Page 33 of The Quiet Rebuild

“I’m all right, Murray. Really. Time away has been good for me. But I’m glad to have my friend Lindsey here,” Taylor said.

Murray shook Lindsey’s hand. “It’s a pleasure. Welcome to Los Angeles.”

Lindsey squinted at the bright blue sky. Taylor slipped her sunglasses on, then found a spare pair in her purse and handed them over. As soon as Lindsey put them on, she looked much less small-town island girl and much more LA It-girl.

In the back seat, Lindsey and Taylor sat and gazed out the window as Los Angeles sprawled around them. Taylor tried to gauge how Lindsey was feeling, especially after telling her story about her poor daughter and her ex-husband. Her face seemed peaceful, if tired.

It had been a very long time since anyone had trusted Taylor enough to tell them a personal story like that. After Taylor had become famous, people had fallen all over themselves to protect her, or make her comfortable, or make sure that she wasn’t annoyed. (Everyone except the paparazzi, at least.) Now, against all odds, Lindsey had treated her the way a friend would—with respect, while also asking for her own time to speak. It filled Taylor’s heart.

Because that happy and tech-friendly family was currently renting Taylor’s Beverly Hills place, Taylor rented another house, not far from where her parents had lived, and only a ten-minute drive from the funeral home where her mother’s funeral was to be held tomorrow. She wanted to be in proximity to the disaster, if only so she could return to bed soon after. The rental house was cozy, with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a living room with a television, upon which Taylor hoped she and Lindsey could watch bad movies while eating snacks. It had been a long time since she did something like that with a girlfriend.

In the kitchen of the rental house, they opened all the cabinets and the fridge to assess what they had. Taylor had ordered groceries, enough for a few days at least, and the people who’d delivered them had been smart enough to put the white wine in the fridge. She pulled it out and poured them two glasses, then led Lindsey to the sofa, where they sprawled.

Taylor felt as though they were eighteen years old, lazing around after a hard day at high school. She imagined them complaining about boys, or about their teachers, or about how difficult their college applications were.

She said this to Lindsey, and Lindsey laughed.

“I’ve never felt old,” Lindsey explained. “I’ve always felt about eighteen years old.”

“It’s strange, isn’t it? When I got news of Jason’s affair, I felt about a thousand. But I’ve had many, many other moments when I felt no older than twenty-two.”

“The brain plays tricks,” Lindsey said.

“It does.” Taylor closed her eyes and thought again of her mother, Veronica Charron, the woman whose life they were in LA to celebrate.

Lindsey sat up slightly, jostling the couch. “Are you thinking about her?”

Taylor groaned. “You can read my mind now, can’t you?”

“That’s what high school best friends do, Taylor,” Lindsey said, laughing gently. “How are you feeling about tomorrow?”

“Exhausted. Ready for it to be over,” Taylor said. “The thing is, I know I should call my dad. But he’s like a stranger to me, even more than my mom was. He didn’t come out to LA with us immediately, which meant my mom and I developed this really intense, otherworldly relationship. Sometimes I was closer to her than to anyone else. It meant that when I didn’t get a job, and she rejected me, I plunged straight into the darkest times of my life.”

Lindsey was quiet for a moment. “Why did you stop speaking?”

Taylor threw her mind back to 2009, which was the last time she’d spoken to her mother. It must have been sometime after Taylor’s birthday. She remembered having dinner, just the four of them—Veronica, Greg, Jason, and Taylor. They’d gone to that French place off Sunset. Taylor had eaten something decadent, as she’d been coming off a film where she’d had to be extra skinny. Her mother had said something stupid, something sort of inane about fat content and calories, and something inside Taylor had split in two. She’d started shaking. She’d gone outside, bummed a cigarette from a server, and refused to go back inside until her mother apologized.

“I mean, she should have apologized!” Lindsey cried.

“Yes, but it was really such a small comment,” Taylor said, blinking away tears. “Everything she’d done up till then was much worse.”

“It was your breaking point,” Lindsey said. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” Taylor sighed. “That was, what? Seventeen years ago? For all those years, I was too proud to pick up the phone and call my mother. And now, she’s gone.”

“She was too proud to pick up the phone and apologize,” Lindsey corrected. “She was living off your money. She built you as her empire, and then she didn’t treat you right.”

Taylor was quiet for a moment, letting Lindsey’s words settle on her chest.

“It’s hard to hear these things aloud,” Lindsey said. “It’s hard to challenge our own belief systems. We’ve told ourselves these stories over and over again. What if they’re not true?”

Taylor thought she might start sobbing. Embarrassed, she got up to fetch more wine and some snacks from the kitchen: more black licorice, red Twizzlers, chocolate, bags of popcorn and chips, and plenty of French cheeses and crackers. It was a strange and funny spread.

“Now we’re eating like we’re in high school, sort of,” Lindsey said, laughing.

Together, they flicked through one of the streaming services and found a movie they’d both loved when they were younger: Save the Last Dance. It wasn’t till they started it that they remembered the mother dies in the film. Lindsey reached for the remote to change it, but Taylor told her to keep it on. “It’s okay. It’s just a story.”

Together, they sat and drank wine and watched the tragedy play out, all the way to the end. It was beautiful.