Page 38 of The Quiet Rebuild

Taylor laughed. “Sick of you? After this trip, I feel like we’re related.”

“Isn’t it necessary to get sick of family?” Lindsey asked.

“Oh. Maybe.” Sorrow swelled in Taylor’s chest. “Maybe it’s better that we remain friends, then. Family can be complicated.”

Lindsey laughed. “Let’s be really, really good friends.”

“That goes without saying.” Taylor smiled.

When the plane landed on Nantucket Island, it was nearly nine at night. Because Lindsey had driven herself, they wheeled their bags out to her car, shivering in the blustery wind. It was hard to believe it was still only the second week of April. There was still an entire month of Harbor House-ing left.

In the front seat of Lindsey’s car, Taylor cranked the radio. It was a song that had featured prominently in one of the silly movies she’d starred in back in the ’00s, and they both laughed in recognition.

“One of these days,” Lindsey said between verses, “I’ll have to ask you a bunch of questions about this time of your life.”

“They’re boring stories, Lindsey,” Taylor said. “I swear, I was mostly craving a normal life. I wanted to be in love with Jason, have kids, and find a way to be calm. Now, twenty years later, I’m only just learning how to be calm.”

Lindsey nodded. But already, the chorus began again, and the two of them belted every word, euphoric, as they sped back toward the Harbor House, through the darkness. Taylor felt as though everything were beginning again, as though, with the dawn tomorrow, she would feel like a completely different person. She was so ready to meet whoever that was.

What Taylor couldn’t have envisioned was how they were going to welcome her back to the Harbor House. In the dining hall, all of the women were waiting for her. Bottles of wine were popped, and cakes, cookies, and pies were dotted across a table. Winona came toward her, throwing her arms around her and whispering, “I’m so sorry I couldn’t come with you.”

But Taylor squeezed her back and said, “You’ve done enough.”

What she’d learned from Winona was to respect your own boundaries. Winona couldn’t reasonably come to Los Angeles. But she could love and respect and pull for Taylor from afar.

Together, the women of the Harbor House—the first iteration of Stella’s dream—sat around a table, ate dessert, drank wine, and chatted, not only about Taylor’s mother’s funeral, but about their own losses, their own sorrows. It was as though Veronica’s death had given them an easy path forward. It reminded them of an integral truth: loss was simply another part of life.

When Taylor opened her door that night and fell onto her Harbor House bed, she was surprised to feel a sense of “home.” How was that possible, when she’d only spent a week at the place? But here it was, this cozy, nourishing feeling that made her feel like she could sleep in an instant.

Right before she fell asleep, though, Taylor reached for her phone and texted Jason.

TAYLOR: I’m happy for you. You’ll be a great dad.

And then, before he could respond, before she could be sucked back into any feelings for him, she blocked his number. She never wanted to talk to him again.

The following afternoon, Taylor met with Dr. Estelle for her first one-on-one session. Sitting in the glowing light in Dr. Estelle’s office, she crossed her ankles. She leaned forward and listened to Dr. Estelle talk about trauma, about loss, about how your childhood and parental relationships dictated who you became in the future. Some of it was stuff Taylor had heard before, but most of it felt illuminating. Three times, Taylor nearly wept.

Afterward, Taylor lent Dr. Estelle a few of her more traumatic stories, plus how her mother’s funeral had affected her, and she left the office feeling ten pounds lighter, as though she could run a marathon and remain upright.

This was the beginning of something enormous for her, she knew.

But over the next month, Taylor was particularly affected by their beach cleanups. For several hours, three or four times a week, Taylor and a few other women from the Harbor House went to various beaches around the island and picked up trash. It was both trash that Nantucket tourists had left behind and trash that had washed ashore. It radicalized her. Standing in the morning sunshine, Taylor grew angry about the state of the ocean, about how awful humans treated it, and about what was assuredly happening to the gorgeous creatures underwater, all because of human carelessness. Not long after the cleanups began, Taylor became a strict vegetarian, and then a vegan, removing all dairy and fish from her diet. A few of the women at the Harbor House took this on as well, and they had many conversations about it, saying, “We live in a world of cruelty. Why would we bring more cruelty to it?”

Taylor was now terribly embarrassed about all the waste she’d brought to the world. She remembered all the private planes she’d flown in and winced.

It was the first time in her life that Taylor felt she believed in something bigger than herself, bigger than any stupid movie or her fame or her relationship.

She canceled her membership with the private plane company, ensuring that she’d never lean on them again. “Yes,” she said to the woman on the phone. “I want to cancel permanently.”

There was no way back.

Taylor grew increasingly passionate, so much so that during her conversations with Dr. Estelle, the ocean and how to better it was all she could talk about. Eventually, she heard herself say, “I want to start a business. Something to protect the oceans. Something that does a bit of good.” She hesitated, pressing her lips together. “I can’t help but feel that all I’ve done is bad. Every year, it was like, I tried to do as much damage to the planet as I could. And I didn’t even think about it.”

“That narrative isn’t helpful,” Dr. Estelle told her, perhaps for the hundredth time. “But why not look into forming a foundation? You’re healthy. You have money. You want to give back.” She shrugged, as though it were as simple as that. And maybe it was.

Funnily enough, a night out with Lindsey and her new boyfriend Jake instilled in Taylor a deeper understanding of where she wanted to take this dream. Jake, nearing the completion of his birding assignment here on the island, was telling them that he had no interest in leaving the island now that he was there.

“Me neither,” Taylor said, furrowing her brow. She hadn’t realized it till right then. “Who in their right mind would leave Nantucket Island?”