Chapter 6
Aweek before Christmas, the Harbor House was filled with decorations: six different Christmas trees collected from the local Nantucket Christmas tree farm, wreaths on every window, garlands and tinsel and white-tipped pine cones and stockings over the fireplace.
Christmas music twinkled in from speakers high above, speakers that Gwen had had installed over the course of the previous months of reconstruction.
Lindsey stood in the foyer, her eyes closed, allowing herself to feel the Christmas spirit.
More than that, she begged to get the feeling back in her toes.
She’d gone for a long beach run, and now, the tips of them were frozen and dead.
“There you are!” Candice appeared, wiping her hands on an apron that was covered with flour. “How was your run? You must be freezing! What is it? Twelve degrees?”
Lindsey grimaced and followed her sister into the kitchen. She missed her Costa Rica runs, her long hours of stretching her legs past turquoise waters and fruit-filled trees. “I think it’s good character-building,” she suggested, trying to laugh.
Candice poured Lindsey a mug of tea and ordered her to sit and drink it. She also set a cut-out Christmas cookie on a napkin and said, “You need to carb load after that, right? That’s a term in the running world?”
Lindsey laughed and took a bite. “Wow. When did you get so good at baking?”
“It comes with being a mother.” Candice laughed. “One day, I woke up and knew how to make anything.”
Lindsey winced but didn’t let it affect her smile. “Where is everyone else?”
“Guys?” Candice called, and soon enough, Candice’s kids, Peter and Sarah, appeared—Sarah back from her first semester of college.. Behind them appeared their Uncle Henry, who’d just returned to Nantucket after another business trip. “I thought you were going to help me decorate cookies!”
“We got distracted.” Sarah grinned at her Uncle Henry.
Sarah had taken a philosophy course last semester and now wanted to talk all things Jungian theory.
As it happened, Uncle Henry was fascinated by it and had done a great deal of reading during his business trip, so they were having endless discussions that, Peter said, did his head in.
“How are the geniuses doing?” Lindsey asked, eating the rest of her cookie and reaching for another.
“She’s the genius,” Uncle Henry said of Sarah. “You should hear the way she runs circles around me.”
Eventually, Lindsey went to her room to shower and change into something cozy.
Always, after a cold run like that, it was the most delicious feeling to bundle herself up and feel extra warm and extra tired.
She logged her mileage in the app on her phone, impressed by how far she’d come over the previous few months.
She wondered if she was running away from something, emotionally.
And then, she remembered the box, still stuffed away in her closet, untouched.
She ducked out of the room and headed back downstairs to join the others.
Candice wanted to watch a Christmas movie. She wanted to order pizza.
The following morning, Gwen arranged for a meeting to discuss the potential candidates for the first round of Harbor House attendees.
Lindsey and Candice sat on the other side of their mother’s desk and flipped through the numerous printouts, all of which featured photographs, write-ups, and application prompts from women around the world.
It was mind-boggling to read their names and see their faces.
More than that, they’d written what had happened to them, what had pushed them to apply.
Often, the stories broke Lindsey’s heart in two.
“Oh, this is terrible,” Candice said, raising a paper. “This woman lost all of her children in a house fire last year. She and her husband are getting divorced.”
“I saw that one,” Gwen said. “I think she should come, if she wants to come. Don’t you?”
“Definitely,” Candice agreed, putting the woman in the “yes” pile.
They talked about a few of the potential candidates, weighing up who they thought needed a fresh space more. It was difficult to gauge. Lindsey guessed they all needed the Harbor House, in a way. How could they turn anyone away?
And then, she saw it: a familiar face, peeking out from the pile of applications.
It was Taylor Charron, the actress. The photograph was one of her headshots, maybe taken five to ten years ago, and there was a light in her eyes that, Lindsey knew, had died out after her husband’s affair and the loss of her career. In her application, Taylor had written:
This year, I learned something about myself.
Everything I’ve planned for, everything I thought would be my future, everything that mattered to me, was not really mine.
It all evaporated in front of me. It’s forced me to question: what was I building my life for?
What happens now that nothing I once cared about fills my days?
Why should I go on, when I have nothing left?
Worse than that: I can’t go in public without being recognized.
If I wanted to rebuild at a spa or meditation retreat, someone would almost assuredly take my photograph and report back.
But something about the Harbor House, and about Greta’s and Stella Vanberg’s stories, captivates me.
I sense it’s the only place in the world where I can figure out the next phase of my life.
Is that naive? Maybe. But the fact that I can still feel naivety after everything is beautiful.
“What do you have there?” Candice asked Lindsey, breaking her reverie.
Lindsey handed the application over, lacing her fingers together as she watched her sister read.
“Oh! That actress?” Candice tilted her head and glanced at Gwen.
“I think she needs us,” Lindsey said.
Candice finished reading and nodded half-heartedly. “What do you think, Gwen?”
Gwen set the paper in the “maybe” pile. “Honestly? I think other women need us more.”
“The thing about Taylor is, she could help advertise for us,” Lindsey offered now, surprising herself. “She’s a big name. She could shed a lot of light on the Harbor House.”
“We have so many applications,” Gwen pointed out. “So much interest. I don’t think we need that.”
“Okay.” Lindsey sniffed and turned to look out the window, where she saw Peter and Sarah walking along the frigid beach.
“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.