Chapter 14
At twelve fifteen the following afternoon, Lindsey drove herself to the Nantucket Airport.
Wheeling her suitcase to the double-wide glass door, she watched as a taxi pulled up and deposited the iconic Taylor Charron on the sidewalk.
Taylor was wearing a chic black dress and a pair of enormous sunglasses that basically screamed, "I am a celebrity. "
“Lindsey, hi.” Taylor’s voice shook with nerves. She wheeled two suitcases behind her and ushered her inside. “The plane’s already on the tarmac. You ready to go?”
Lindsey hurried after Taylor, her heart pounding. It was a warm day in early April, sixty-five, and a few tourists milled about, either having just arrived or preparing to depart.
As they walked, Taylor explained that she no longer had her own private plane; it was easier to rent pilots and planes when needed.
“I’m not, like, the other Taylor, you know,” she said, laughing.
“I don’t need to fly all over the world at a moment’s notice.
I’m not that famous. Actually, the goal is not to be famous at all. ”
“Won’t you miss all this?” Lindsey asked, gesturing at the plane as the staircase was unraveled from the body.
“I’m happy to fly economy with everyone else,” Taylor said. However, Lindsey thought Taylor had probably forgotten what it was really like: cramped quarters, elbows against elbows, and bad airplane food.
Lindsey had never seen such luxury as what awaited them on that plane.
There were to be just the two of them, plus a stewardess and the pilot.
Already, the stewardess had poured them glasses of champagne and arranged bowls of bruschetta, popcorn, and Norwegian licorice, among others.
It was a strange collection, but Taylor explained that she’d requested it all herself.
“I have bizarre snacking tastes,” she said with a laugh.
“It’s because we lived too many places over the years.
Jason always said I was a chameleon. I could never be like him, though.
All he ever wanted to snack on, no matter how much money we had, was Snickers. ”
Taylor’s eyes darkened, and she reached for her glass of champagne and raised it. “I suppose we should toast my mother,” she said.
“To your mother,” Lindsey said gently.
“And to yours,” Taylor said. “She’s the reason we’re both here, after all.”
Lindsey was quiet at that. The stewardess—whose name, she now learned, was Deb—announced that it was nearly time to take off.
They downed their tiny glasses of champagne and got in the correct position.
Lindsey watched as the land outside sped past before they burst into the air and charged into the sky.
Not long after that, Deb came back to top off their drinks, and they were headed west. Lindsey remembered what she’d learned about Taylor: how Taylor had been a very little girl when she’d gone to LA, how she’d been born in Ohio and been taken west again and again until her career had stuck.
Lindsey wondered if Taylor remembered that at all, on journeys going east to west. Maybe she’d wiped it all from memory.
About an hour and a half into the trip, they were served the best meal of Lindsey’s life.
This was saying something, given who her mother was and how Stella Vanberg had liked to eat back in the day.
But this—duck confit and duck fat fingerlings and haricot verts—boggled Lindsey’s mind. She wasn’t too embarrassed to say it.
“It’s because we’re up in the air,” Taylor said, drawing her face forward, looking earnest. “I think everything tastes better up here. It’s something about the romance of it. The danger.”
Lindsey nodded. It sounded rational to her. She took another bite of duck and closed her eyes. “How do they do it?”
Taylor laughed. It was a warm laugh, not the one that she’d often used on sitcoms but something deeper and kinder and more personal.
Lindsey had the sense that she didn’t use it with everyone.
But even as they spoke, talking about the Harbor House and what awaited them in Los Angeles when they arrived, Lindsey knew that Taylor had built a wall between them.
It was a funny thing, given that Lindsey had built her own wall between herself and so many others.
It was as though Lindsey’s wall and Taylor’s wall were up against one another, fighting to crumble the other.
And then, they hit the kind of turbulence that made Lindsey doubt everything she’d ever known about airplane travel.
Somewhere over the Rocky Mountains, maybe in Colorado, the plane began to tip and shudder and shake.
Deb, the stewardess, got up, put everything away, and secured anything that might hurt them, then told them in a happy voice that it was time to buckle their seat belts.
“This always happens over the Rockies!” she sang.
But something about this turbulence did not feel normal, not to Lindsey.
She couldn’t breathe. Glancing at Taylor, she saw that Taylor, too, was terribly frightened.
Taylor’s hands gripped the armrests, and her beautiful movie star cheeks were pale.
Lindsey tried to draw up the strength to speak.
She wanted to assure Taylor. Maybe she wanted to tell her it was all right, if only to assure herself it was all right.
But what if it isn’t all right? Lindsey thought.
What if I’ve gone my entire life hiding from my own secrets? What if I die here in this airplane?
She thought of the box back at her apartment in Nantucket.
She remembered how often she’d opened the closet to look at it, how often she’d considered opening it.
I should have opened it. I shouldn’t have been so afraid of the past. Because maybe, soon, she would be the past, too.
Maybe she’d be long gone, only a story those people she loved told each other.
Tears began to fall down her cheeks. Beside her, Taylor let out a sob that, at first, Lindsey thought was her own. They were united in terror.
It was Deb who spoke first. “We’re almost through the worst of it, girls!”
Lindsey and Taylor let out equal laughs. Lindsey brushed tears from her eyes. And all at once, the torturous turbulence calmed down, and the clouds cleared, and they could breathe again.
“Oh my,” Lindsey said, laughing to herself.
“I’m going to need more champagne, Deb. Please.” Taylor smiled over at Lindsey.
They each sipped their champagne in silence, shaking their heads.
“I really thought it was over,” Taylor confessed after a few minutes.
“Me too.” Lindsey couldn’t believe it now. “What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking about Jason.” Taylor wrinkled her nose. “I hate that I was thinking about Jason, but I was. I was wondering what he’d say when he heard the news.”
Lindsey nodded. “I was sort of thinking of my ex, too. But also, I was thinking of how I’ve been so unable to move on from him. I’ve been thinking of everything I’m hiding from, because I’m too scared to move on from my past.”
Taylor’s eyes were enormous, as though, for the first time, she fully saw Lindsey as her equal—someone with stories similar to her own. “Tell me,” she said gently. “We have hours to go.”