Page 3 of The Quiet Rebuild

Taylor continued, her chin held high, past the hair and makeup artists who’d worked on her all morning, past the interns who’d fetched coffee and tried to make things comfortable, past the assistant directors and the caterers, all the way to the door. Once she got outside, she filled her lungs with the most humid air imaginable, air that was difficult to breathe, and told herself not to burst into tears.

“We’ll fix this,” she said to herself, feeling half insane. She fished her phone from her pocket, ready to dial her agent or her manager or whoever was still awake back in Los Angeles. Somebody, somewhere had to make all this go away. This couldn’t be the end of all things.

2

It wasn’t so long since Lindsey and her sister, Candice, had journeyed to Tennessee and learned the truth about their mother Stella Vanberg: namely that she wasn’t Stella Vanberg at all. Her name had once been Heidi, and she’d been raised in awful conditions in the middle of the mountains. When things had grown especially dire, she’d escaped, bringing her little sister along with her. They’d taken on different names—Stella and Sally McGee—and they’d become country music stars. That is, until their father caught up with them and split them apart.

It was a story like no other. It also demanded something of Lindsey, Candice, and their brother, Henry. It demanded that they respect their mother’s wishes to transform their Nantucket estate into a house for women in need.

Now, Lindsey and Candice were in their mother’s old office with their mother’s old assistant, Gwen, discussing the next phase of the Harbor House. Stella had put Gwen in charge of nearly everything in the wake of her death, and Gwen now had authority over the project and the future of their mother’s money that, frankly, relieved Lindsey. She was happy to let Gwen make most of the decisions while she continued to live and help out at the Harbor House.

“I don’t see how we’ll manage to open before next spring,” Gwen was saying now, folding her hands beneath her chin and staring down at the plans the architect had drawn up. Construction had been ongoing for weeks now, but a great deal still needed to be done before any women could move into the Harbor House. “But I think it’s nearly time to put out a call for applications.”

Candice furrowed her brow. “It’s going to be tough. How do we decide who ‘deserves’ to be here? How do we turn people away? Thinking about it does my head in.”

“The selection process will not be easy,” Gwen agreed. But she went on to explain how she imagined daily activities at the Harbor House, when it did open. “I’ve already interviewed a few therapists. I’m imagining a yoga studio here.” She set her finger on the plans before them. “And I’m thinking we need many, many more books in the library. Not just literature, but self-help books as well. Oh, and I think maybe some stables? For horses?”

Candice laughed. “I think Mom would be into all of this, yes.”

“Me too.”

“Oh, I wanted to say,” Gwen added, rubbing her lips together, “it’ll be possible for at least one of you to continue living here at the Harbor House for the foreseeable future. I know I told you, initially, that you’d both have to clear out. But there are so many rooms.”

Candice and Lindsey eyed one another. Lindsey’s pulse quickened. When she’d first met Candice and their brother, Henry, at the Harbor House, she’d assumed they would either sell the house and take the money and run. That, or she’d imagined that Candice would return to New York City, to her well-trodden career as a writing professor, and leave Lindsey alone in the mansion, licking her wounds and pretending, at least to outsiders, that nothing in her life had ever gone wrong. Their mother’s will had gotten in the way of these plans.

“Well, I mean. If things go well with Frank…” Candice offered with a shrug. She meant maybe she’d want to move in with him, eventually, maybe by spring.

But Lindsey knew that Candice had only just started dating Frank, an islander she’d had a fling with all the way back in high school. The truth was, Candice was still reeling after her husband’s affair. Worse than that, her husband had published a novel about the affair, calling it “fiction” when it was so clearly non-fiction. That was a lot for one woman to deal with. It meant that Candice had come to Nantucket for her own rebuilding. She’d even brought her son along for the ride—fourteen-year-old Peter, who’d recently begun high school.

“Again, we don’t need to make those arrangements till spring,” Gwen said, waving her hand. “I imagine we’ll have the first batch of residents in April or so.”

“April it is,” Lindsey said, smiling. She was excited to see how this story played out.

After their meeting with Gwen, Candice and Lindsey put on fall jackets and drove into the Historic District. Once there, they grabbed seats in the sunshine outside a wine bar and watched the waves roll gently to shore. From a distance, Lindsey spotted Peter Lerner, Candice’s son, walking around with a few other high schoolers, acting as though he’d been born and raised here.

“How is he?” Lindsey asked.

“I think he’s all right,” Candice admitted, although worry fluttered through her face. “He talks about this guy Rodrigo sometimes. Makes me think maybe he already has a real friend?”

“Friends are so hard to come by in life,” Lindsey said.

“But they weren’t back in high school, right?” Candice asked. She sipped her wine and seemed to scrutinize Lindsey’s face. “But what are you saying? You have more friends than anyone I know.”

“I don’t know about that.” Lindsey laughed. She knew it seemed like from the outside that she was always heading out on the town with old high school friends, eager for laughter and funny conversation that never hit on anything real. Lindsey’s nights out had been the reason that Candice and Frank had rekindled their long-dormant romance.

“What are your theories about adult friendships?” Candice asked, clearly curious now. “Do you think you can forge new friendships after a lifetime of differences?”

Lindsey reflected on the past four decades of her life. “I think you can make some friendships, sure. But is a friendship ever equal?”

“Good question,” Candice offered. “Back in the city, I always felt that people were using me for whatever I could give them. I once became friends with a woman named Jane. I thought we were really close, until she started asking me how I could get her kid into Columbia. I was gobsmacked. When I told her that I wasn’t in a position to help her, she stopped calling me. She never answered any of my texts, either. I felt so used!”

“That’s the worst.” Lindsey’s chest ached for her sister, whose wounds went deep.

Candice suggested that they have a little wine night at the Harbor House, maybe that weekend. “We can invite the gang,” she suggested. “They’re fun, and they love you.” She narrowed her eyes, then asked the question Lindsey had known was coming for weeks. “And what’s going on between you and Gavin?”

Lindsey groaned, thinking of Gavin, who’d been a perpetual flirt all summer long. The attention had been nice, but Lindsey had no interest in pursuing it. “Gavin is just a friend. Honestly, I have no feelings for him.”

Candice gave her that big-sister look that meant she didn’t believe her.