theatre blogs, hadn’t heard it whispered in the literary circles she and Bernard had recently rejoined. It struck her as bizarre.
More bizarre was the fact that Celeste’s name hardly came up on google. There was one photograph of Celeste at the age of twenty-five—a couple of years after her stay at The Copperfield House. In the image she wore a black dress with spaghetti straps and stood off to the right of a theatre stage. This was probably where she’d worked after she’d embarked on a trip to the big city after her stay at The Copperfield House. But what happened afterward?
Greta was stumped.
What had happened to Celeste? Why hadn’t she had the career of her dreams?
Bernard knocked gently on Greta’s office door and entered when Greta gave the okay. Greta spun around in her office chair and blinked at him through the darkness. The afternoon light had dimmed to grays and purples, but she’d been too distracted to turn on the overhead light.
“Are you about ready to go?” Bernard asked.
Greta flinched and jumped up from the chair. “What time is it?”
“We have to leave in about fifteen minutes,” Bernard said.
Greta tugged her hair and flew past him en route to their bedroom. “I just have to put on fresh clothes!”
She could hear her husband chuckling behind her. He knew what she was like when she got “lost” in a writing project. But this time, she hadn’t been lost in a novel. She’d been lost in the throes of her memories, trying to make sense of the year and four months she’d spent with Celeste and what might have gone wrong after she’d left. Bernard didn’t know anything about Celeste, nor did any of her children. It was difficult to verbalize the truth that Celeste had been Greta’s stand-in family when hers had abandoned her.
Sometimes, it was still difficult not to feel angry about all the time that had been taken from her. A therapist had suggested those feelings would eb and flow forever, no matter how often she focused on forgiveness. And with this letter from Celeste, these feelings had come back with a vengeance.
It begged the question of whether she wanted to see Celeste at all when she came in mid-May. Or would it be too painful?
Greta put on a pair of slacks and a blouse, fluffed her hair, put on a dark red shade of lipstick, and cut back downstairs to join Bernard in his car. The walk to Jeremy’s place took less than twenty minutes, bu
“Do you think a character like that would actually do something that reckless?” he asked, second-guessing his characters’ intentions. “Do you actually think a man who grew up in Wisconsin would say something like that?”
Greta answered as best as she could and touched his thigh. This was part of the reason they’d fallen in love in the first place; they’d both been the most brilliant and creative person they’d ever met, and they didn’t want their conversations to stop. Not ever. And now that Bernard was home, they could do it for the rest of time.
It had been more than two years since he’d returned. The change had given her a form of whiplash that she wasn’t sure she would ever recover from.
Jeremy lived in a two-story house with his newly graduated daughter Sarah and, as of recently, Alana. The house had light blue shutters and fir trees outside, and it came with a pool in the back, which Alana had promised was open to all Copperfields who wanted to swim in it as soon as it got warm enough. (Greta wasn’t sure why you would ever swim in a pool when the Nantucket Sound was right there but to each his own.) Bernard and Greta were the last to arrive. Julia’s SUV was parked along the road; Quentin’s fancy sports car was in the driveway; Ella and Will’s junky van was behind it, and other second-hand cars that belonged to the teenagers in the family were scattered about. It was Alana’s first “family party” in her own place, and the air bubbled with curiosity. It was strange to pull all of the Copperfields away from The Copperfield House.
Alana opened the door wearing an apron. Her cheeks were cherry red from the heat of her oven and stove top. “Welcome! We were wondering what happened to you.”
“We’re not that late!” Greta laughed and hugged Alana. “How is the cooking going? Do you need any help?”
“Julia came in the nick of time,” Alana said. “Come on. I’ll pour you some wine.”
Greta had only been in Jeremy’s house one other time and only briefly, but that didn’t matter anyway, as Alana had completely changed it. It was cozy but slightly strange and colorful, and it was completely Alana. “What do you think of it?” Alana asked. “I realized I hadn’t made any decorating decisions since Paris. And in Paris, your house has to look a certain way if you want to fit in with certain crowds.” She rolled her eyes as she poured Greta a glass of red. “I just wanted to lean into whatever decorations I really wanted. I said yes to whatever colors spoke to my heart.”
Jeremy strode into the kitchen and shook Bernard’s hand. He looked every bit the all-American jock he’d been at eighteen—handsome and formidable and strong. When he looked at Alana, you could see the immensity of their love. Sometimes it amazed Greta that Alana had been all over the world, worked so many different jobs and met so many different types of people, and still, she wanted to get back together with her high school jock boyfriend. But nothing got in the way of true love.
“How’s the first week going?” Bernard asked with a wry laugh.
“No big fights yet,” Alana joked. “And Sarah might be on her way to the city, so we might have the house to ourselves for the summer.”
Greta brightened. “Is she going to audition for that play?”
Alana clasped her hands together and beamed. “It took some convincing. But she’s good, Mom. Really good. I think she could be something.”
Jeremy rubbed his temples and gave Bernard a look. “I’m terrified, Bernard. I don’t want my only daughter running off to the big city. She’s barely nineteen, for crying out loud.”
“I know. But you have to let your kids explore their passions,” Bernard said, clapping his shoulder.
“It’s awful,” Jeremy said with a laugh. “Nobody tells you it will be this hard to let them go.”
Greta and Bernard joined the others at the big dinner table. Greta was seated between her darling son Quentin and her granddaughter Scarlet Copperfield. Scarlet squeezed her hand under the table as Alana and Julia piled the table with dishes containing roasted lamb, buttery potatoes, beans, several different types of salad, and more bottles of wine. She watched Alana like a hawk, wondering what it was like for her to slip into this caretaker role for the first time. Greta knew a great deal about Alana’s life before The Copperfield House—a time when she’d been married to an extremely handsome, rich, and successful artist who’d made them a great deal of money and, of course, broken her heart. Everything had been done for Alana. She’d never had to clean a toilet in her life.
“Before we get started,” Jeremy began, still standing behind his chair with his wine glass raised, “Alana and I want to make an announcement.” Jeremy smiled at Alana adorably as she came toward him and wrapped her arm around his waist. They made eye contact and laughed nervously.
“Get on with it!” Quentin teased, raising his glass.
Alana stuck her tongue out at him and burst into giggles. “We’re getting married,” Alana said finally, wrapping a curl around her ear.
Greta was on her feet in a flash. She rushed around the table and threw her arms around Alana. This was the daughter she’d never fully understood and, therefore, the daughter she worried about the most. The fact that Alana had found her happily ever after with someone good, someone besides Asher, someone on Nantucket Island, thrilled her to the bone. Julia and Ella were there, too, and they peppered Alana with questions. The food had been abandoned.
“Soon!” Alana explained. “We want to do it at the end of July or something. And we were hoping we could have it at The Copperfield House?” She winced as she asked.
“Of course!” Greta cried. “It’s the perfect place for it.”
It blew her mind that Alana, of all her children, wanted a wedding at The Copperfield House. Alana was the most interested in elegance and finery, and there were certainly many hotels and wedding venues across Nantucket—ones that would suit her disposition. But perhaps this was proof that Alana fully accepted her status as a Copperfield. Perhaps it was proof that she felt she fully belonged.
Eventually, they returned to their seats, but the conversation and questions didn’t let up for a second. Alana and Jeremy often held hands over the tabletop. Jeremy gushed with excitement, and even his daughter, Sarah, offered her two cents. “Alana already feels like a part of our family.”
“Sarah promised to write a speech for our wedding,” Alana said tenderly.
Sarah laughed and blushed. “Don’t build up too much excitement. I don’t want to disappoint.”
“You won’t, honey,” Julia assured her. “I’ve seen you on stage. You have such amazing stage presence.”
“Nobody said I was a writer, though,” Sarah said. “There are already so many writers in the Copperfield family!”
“We always welcome more,” Greta said.
They fell into a beautiful celebration. After dinner, Greta helped her daughters clean the table and served apple pie on the back porch, where they watched a big yellow sun drop into the pink ocean. Greta felt in her pocket for the letter from Celeste, which she’d packed with her for reasons she didn’t remember. She wondered where Celeste was living now and why she hadn’t included the return address on the envelope. Was she in danger? Is that why she was coming back?
It was true that when Celeste had left in 2004, Greta had fallen into the darkest of depressions. She’d fallen so deep that she hadn’t recognized herself for years after that. Maybe she hadn’t even fully recognized herself until the summer her children had come home to save her. She’d carried a Celeste-sized hole in her heart.
Greta excused herself for the bathroom and removed her letter from her pocket. Celeste had written her phone number clear as anything on the bottom. Greta took a breath and typed it out.
