Chapter 18
Two days later, Taylor and Lindsey went back to the airport and prepared to fly to Nantucket Island.
The same pilot and stewardess, Deb, were waiting for them.
Onboard, Taylor settled in, glancing leftward at a stack of magazines and books, prepared there by Deb.
Taylor reached for a gossip magazine, remembering the not-so-long-ago day when news of Taylor’s on-set outburst had graced the front page.
Now, another starlet was on the front page, screaming at someone else. Time marched on.
Without thinking anything of it, Taylor flicked through the pages, then found herself halfway through, reading an article about Jason Clapton.
Twenty-Three-Year-Old Girlfriend Pregnant with Jason Clapton’s First Child.
Taylor searched her heart for devastation.
She searched her spirit for breakage. Instead, she felt a weightlessness that she couldn’t understand.
Attached to the article were numerous photographs of Jason and his girlfriend.
In them, they strolled through Madrid and Barcelona.
They sat in the sun on Jason’s yacht. They went jogging together in Los Angeles.
Jason looked happy in those photographs.
His girlfriend was often laughing in a way Taylor couldn’t recall having laughed in, not in ages.
Maybe being famous had never suited Taylor, not the way it suited Jason and his girlfriend.
Deb strolled past and happened to glance at the images of Jason in the magazine. She yelped and grabbed it, saying, “Oh, Taylor, I’m so sorry! I thought I checked every page.”
Taylor laughed and shook her head. “It’s not a problem. Really.”
“Oh, but these men. They don’t know how silly they look,” Deb said, her hands on her hips.
On the other side of the aisle, Lindsey looked stricken. “What’s going on?”
“I found out why Jason wanted to talk,” Taylor explained. “His girlfriend is pregnant.”
Lindsey made a sound in her throat. Deb, still worried and sweating slightly, told them to buckle themselves in and prepare for takeoff.
She apologized another three times, then buckled herself in as well.
Soon enough, the plane charged into the sky, giving Taylor plenty of time to think about Jason and his baby.
Of course, Jason and Taylor had wanted a baby of their own.
It had always been in the cards. When Taylor’s fame had stalled out a little bit in the late 2000s—after her cuteness had died away—they’d discussed it more seriously.
But their initial attempts hadn’t been fruitful.
They’d talked about doing IVF. After all, they were wealthy and could afford treatments other people couldn’t.
But Jason started getting more and more acting gigs, and Taylor hired a new manager around then to kick-start her career, but it just never happened.
Now, he’d get that baby they always wanted.
What would Taylor have instead?
By now, they were fully in the air, speeding east toward Nantucket.
Taylor turned to look at Lindsey, who sipped her champagne and studied her phone.
Taylor guessed they were messages from the birdwatcher.
Lindsey confirmed this soon after, showing photographs Jake had taken both that morning and the one before that.
“I’m falling in love with a nerd,” Lindsey said.
“Hold on to him,” Taylor told her. “He’s a good one. And there are so few good ones left.”
Lindsey pocketed her phone and reached over to top Taylor’s champagne off. “I think I’m going to miss this high-rolling lifestyle a little bit. Private planes? Private drivers?”
“It isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Taylor assured her. “I’m excited to get back to Nantucket and fully commit to the Harbor House, you know? I applied for a reason.”
Taylor was looking forward to one-on-one sessions with Dr. Estelle.
She’d already booked a few acupuncture appointments, a massage, and a session with the personal trainer in which they talked about trauma and where it lived in the body.
Tomorrow morning, she planned to join Audrey, Mary, and Cindy for a beach cleanup on one of Nantucket's more popular beaches. According to the Harbor House’s mission, it was good for the soul to give back to your surroundings.
“Maybe I’ll join you for the cleanup crew,” Lindsey said. “That is, if you’re not too sick of me.”
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?”
“That’s what I keep saying.” Jake had a casual arm around Lindsey’s shoulder, and Lindsey beamed at both him and Taylor, as though she’d won the lottery. A new friend and a boyfriend had come to Nantucket, and now, they planned to stay.
“Nantucket welcomes you,” Lindsey said, blushing.
“And I think I know what I want to do with my time here,” Taylor said.
Tentatively, Taylor discussed her dream of opening an ocean-protection foundation.
Jake was immediately excited, talking about how necessary ocean life was to bird and human life.
“Every ecosystem feeds off other ecosystems,” he said.
And then, he threw up his hands and said, “Tell me how I can help!”
Lindsey grinned and took both of their hands over the table. “Me too! I’m so in.”
It had never been easier to recruit people, Taylor thought. And to think, she’d previously assumed people would only be drawn to her because of her money and how that money could benefit them, rather than how that money could help the earth.
After that, between Harbor House sessions and hang-outs with the other women, Taylor threw herself into the idea.
She spoke with various East Coast scientists about how best to use her money.
She spoke with other celebrities she knew who’d opened their own foundations.
She made list after list of things she needed to consider before starting something like this.
She made spreadsheet after spreadsheet and worked diligently into the night.
Her energy was infectious, so much so that many of the women at the Harbor House had begun to discuss how they wanted to “give back” after they left Nantucket.
Many of them had children to raise or husbands to return to, but they didn’t want to end their contributions to humanity there.
They spoke of volunteering. They spoke of going back to school.
Sometimes the group therapy sessions turned into a hive mind of ideas—women throwing joy and hope into the room.
Taylor began to think that, as a result of Stella and the Harbor House, the entire planet would become markedly better. If only Stella could see the fruits of her labor.
“Maybe she had a sense for it,” she suggested to Lindsey once.
Lindsey was quiet, thoughtful. “She knew the power of helping people,” she said finally. “But I don’t think she ever could have fathomed the scope of all this.”
As the end of her time at the Harbor House came closer, Taylor no longer fully recognized herself. Dr. Estelle said the same. “This place has been good for you,” she said.
“It’s been life-changing,” Taylor agreed. There was nothing else to say.
The only thing she had to do, now, was figure out how to stay in Nantucket long-term.
Well, it wasn’t really a question of “how,” was it? It was more of a question of: where?
A few days before she was set to graduate from the Harbor House, Taylor dialed a local real estate agent.
The woman was bright and chipper and eager to find Taylor “the house of your dreams.” Taylor wanted to laugh at that.
She was beyond dreams. She was beyond fiction.
She was planted firmly in reality. Thank goodness.