Page 7 of Nantucket Reflections
“Didn’t you do all your prerequisite research?” CAT demanded. “Did you not look up everything there was to know about the memoir?”
Had Julia? Had she really? She was beginning to doubt herself, beginning to think she’d seen nothing but dollar signs since this had all begun. She was forty-six years old and far too old to act like this. Then again, this woman—CAT—in front of her was probably about that age and acting like an insolent teenager. Nobody ever really gets more mature, Julia thought. We age, but we always act the same as before. We never really learn.
There was a copy ofA Journey into the Nighton the corner table. Julia got up and walked over to it, feeling a shiver down her spine when she picked it up. It was three hundred and forty-two pages of “CAT’s life,” a life that had felt inspiring and gorgeous and daring just a few hours ago. Julia sat down with the memoir and traced the lines of the author’s name. “So you’re saying you wanted to reveal your name as Lucia Colombo—to everyone who bought the book—but you don’t want me to call you Lucia? Or Miss Colombo? Or anything relating to that name?”
“Can I smoke in here?” Lucia asked, flipping through her purse to find a package of Italian cigarettes.
Julia shook her head. “Absolutely not.” She was surprised that Lucia smoked at all, given the fact that she’d struggled for years with heinous cancer diagnoses and chemotherapy treatments. Didn’t she want to live well, live healthily, for herself and for her future fame?
“You’re from Positano, correct?” Julia asked, deciding to quiz her based on the fact that she was pretty sure was true, given what she’d read in the memoir and verified via other means. “On the Amalfi Coast?”
Lucia wagged her eyebrows and flicked a cigarette between her fingers. “You know that’s true, don’t you?”
“And your first mural was painted when?”
Lucia’s face broke open with a ridiculous smile. “You know that too. Tell me yourself. You read the memoir. You read the papers. Everyone knows what I did and when I did it. Everyone paid attention to me.”
Julia’s eyes were slits. The arrogance that beamed off Lucia felt incongruent with the morally sophisticated and big-hearted murals CAT had painted over the years.
“Can I ask you something else?”
Lucia rolled her shoulders back. “You have me locked in here. I suppose I cannot leave before you ask me whatever questions you want?”
“It isn’t like that,” Julia hurried to say, because she didn’t want to be seen as a criminal.
“Own what you’re doing to me,” Lucia said.
Julia’s cheeks were hot. She forced herself to ask, “Why did you want to come forward? Why now? You’ve been anonymous for ten years, and it seems to have been working for you. If you say you’re CAT, why do you want to change your message? Why did you make that speech?”
Lucia’s eyes flickered dangerously. “Did you not like my speech?”
Nobody liked your speech, was what Julia wanted to say but didn’t.
“Why now?” she asked again.
Lucia buzzed her lips. “Why now? Why should a woman wait on the sidelines while so many men take credit for what she’s doing? Why should I sit back and watch as so many of my messages ring false in the articles, when I find myself so misunderstood by so many? Why should I wait and wait and wait for other people to profit off everything I’ve done?”
Julia’s heartbeat slowed. There was something true about what she was saying, something that felt honest and open.
“For ten years, people have been speculating,” Lucia continued. “For ten years, people have been guessing I’m everything from Banksy to Eduardo Kobra, and I’m tired of it. The woman behind the murals—murals that have captivated the world, mind you! —is me, Lucia Colombo. Me, CAT. If people cannot handle that truth, then they were never meant to understand my work.”
Julia took a sip of water. Although she’d turned her phone off, it was filled with even more messages from Nicole and others about the state of the publishing house’s bank account.
“I need them to start paying attention to what I first set out to do!” Lucia went on, her hand in a fist, raised to the sky.
Julia’s voice was breathy. “And what is that, Lucia? What did you first set out to do?”
But this was a question too far. Lucia burst into tears, her face a big red sponge. Pity rushed through Julia’s chest, and she got up and went to the door. Did she really plan on questioning Lucia all night? Did she really plan on demanding answers about every single intimate detail of Lucia’s life?
Maybe Lucia and the publishing house were being canceled in one go. Perhaps Julia could only think of this as the biggest professional mistake of her career. Maybe it was time to move on.
* * *
That night, Greta wouldn’t let anyone go anywhere but The Copperfield House. She wanted to mother them, wanted to bring them all under her protective umbrella, and stuff them with good food and sweets. Julia was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a big, baggy T-shirt that had belonged to her in high school, and she was cuddled up in Charlie’s arms, watching a surprise rain fall. Greta and Bernard were on the porch swing with glasses of wine, and Alana, Jeremy, Ella, Will, Catherine, and Quentin were all represented, bringing together two entire generations of Copperfields and their spouses. Julia was grateful they were there to comfort her, but she also felt pathetic and weak. Would Quentin have allowed something like this to happen? Would Alana?
“There was something so fishy about her,” Julia said under her breath.
“You said her name’s Lucia Colombo?” Alana asked, perking up.
