Page 3 of Nantucket Gala

“Oh, I’ve really made a mess of things, haven’t I?” Greta laughed.

From the open window at the top of The Copperfield House came the sounds of Francis and Bernard’s conversation, their deep and booming voices as they tore through a philosophical discussion. Sophia could smell their cigars.

“Forgive me for asking,” Greta said. “But how much older is Francis?”

“He was born in ’45,” Sophia answered automatically. “And I just turned twenty-seven this year.”

“That’s right. I’m sorry we couldn’t make it to Francis’s fortieth birthday party,” Greta said. “I saw some photos in a magazine at the grocery store. What a marvelous collection of stars. Bernard and I would have looked drab by comparison.”

“We would have loved to have you,” Sophia offered, remembering that glossy, champagne-soaked night in Los Angeles, the night two hundred and fifty millionaires sang “Happy Birthday” to Francis, the love of her life. She considered telling Greta that there hadn’t been a soul at that party she’d genuinely liked, that she liked Greta more than most people on the planet.

“Thirteen years is really nothing,” Sophia said about their age difference, then wondered if her inability to drop the subject meant it bothered her more than she could admit to herself. Francis’s first wife was his age—forty—and his second wife was six years younger than him. She’d been thirty at the time of their divorce.

Did that mean Francis would break things off with Sophia in three years?

“Thirteen years is nothing,” Greta agreed, waving her hand. “Love has no timeline. And like I said, Francis’s artistic merit has skyrocketed since he met you. You must ignite something inside him.”

Sophia blushed again.

“Have you ever considered making art of your own?” Greta asked.

Sophia thought about the typewriter she’d insisted on packing in the sailboat. She thought about the writing room she’d built for herself back in their Beverly Hills mansion. She thought about the intoxication of digging herself so deep into a story that she no longer remembered what the real world was like.

But she said, “Francis’s career is all-powerful. It’s like the sun. Now that he’s ramping up for another new film, I have to support him. I can’t think about myself.”

Greta cocked her head. She looked at Sophia as though she’d just spewed poison.

“It’s hard to believe the studios won’t shell out enough forThe Brutal Horizon,” Sophia observed, trying to distract Greta from her own thoughts.

“It’s like Bernard said at dinner.The Brutal Horizontakes risks the studios don’t know what to do with. But it’s better to fund your own artistic projects so you never have to ask for permission to make what you want.”

Sophia smiled and sipped her wine. It was exactly what she’d said to Francis, alone in the bedroom they’d shared in Paris last year, twisted up in the sheets.Don’t ask for permission. Apologize later.

Of course, she often wondered how much he’d taken that to heart.

Don’t hurt me, Francis. Her heart ached as she listened to him erupting with laughter upstairs.

You’d be nothing without me, Francis.

But nobody knows that except for us.

Chapter Two

Christmas Eve 2024

Los Angeles, California

Sixty-two degrees on the morning of Christmas Eve felt horrific to Henry Crawford. Out on the front porch of his apartment in Echo Park, he stood in a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of loose-hanging sweatpants, gazing down the block at the massive palm tree that shot up into the cerulean-blue sky. To him, the palm tree looked ancient and misplaced and lonely.

Where was the snow? Where was the winter wonderland? Where was the magic of Christmas?

He’d left it all behind.

It was Henry’s first Christmas Eve away from his family—the first he didn’t have money to fly back to meet them and had refused help out of what his mother Julia called “radical stubbornness.” But Henry didn’t have time to traipse back to Nantucket Island right then anyway. Besides, Nantucket still didn’t feel like returning to any kind of home. He’d been born in the suburbs of Chicago. He’d gone to university in Chicago. After graduation, he’d stumbled through the massive continent,spent occasional weeks in Nantucket with his grandparents and extended family, and made money freelance writing. But he was in California for the same reason as most everyone else in California—he wanted to make it in film. Specifically, he wanted to write scripts. His mother, who worked in publishing, was horrified.

But every single meeting Henry had stayed in Los Angeles to take had gone south. Nobody liked his ideas. Nobody even bothered to read his scripts.

Maybe he wasn’t good at this.

---