Page 41 of The Quiet Rebuild

Lindsey laughed.

“She can’t hide this from us,” Taylor said mischievously, pouring Lindsey a glass. “Come on. No secrets!”

Lindsey sat and crossed and uncrossed her arms. Finally, she explained it in as simple of terms as she could. “We opened the box. Jake and I. And it was devastating, and it made me feel so alive, and it made me remember what it means to raise a child, to love a child so much that it hurts.” She squeezed her hand into a fist. “It made me realize that maybe I’m not too tired to do it again. Even though it was the worst kind of pain, even though it nearly destroyed me, even though I spent years hiding from the truth of what happened, I’m not done living. And Jake’s love has taught me that, too.”

“Oh, honey.” Candice’s eyes glinted with tears.

Taylor raised her glass of wine. “I think you’re ready, Lindsey. Nobody in the world deserves happiness more than you.”

Lindsey was so overcome that she couldn’t speak. Silence spread out between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was filled with promises, and dreams, and hopes.

Finally, Taylor got up and said, “Who wants a tour?”

Lindsey and Candice followed after her, tracing a path through the immaculate kitchen, filled with windows and yellow curtains, up the winding staircase to its three bedrooms, back down into the library, the dining room, and the living room, which had a single television and a single chair and nothing else, yet. “I need to figure out my furniture situation,” Taylor admitted. “It’s a journey!”

They laughed, congratulating Taylor, then hurried back outside to talk more about the future. Taylor was already making headway on her foundation, and Candice was falling deeper and deeper in love with Frank—the man who’d changed her life last year.

“Maybe I want him to move in,” Candice said contemplatively. “Maybe Peter would be okay with it?”

“I’m sure he would be,” Taylor said. “Kids are resilient. And goodness, Peter’s seventeen now. He has to start seeing you as a person, rather than his mother.”

Candice laughed. “Imagine that! My kids, grown up and no longer seeing me as a person who lives fully for them.”

“It’s how it should be,” Taylor said softly. “At least, for a while. You created a safe, comfortable environment for them as long as you could. Now, it’s your time.”

“It’s our time,” Candice agreed, raising her glass so that it glinted in the last of the pink light.

20

It pleased Taylor to no end that, on the first night in the Nantucket house, both Candice and Lindsey decided to stay the night. Taylor had stretched sheets and blankets over the guest beds upstairs—the only real furniture she’d committed to thus far—with the hope that she could host them. Now, tucked in her bed down the hall from each of them, Taylor felt a softness that she associated with childhood, or somebody else’s version of childhood, at least. She felt as though she’d fallen into a family.

The following morning, Candice convinced them to go out to breakfast. She had a favorite vegan-friendly spot in downtown Nantucket, and she wanted to people-watch and take a walk along the boardwalk afterward. Taylor rode to town in Lindsey’s car, flicking through the radio stations as the wind fluttered through her hair.

“I have so much to do this week,” Taylor said, laughing. Tomorrow, she was having more secondhand furniture delivered—in line with her environmentally friendly vision for her future. And she had several meetings coming up with environmentalists, ocean specialists, accountants, and other celebrities eager to get in on the ground floor of her foundation.

“But there’s always time for breakfast, right?” Lindsey asked, laughing.

Taylor grinned. “Absolutely.”

At the breakfast table, Candice, Lindsey, and Taylor spoke about what they remembered of their teenage years. Candice and Lindsey had grown up on Nantucket and had numerous hilarious stories of sneaking out and going to beach parties. Taylor, of course, had been a full-time actress at the time, bringing in enough money for her mother and father and their extravagant lifestyle. But Taylor, too, had her share of teenage stories. She talked about boys, about period cramps on set, about pimples that made various directors over the years panic. “What was I supposed to do?” she asked, laughing. “I was fifteen! I was oily! My mother nearly flipped over the snack table on set!”

Lindsey and Candice howled with laughter. It felt good to be heard this way. It was commiseration. And really, these were funny stories, if you stripped away all the heartache.

Toward the end of breakfast, Taylor got a message from her agent: Call me. Taylor showed the text to her friends and asked, “Do you think she’s mad that I don’t want to act anymore?”

“Take the call.” Lindsey shrugged. “Maybe it’s time for you to part ways, anyway?”

“Yeah! Fire her!” Candice said, teasing.

Taylor laughed and stepped out of the bustling breakfast spot to make the call. Almost immediately, her agent answered, saying, “Taylor, where have you been?”

Taylor hesitated, taking in the sight of the boardwalk before her, the sailboats shifting gently in the water behind the railing. Everything smelled of butter and fish.

“The thing is,” her agent went on before she had a chance to answer, “they want you on The Today Show. Next week. They want to talk about your, um, new mission? Some environmental thing?”

Taylor was floored. “I’m sorry?”

Her agent explained everything she knew. The world was increasingly excited about Taylor’s new “angle,” as she called it, and The Today Show wanted to shed more light on it. “I guess this could help your career in some way,” her agent said tentatively. “I mean, more face time on television means more people thinking about you, right?”