Chapter 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.
“Honestly. You’d know if I liked him,” Lindsey said. “But I told you. I’m not dating right now. It’s a waste of time.”
“Sure, but…” Candice trailed off, as though thinking better of what she wanted to say.
“Come on. Say it.”
Candice sighed. “I mean, how are you spending your days, Sis? No offense. I worry about you.”
Lindsey let her eyes drop where her hands were splayed on the table. “I keep busy,” she said. And then, because she knew it would get her sister off her back, she added, “I’ve been writing.”
Candice’s eyes were illuminated. “Really! Is it non-fiction? Fiction?”
It’s nothing, Lindsey wanted to tell her. All I do is sit and think and stare at the wall. All I do is think about everything that has gone wrong. And then, after I’ve exhausted myself with all that thinking, I get up, call my friends, and go out, if only to forget what’s going on in my head.
“I never knew you were interested in writing,” Candice said, blushing. “I mean, do you want me to look at anything? I could give you notes. If you want that.”
“I don’t think it’s ready to be read,” Lindsey said.
“Sure. I get it. It’s a process.” Candice leaned back and crossed her arms. “You know, it’s been incredible, getting to the root of Mom’s story with you.
Our road trip to Tennessee was one of the best of my life.
Especially after everything that happened over the summer, I needed that.
But I can’t help but think, there’s so little I know about your past. About everything you went through after you left Nantucket, and before we all met up here to read the will.
It’s like, there’s a big black hole between then and now. ”
Lindsey swallowed the lump in her throat. She reminded herself not to scream.
“There’s not much to say,” Lindsey said. “I had a few adventures. I met a few of the wrong people. Now, I’m forty-three, and I’m back on Nantucket.” She shrugged.
“I hope you know you can tell me anything,” Candice told her, her eyes buggy with disbelief. “The Harbor House is a place of safety for all of us, not just the women we invite into it.”
Lindsey considered it. What would happen if she let Candice into her secret world?
What would happen if she spilled the beans about her past and everything that had broken and still broke her heart?
But as her heart beat harder and the world spun around her, she heard a man’s voice, calling out, “Candice, Lindsey, hey!” And all at once, their brother, Henry, and Candice’s new boyfriend, Frank, were with them, pulling up chairs and ordering wine of their own.
Lindsey was grateful. They’d saved her from facing her past, from fessing up.
Since their return to Nantucket, Henry had been off and on the island, here to spend time and drink wine before speeding off for whatever business opportunity or meeting he had to take.
To Lindsey, Henry was an enigma. But he was always, always fun to be around.
Now, he told them stories about his recent trip to Atlanta, where he’d met with a rapper about his career and how he could fine-tune it.
“He took me backstage to a very prestigious concert,” Henry said, laughing. “I have to admit, that isn’t exactly my kind of music. It’s certainly not country western.”
Candice and Lindsey laughed, exchanging knowing looks.
“But there’s something about being swept up in someone’s orbit like that,” Henry went on. “I felt important, shaking hands with famous people, giving them my cards. I have no idea how this guy got my number in the first place, but it might have escalated my career.”
“You’ll leave Nantucket and never come back one of these days,” Candice said with a sigh. “And we’ll miss you like crazy!”
“No way,” Henry said. “I’ve come to love it.
” He explained that he’d been looking at houses all day and was heavily considering buying a property here on the island.
“I know we can’t all stay at the Harbor House much longer.
Madame Gwen is going to kick us out. But I want to be around to keep tabs on everything. ”
Candice squeaked with happiness and squeezed his hand over the table. Lindsey buzzed with excitement. It really felt as though they were entering a new era—the three Vanberg children, together.
A little while later, Lindsey got up to use the bathroom.
Waiting in line, she pulled out her phone and scanned through social media, grateful to have a few moments of alone time.
Most notably, she hated that Candice wanted to pry into her past. She wondered if her sister had ever googled her and found anything.
But Lindsey guessed much of that was too difficult to wade through.
Lindsey had googled herself before—and found nothing.
She wanted to pretend none of that had happened. She wanted to pretend that she’d never left Nantucket in the first place, that she’d never made herself susceptible to such pain.
On her social media feed, Lindsey spotted a grainy video and, for whatever reason, paused.
She recognized the woman immediately as Taylor Charron, one of her favorite actresses from the late nineties and two thousands.
Taylor and Lindsey were almost the same age.
Sometimes Lindsey felt as though they’d grown up together, although that was obviously one-sided.
But she felt a fondness for her that was probably parasocial, but fun.
In the video, Taylor Charron was yelling at someone, pointing a finger as she talked about “bad writing” and how her name was the only name keeping a film afloat.
Lindsey had the sound off, but whoever posted it included subtitles, making it easy to follow.
Taylor looked angry, backed against a wall, fighting for her life. She also looked exhausted.
In the caption, the poster wrote, "Taylor Charron has a meltdown!"
Lindsey grimaced. The last thing she wanted was for poor Taylor Charron to fall apart.
She hadn’t done a film or a TV show in years before this one.
Lindsey imagined it was overwhelming, being under those lights and wearing that heavy makeup again.
She imagined feeling tremendous pressure to rise again from anonymity.
Maybe that was why the bad script seemed so personal to Taylor. Taylor wanted her return to be perfect.
There’s no such thing as perfection, Lindsey thought of Taylor, before pocketing her phone and looking in the mirror.
She looked pretty good for her age, forty-three and red-eyed after a glass of wine.
Her dress was form-fitting, a light pink that brought out the blond in her hair.
She told herself that when she rejoined the party outside, she’d make jokes.
She’d smile as though nothing was wrong.
For the rest of her life, she’d be just as good an actress as Taylor Charron.
Meaning probably not very good, but passable.