Page 12 of The Quiet Rebuild

“Maybe we can fit her into another round,” Gwen said. “I like what she said about needing anonymity.”

“She’s recognized everywhere,” Lindsey said. “It seems like a curse.”

But already, Gwen had another application in her hand, and she was talking about another woman’s plight, another woman’s story. They’d moved on.

On Christmas Eve, the Vanbergs had an immaculate feast. Candice insisted on doing everything themselves, and Lindsey, Henry, Sarah, and Peter found themselves slicing and dicing like crazy, being ordered around the kitchen so that everything happened at the correct time. Soon enough, Candice’s boyfriend, Frank, came, as did some of their friends from the island, Claire and Jennette and their husbands, Hunter and Conor. By the time they sat down to dinner, it was snowing outside, and everyone was starving. Lindsey poured herself a decadent glass of red wine and grinned out at everyone, feeling floaty. This was the first proper Christmas she’d celebrated in a very long time. Could they tell that she wasn’t used to it?

Candice made a brief toast, thanking everyone for gathering and celebrating the end of the year and the approach of a new one. “At the beginning of this year, I never could have imagined how everything would fall apart, nor how everything would rebuild itself,” Candice said. “My life looks remarkably different than it did a year ago. And I couldn’t be more grateful for that.”

Later, Lindsey and her family and friends sat around the fireplace, laughing and drinking a little more wine. Sarah and Peter were off somewhere, watching movies. Lindsey eyed the three happy couples before her and felt a spasm of grief that she soon swallowed down. She was accustomed to other people’s happiness. She knew better than to expect more of her own.

“It’s a gorgeous house,” Conor said dreamily. “I guess this will be the last Christmas you can spend here?”

“I’m moving into a new place in February,” Candice explained, as she’d recently purchased a house not far from the Harbor House, a place big enough for her and Peter and Sarah, when she came home for a visit. Frank might move in next year or the one after that. “But there’s no reason we can’t celebrate more Christmases here! I can’t imagine any of the Harbor House women would want to be here during the heavy winter months.”

“True,” Claire said. “It’s too cold even for me.”

“We’re the brave full-year islanders, now,” Candice said, looking at Lindsey. “Lindsey’s been braving the harsh wind with her long, long runs.”

Lindsey laughed. “I keep trying to train myself to be strong. It isn’t working.”

Because I used to live in balmy Costa Rica, she thought. I used to feel the sun on my face all the time.

But there was still so much her family didn’t know.

After she finished her glass of wine, Lindsey went to her room and got under the covers. She listened to the wind rush violently against the windows, threatening to take the whole house down.

For the thousandth time since she’d seen Taylor Charron’s application, Lindsey thought about her. She thought about the desperation involved with applying to something like the Harbor House, specifically if you were a major celebrity like Taylor. Taylor had previously been accustomed to having all doors opened for her, metaphorically and otherwise. The world had been her oyster. Now, Gwen was closing the Harbor House door in Taylor’s face. It didn’t feel right, at least not to Lindsey. But maybe it felt too personal.

Lindsey thought back to those first few months in Costa Rica, when she’d been eighteen and then nineteen. With the first of their scuba diving instructor money, she and Christopher had skipped over the purchase of more logical things and instead bought a television, which they’d put in their bedroom so that they could fall asleep to the sound of it at night. They hadn’t cared that this was unhealthy. They were young and in love, and nothing mattered.

Often, Lindsey and Christopher would stay up late, eating snacks and watching reruns of Taylor Charron’s sitcoms. She’d had many over the years, including the two in which she’d starred with Jason, her beloved boyfriend. Goodness, they’d been a great-looking couple. Although some of the sitcoms were cheesy and featured laugh tracks that told you when to laugh, Lindsey loved the coziness of those shows. There was a safety in knowing how each storyline would play out. And she genuinely loved Taylor, who was beautiful and cute in an American girl-next-door way. Lindsey had had many friends back in high school on Nantucket, and Taylor reminded her of some of them in a way. It made her homesick. But by then, Lindsey was living under the illusion that she could never return to Nantucket in a real way.

For a few years, Lindsey and Christopher lived in the bliss of their Costa Rican lives. Lindsey grew into a strong and very capable scuba diving instructor, and she and Christopher frequently took trips with paying customers to gorgeous locales, deeper and deeper beneath the sea. Something Lindsey loved about scuba diving was the unimaginable, impenetrable quiet down there, how that quiet seemed to merge with the deep purpley blue of everything. She felt weightless and entirely unlike herself. Sometimes they saw funny fish, or sharks, or dolphins—but more often, Lindsey felt as though she were all alone down there, swimming forever into the dark.

Always, when she and Christopher returned to the surface, they babbled and laughed and celebrated. But there was no need for words down there.

Were these the happiest days of Lindsey’s life? Probably. Even while she lived those blissfully happy days, Lindsey knew they were special, that most people didn’t get to live like that. She’d abandoned all concept of “going to university,” but that didn’t bother her. She’d carved for herself a different path.

It must have been 2003 or 2004 when it was announced that Taylor Charron and Jason Clapton were getting married. Lindsey read the headline in a magazine at the grocery store, beneath which was a photograph of Taylor and Jason on a beach somewhere, showing off Taylor’s engagement ring. Lindsey bought the magazine right away and took it home, where she read the very short article and tried to imagine what it would be like to be young and wealthy and famous and in love. When Christopher came home that evening from a scuba diving trip, he found her in a heap on their bed, crying. He looked from her to the magazine spread out beside her and understood that it was time.

A little less than a month later, Christopher and Lindsey went scuba diving, just the two of them. They weren’t far from home, and these were waters they knew well, but it felt romantic and freeing to be alone down there, watching each other’s fins as they swam into the dark. Just before they plunged deeper than they normally went, Christopher turned toward Lindsey and took both of her hands in his. He looked at her for a long time. This was a struggle, as it was never fully easy to remain in the same place underwater, but Lindsey held her ground. And then, Christopher brought one of his knees forward and bent the other, so that it looked, down here, like he’d gotten down on one knee. Lindsey’s heart flipped over. She knew what he was asking. She squeezed his hands in response, and then did the “okay” sign, which, at this moment, meant yes in underwater speak.

For this reason, Lindsey always associated her own engagement with Taylor’s. As she planned their intimate wedding, she imagined Taylor planning her much larger and grander affair, compiling a guest list of people she and Jason had starred with over the years. As Lindsey and Christopher taste-tested wedding cakes, she imagined Jason and Taylor discussing caterers. And as she tried on multiple secondhand wedding gowns, she imagined Taylor discussing her wedding gown with a variety of designers, all of whom were surely competing to make the wedding dress of the year.

Ultimately, Lindsey and Christopher got married about three months before Taylor and Jason. They went to the courthouse and then had a little party with their friends, both Costa Rican transplants and a few Costa Rican locals. There were tacos, buckets of ice cream, and a huge vanilla-lemon cake. One of their friends offered to DJ, and they danced and drank wine and cheap beer all night. When they collapsed in bed, it was nearly four in the morning, and Lindsey was too tired to take off her wedding dress. But in the light of the morning, she and Christopher kissed and showered and went out to breakfast, where they ran into several of their friends, the same friends who’d been at their wedding last night. Yet another party had broken out from there. There’d been no end to their celebrating, until there was.

Now, so many years later, it was New Year’s Eve at the Harbor House. Lindsey went out for a long, frantic run, stretching her legs until her heart pounded in her ears. She was trying not to think of Christopher, of Costa Rica, of the New Year’s celebrations they’d had so often in the past, but the memories swam behind her eyes, and her tears poured.

When she returned to the Harbor House, she found Candice and Frank carrying boxes out to the car. Candice had already begun her big move to her new place, hoping to get her and Peter situated before his next semester began. Lindsey felt a pang of regret. She’d only just gotten used to this new arrangement with her sister living down the hall. Why did everything have to change so quickly?

“You’re coming back later, aren’t you?” Lindsey asked, hating how naive and silly she sounded.

“Of course! We’re going to celebrate into the new year. And remember, we’ll have that big breakfast tomorrow? Peter’s insisting on it,” Candice said. “Oh, and most of my stuff is still here. I’ll be in and out. We all will be, till the women come.”

Lindsey helped Candice carry out another few boxes, then waved as she and Frank drove down the driveway and turned out of sight. Seeing her sister begin the next phase of her life left Lindsey with a cold emptiness in her stomach. Would she feel better if she left Nantucket? Or should she get an apartment in town somewhere, somewhere close so that she could maintain her connection to the Harbor House? She was certainly interested in how the first session would go.

En route to her room, she heard Gwen down the hall, talking to someone on the phone.