Page 26 of Nantucket Longing

Madeline took a drink of mulled wine and felt her stomach flip.“You don’t mean that,” she said, trying to tease Greta.“You think I should move on.”

Greta sighed, her eyes on the church spire that shot up into the gray clouds above them.“I don’t want either of you to get hurt,” she muttered.“I know how driven you are.”

Bernard touched Madeline’s shoulder gently.“You’ll see him at Christmas,” he reminded her.“We’ll have plenty of eggnog, and Greta will cook enough food to feed the entire island, and we’ll eat it all in the span of two hours.It’ll be just as it is every year, except a little bit more magical because you’re in our lives now.”He gave her a smile that warmed her from the inside, even as she panged with fear at what Henry would say when he walked through the doors.

She imagined him announcingI’m in love with a Hollywood actress!

“Do you think it’s true that everyone who goes to Hollywood becomes, um…” Madeline trailed off, not sure if she should say more to Greta and Bernard.

Bernard filled in the gap.“Evil?Sinister?Money-driven?”

Madeline cackled and gave him an appreciative smile.“I guess that’s what I mean.”

“Not our Henry.”Greta furrowed her brow.“He’s in it for the artistry.”

“I’m sure the big check doesn’t hurt,” Bernard reminded her.

Greta shot Bernard a look.“When we started The Copperfield House, we promised ourselves we would never compromise on our art for money’s sake.”

“And then I went to prison,” Bernard tried to joke.

But Greta’s face fell at the memory, and the air felt taut around them.Greta strung her arm through Bernard’s and put her head on his shoulder.She met Madeline’s gaze.

“You know about the complications of life,” Greta breathed.“But it means you know about its beauty, too.The full breadth of it.”

Madeline took another sip of mulled wine and stirred with a longing she couldn’t name.

After finishing their mulled wine, Madeline walked Bernard and Greta back to their hotel so they could rest before tonight's big show.Madeline returned to her apartment to practice and drink a ton of water and get dressed for the night.When she left the apartment, it was dark and spitting with snow.It filled her red curls and melted on her coat.At the speakeasy, she hugged her friends hello and fell into a wild and jazzy warm-up that felt second nature to her after so many months of doing just this.Every now and again, David still suggested that Madeline was on her way elsewhere and wouldn’t be in their jazz quintet in Paris for long.But how could Madeline leave a group that pulsed with such creativity and heart?

A full twenty minutes before the gig was set to begin, Bernard and Greta arrived, sitting in their easy elegance and sipping wine.The speakeasy filled up around them with both regulars and tourists who’d booked seats to see the iconic Madeline Willis.Madeline was no longer nervous in the least.She’d accepted her role.

Five minutes before they took the stage, Madeline glanced out into the crowd and saw—with a surge of panic and disbelief—that Henry stood in the far-back corner, his arms crossed as he scanned the room.Madeline couldn’t stop herself.She snapped out of the door and ran past Greta and Bernard, her heart surging in her chest.Several onlookers spotted her and said her name, remembering her as the musician they’d come to see.But she only had eyes for Henry.When he realized she was running at him, his eyes widened, and his smile became charismatic and charming.This close-up, she saw how tired he was, presumably from a recent flight.Why had he come all this way without saying so?A surprise, Madeline realized.He wanted to shock me to my core.But all at once, Madeline’s arms were around Henry’s neck, and he whirled her around joyfully as they both laughed.

“What are you doing here?”Madeline cried.She wanted to pinch herself and him to make sure they were real.

Henry set her feet back on the floor and kissed her gently; he kissed her in a way that made her heart balloon, in a way that made her want to take his hand and guide him out into the night, away from this thickening crowd.She was wordless.He’d come for her!

But from behind the stage, she heard David saying her name.She felt tugged back to the piano.Henry’s eyes were wide with recognition.

“It’s time,” he said, nudging her along.

Madeline wore an enormous smile and returned to the stage.A part of her sensed that this would be her final time up there.After this, she would return to the United States and move in with Henry and be by his side through everything.Thanks to David, she had her music confidence back.She could form another quintet in Los Angeles and bring sweeping and strange jazz music to that sun-bleached city.She could write music for movie scores or even, if it came to it, teach piano lessons.She didn’t owe anything to anyone except herself—the child and teenager who’d spent hundreds of thousands of hours mastering piano.She owed it to her love of music to keep going.

Madeline fell into the performance.In an article posted to a Paris nightlife website, the journalist would go on to write that this was one of Madeline’s very best performances, that she left everything of herself on stage.When it was finished, she stood with her colleagues and bowed three times, then played three encores before the crowd would let them go.It was nearly midnight, and she was exhausted.When she reached Greta and Bernard in the crowd, Henry was with them, drinking a glass of red wine and smiling sleepily.The three of them were jet-lagged but eager to spend as much time with Madeline as they could.Greta, especially, seemed to want to spend every minute in Paris wide-awake and experiencing everything.

“You were brilliant!”they told her.Henry kissed her cheek and waved the server over to order Madeline a glass of wine.Greta looked confused yet very pleased that Henry was there.She kept saying, “You’re a mystery man!”

“How did you get away?”Bernard asked him.

“We cut for the rest of the month,” Henry said.“Sophia had a few problems with some of the scenes, and they need to be rewritten.”He groaned and laughed.

“Of course she did,” Greta said, shaking her head.

“Sometimes I worry that making this film will take forever,” Henry admitted.“But mostly, I think—wow, I’m lucky to be able to do this at all.”

“That’s a great attitude to have,” Bernard said.

Madeline was about to respond, about to tell Henry how proud she was of him and his work, and maybe even about to tell him that she wanted to move to Los Angeles to be close to him when suddenly, a person she’d never seen before came up behind her and said, “Madeline Willis?”The lilting and foreign accent wasn’t French, and she couldn’t place it at first.She turned to find a man in his fifties or sixties with blond-gray hair to his ears and piercing blue eyes.At first, she assumed he was simply a fan, someone who’d wandered in to see some jazz and wanted to compliment her before going on about the rest of his night.She smiled at him, still with her hand on Henry’s arm.

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