Chapter 19
Halfway through May, the first batch of the women at the Harbor House “graduated” out of it.
Gwen, Candice, and Lindsey threw them a gorgeous celebration on the veranda of the Harbor House, one catered by local Nantucket talent and featuring several islander music acts.
A large vegan cake sat at the center of a beautiful outdoor table, shrouded with fantastic vegan and vegetarian appetizers.
Gwen had caught wind of all the Harbor House women’s desire not to cause more damage than the world already had.
Maybe the next batch of Harbor House women would feel differently.
Still, Gwen told Lindsey and Candice that, as the head operator at the Harbor House, she had to attend to the women's emotional needs at any given moment.
“What they need is what the house needs,” Gwen said proudly, raising her glass of wine.
Lindsey and Candice sat in the corner of the veranda, their chins tilted skyward so their faces were bathed in late afternoon light.
It was warm, mid-seventies, and all the women wore short-sleeved dresses.
It was clear that over the past month, the women of the Harbor House had become thick as thieves.
They had nicknames for one another. They fetched each other's favorite snacks and asked detailed questions.
“I almost feel left out,” Lindsey whispered to Candice.
Candice nodded. “But it’s what Mom would have wanted.”
Lindsey was quiet, remembering how Taylor had said the same thing.
At the graduation party, Taylor Charron seemed brighter than ever.
She’d gained weight, filling out her skeletal frame, and she laughed and smiled easily.
She’d also dyed her hair to more of a honey blond, so that she no longer looked precisely like the celebrity the magazines knew so well.
Now, she sat between Winona and Michelle, exchanging stories that Lindsey couldn’t hear very well.
Lindsey searched her heart for jealousy.
After all, Taylor was increasingly one of Lindsey’s closest friends. But there was none.
There was so much love to go around, she knew.
When it came time for the ceremony of sorts, Gwen stood up and thanked all the women of the Harbor House for their commitment to Stella’s vision.
“It’s been a phenomenal first session, and I can’t thank you all enough for bringing your hearts and minds and spirits to our sessions, day in and day out. ” Gwen’s eyes glinted with tears.
A few of the women made speeches. Winona got up and thanked them all for bringing new life to hers. She said, “I don’t know how I could have moved on without this.”
Lindsey felt a stab of fear, thinking of the women who hadn’t been accepted to this first round at the Harbor House—the women who’d applied and been turned away. Were they still out there, struggling? Were they still waiting for change?
Of course, Gwen, Candice, and Lindsey had already selected the next batch of candidates.
The next round was already set to begin in June—from June first to the fifteenth of July—another six weeks of soul-searching, of the difficult task of rediscovery.
Lindsey was overwhelmed by it. But Gwen, Dr. Estelle, and the other staff members seemed stronger than ever.
Toward the end of the evening, Taylor made her way over to Candice and Lindsey’s table. She sat with her glass of wine and smiled dreamily. “I want to invite you both to a little soiree tomorrow night,” she said.
“Oh?” Lindsey laughed, glancing at her sister. And then, it struck her. “Wait. Does this mean you got a house?”
Taylor winked. “I’ll send you the address via text.”
The following morning, the women of the Harbor House moved out of their rooms. They headed to the airport or the ferry, spreading out to the four winds. But according to a text that Taylor sent to both Candice and Lindsey midmorning, Taylor wasn’t going far.
In fact, the address she sent them was about a half mile down the beach from the Harbor House. Lindsey was pretty sure she knew which house it was. It was relatively understated, far smaller than anything Taylor had probably lived in before as a famous person. It had been vacant all spring long.
LINDSEY: Goodness, I’m so excited for you! What should I bring?
TAYLOR: Bring your beautiful selves! Please.
During the hours before Taylor’s little soiree, as she called it, Lindsey was in her apartment in downtown Nantucket with her boyfriend, Jake.
The fact that he was now her boyfriend still thrilled Lindsey.
She’d only ever called one person her boyfriend, and that man had ultimately become her husband and the father of her child.
But she and Jake were forging a new path now.
Remarkably, Jake had finagled a freelance journalist position at a major bird-watching publication, one with a marked interest in Nantucket Island and its surrounding bird populations.
It meant he could stay on Nantucket for the foreseeable future, taking trips to surrounding islands, spending long hours talking to local birders, and writing in his office.
He’d extended his lease on the rental, which made him an islander, at least for the time being.
Lindsey felt all floaty with feelings for him.
She didn’t know how she’d gotten so lucky.
Now, so many weeks after she and Jake had decided to make their relationship “official,” Lindsey turned to him, laced her fingers through his, and asked him a question.
“You said one day that you’d help me,” she said. “Would you do it now?”
Jake, being Jake, knew exactly what she meant.
Wordlessly, they went to her closet, where the box that Piper had sent sat in the shadows.
Jake pulled the box out and set it in the center of the room.
He studied Piper’s handwriting. Lindsey wondered what kind of person Jake guessed Piper was, based on her handwriting.
There was so little that Lindsey remembered about Piper as a person.
She’d come into her Costa Rican life toward the end of it.
By contrast, Lindsey guessed that Piper knew a great deal about Lindsey.
Lindsey was probably one of Piper’s ghosts, haunting her.
Jake went to fetch scissors, and together, they tore through the tape and pulled the box flaps aside. Jake hung back, gesturing for Lindsey to go ahead. But Lindsey was frozen with fear.
“Please,” she said. “Can you take some of the stuff out?”
Jake nodded, then dropped his hand in and removed the thing at the top.
Lindsey’s heart thudded when she saw the fluffy blue bear.
She reached for it and pressed it against her chest, remembering how obsessed Maya had been with Mr. Blue.
She’d taken him with her everywhere, as evidenced by how mussed his fur now was.
She hadn’t thought of Mr. Blue in years, and now, here he was, on Nantucket Island.
She pressed her nose to his fur, but he didn’t smell at all like Maya.
Her smell had probably diminished long ago.
“Do you want to keep going?” Jake asked.
Lindsey nodded, watching as Jake pulled out more toys, her baby blanket, and a few of the decorations that had hung in her room.
Each thing triggered about a thousand memories.
But Lindsey was surprised at her attitude toward those memories.
She found that, although they were painful, she wanted to drop into each of them. She wanted to explain them to Jake.
Jake was keen on learning as much as he could.
“This was the lamp next to her bed,” Lindsey said, her voice shaking as she set the lamp to the side.
“And this was her favorite book. We must have read it a thousand times or more. I’m sure I could still tell you what every word is on every page.
” She swallowed, flipping through the worn pages.
“Maya was slowly growing out of this book when she died. I remember telling Christopher that I wouldn’t miss it when we finally stopped reading it.
I remember joking with him that I wanted to throw the book away. Goodness, I’m so glad we didn’t!”
Jake smiled. “You can read it out loud now, if you want to.”
“No. No.” For some reason, this felt like it was going too far. Lindsey set the book beside the lamp and smiled at him. “Is there anything else?”
There was, of course. Christopher and Piper had sent along photo albums, painstakingly put together by Lindsey herself.
She remembered gluing and writing and trying to memorialize every moment of Maya’s life until the end.
At the time, she’d assumed that the photo albums would become Maya’s one day.
She imagined Maya showing the photographs to her own children, telling them stories about her parents.
Now, the memories belonged to Lindsey and Lindsey alone.
Her throat filled, and she nearly wept.
“Show me,” Jake said quietly. “I want to know.”
For the next two hours, Lindsey showed Jake every single photograph in every single photo album, to the point where she imagined any other person might have gone crazy.
Jake didn’t. He asked questions. He gazed at beautiful Maya.
He commented on the clothes she wore and the dramatic Costa Rican scenery and how happy everyone looked.
As they slipped back through time, Lindsey found herself imagining—for the first time—that she might want to start again, one day.
She was forty-three, which didn’t leave her much time.
But what if she could get pregnant again?
What if she could share this happiness with another person? What if that person could be Jake?
Hours later, after she kissed Jake goodbye and drove herself out to Taylor Charron’s new Nantucket house, she felt a lightness that she’d never imagined.
She’d opened the box! She was free! As she hurried up the walkway, a bottle of wine banging against her thigh, she couldn’t get the smile off her face.
And when Taylor opened the door to greet her, she wore a similar grin.
“Look at you two!” Candice said as Lindsey and Taylor went out to the veranda, where Candice was already sipping a glass of wine and shining beneath the evening sky. “I’ve never seen anyone happier.” She scrutinized Lindsey’s face, then asked, “What’s up? What happened?”
Lindsey laughed.
“She can’t hide this from us,” Taylor said mischievously, pouring Lindsey a glass. “Come on. No secrets!”
Lindsey sat and crossed and uncrossed her arms. Finally, she explained it in as simple of terms as she could.
“We opened the box. Jake and I. And it was devastating, and it made me feel so alive, and it made me remember what it means to raise a child, to love a child so much that it hurts.” She squeezed her hand into a fist. “It made me realize that maybe I’m not too tired to do it again.
Even though it was the worst kind of pain, even though it nearly destroyed me, even though I spent years hiding from the truth of what happened, I’m not done living.
And Jake’s love has taught me that, too. ”
“Oh, honey.” Candice’s eyes glinted with tears.
Taylor raised her glass of wine. “I think you’re ready, Lindsey. Nobody in the world deserves happiness more than you.”
Lindsey was so overcome that she couldn’t speak. Silence spread out between them, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. It was filled with promises, and dreams, and hopes.
Finally, Taylor got up and said, “Who wants a tour?”
Lindsey and Candice followed after her, tracing a path through the immaculate kitchen, filled with windows and yellow curtains, up the winding staircase to its three bedrooms, back down into the library, the dining room, and the living room, which had a single television and a single chair and nothing else, yet.
“I need to figure out my furniture situation,” Taylor admitted. “It’s a journey!”
They laughed, congratulating Taylor, then hurried back outside to talk more about the future. Taylor was already making headway on her foundation, and Candice was falling deeper and deeper in love with Frank—the man who’d changed her life last year.
“Maybe I want him to move in,” Candice said contemplatively. “Maybe Peter would be okay with it?”
“I’m sure he would be,” Taylor said. “Kids are resilient. And goodness, Peter’s seventeen now. He has to start seeing you as a person, rather than his mother.”
Candice laughed. “Imagine that! My kids, grown up and no longer seeing me as a person who lives fully for them.”
“It’s how it should be,” Taylor said softly. “At least, for a while. You created a safe, comfortable environment for them as long as you could. Now, it’s your time.”
“It’s our time,” Candice agreed, raising her glass so that it glinted in the last of the pink light.