Page 35 of The Quiet Rebuild

“Maybe catch you after?” Jason asked.

Taylor hesitated. For a beautiful moment, she allowed herself to skate down this avenue. She allowed herself to dream of spending all evening with Jason, laughing about old times, talking about her mother and the sitcoms they’d done together. She allowed herself to think, Maybe we could try again. Why couldn’t we try again?

But a voice in the back of her mind screamed, Don’t.

He’d betrayed her. He’d made her out to be a fool. It wasn’t something she could ever forgive.

“I’m sorry, Jason,” Taylor said, squeezing her body so tight with her arms that she thought she might pop.

Jason bowed his head. Music started up from the speakers, her mother’s favorite Beach Boys’ song.

“I’m sorry, too,” Jason said, raising his shoulders.

Taylor touched his wrist. “We’re going to be okay,” she said.

“I know you’re right,” Jason said. “I mean, I hope you are.”

Taylor turned and hurried over to Lindsey, who’d grabbed a seat in the second row, not far from Greg Charron. Taylor sat, and Lindsey wrapped her arms around her, hugging her and whispering, “Are you all right?”

Taylor nodded. “I’m fine. Really, I’m fine.”

A few minutes later, a pastor who, apparently, had been a big part of Veronica’s life over the past few years, approached the front and began to speak. He was eloquent and charming in a way that, Taylor knew, her mother had probably liked.

“Our Veronica was a spitfire,” the pastor said. “She went into the world and made something of it. She was a loving wife and a fierce supporter of her child.” The pastor’s eyes flickered up toward Taylor, then dropped again.

Taylor thought, He knows exactly what Veronica did. He knows she took advantage of me.

And then an idea hit her like a ton of bricks. What if he knew because Veronica herself had told him? What if she’d confessed that she hadn’t been tremendously kind to Taylor? What if she’d confessed that she hadn’t been the very best mother?

The pastor went on, talking of Veronica’s life back in Ohio, her love of theater and movies, her love of music, and the story of how she’d met her husband, Greg. Taylor knew all of this the way she knew the back of her own hand. She was surprised at how the stories tugged at her heartstrings. She was surprised, too, to hear herself laugh at some of the stories.

Grieving was a funny thing. Taylor hadn’t anticipated half of the feeling she was now experiencing. But after the funeral was over, as she walked up to the photograph of her mother to say her final goodbye, she felt a lightness in her chest. “I do love you, Mom,” she whispered, both to the photograph and to the closed coffin, shining before her. “Maybe I’ll never understand you, and maybe I’ll never get over some of it. But I do love you. I guess I always will.”

17

Lindsey was bleary-eyed, sitting in the back of Murray’s car. Going to a funeral meant to honor a woman you didn’t know was truly a singular thing, an event clouded with the suffering of so many people you also didn’t know, until it had made Lindsey feel disoriented. Lindsey had found herself catching their grief and holding it in her chest. All the while, she’d squeezed Taylor’s hand, wanting to impart to Taylor: You’re not alone.

Of course, she’d allowed herself, briefly, to think of her own mother’s funeral, how she and Candice and Henry had sat together, strangers at that point, all three of them carrying tremendous secrets.

It had occurred to Lindsey, more than once during the service, that there was still so much she didn’t know about their brother, Henry, who moved in and out of their lives like a ghost.

Now, Taylor and Lindsey and Murray were leaving the cemetery, and it was nearly five thirty in the evening. Traffic picked up, that famous Los Angeles traffic that everyone around the world hated so much, and Lindsey shivered as Murray pressed the brake and then the gas and then the brake. Taylor was hidden behind her sunglasses, probably having a thousand thoughts she couldn’t fully name.

There was too much to say, which maybe meant nothing was right to say.

Now that Lindsey had told Taylor her deepest secrets—about Maya, about Christopher, about how anxious she was in the world—she felt a safety with this improbable woman. Still, Taylor didn’t know that Lindsey had been such a massive fan of her work through the years. And of course, Lindsey wasn’t sure if she wanted her to know how deep her love had been, back then. But Lindsey reasoned that her love for Taylor Charron, the TV star, was different from her love for Taylor Charron, the person. This Taylor was outside the bounds of a sitcom. This Taylor was real, unscripted.

Taylor groaned and showed Lindsey her phone screen. It was a text from Jason, asking if she wanted to grab dinner to talk more. “What should I do?”

Lindsey grimaced. “Do you feel you have more you want to say to him?”

“Apparently, he has more he wants to say to me,” Taylor said. Her eyes widened as another text came through, which she showed to Lindsey.

JASON: There’s something you should know.

“Goodness,” Taylor said, shaking her head. “I don’t know if I have the energy for that.”

“You have to focus on yourself,” Lindsey told her. “He’s being selfish. He wants to tell you whatever’s on his mind, to clear his conscience. But you’re on another journey now. You’re moving forward. Without him.”