Page 8 of The Quiet Rebuild

“Lindsey?”

Lindsey’s free hand formed a fist. She couldn’t believe she’d had the nerve to answer the phone! After all she’d done! Then again, Lindsey had been the one to call her. So she supposed she couldn’t be too angry.

Lindsey sat at the edge of her bed and tried to picture her. Was she at the shop, sun-tanned after a full day at the beach? Did she know how cold Lindsey was here in Nantucket, her stomach boiling with red wine, her eyes blurry with rage?

“How could you send it?” Lindsey demanded, unsure exactly what she meant.

“You got the box?” the woman on the other line asked. “Oh, good. I was worried. It took so long to ship, and…”

“I can’t understand how you could send it,” Lindsey said.

On the other line, the woman took a staggered breath. “We couldn’t keep them. And we thought…”

“You had no right to send this without asking me,” Lindsey said.

“Yes. I know. Lindsey, I really do want to talk about all of this.”

“So talk,” Lindsey barked.

“You’re not being fair,” the woman whispered.

“Me? Not fair?” Lindsey could hardly believe her ears. She was on her feet again, pacing. The towel had fallen from her hair.

“Lindsey, maybe if you could call when you’re a little less…”

“Less what?”

“When you’ve calmed down a little,” she said.

“I’m calm. I’m ready,” Lindsey said.

On the other line, she was quiet, so much so that Lindsey could hear the ocean. It wasn’t the ocean beside the Harbor House. These two oceans were different beasts with different languages. She loved them both dearly. Oh, but she ached to see that particular ocean, that stretch of turquoise, how it lit up beneath the sun.

“Please, Lindsey. Listen to…” the woman pleaded with her.

But Lindsey couldn’t take it anymore. She hung up and threw her phone onto the mattress, bursting into tears. She felt like a toddler, unable to control herself.

She fell to the floor, reaching for her glass of wine and staring into the space before her. “Please,” she muttered to herself. “Please, leave me alone.” But she didn’t know exactly what she meant.

It wasn’t like she could leave herself alone, was it?

Lindsey remembered when she’d first left the East Coast. She’d been a kid, basically, just eighteen years old, when she’d met Christopher, her beloved Chris. Her ticket out of here. He’d been a few years older than her, a sailor who made money however he could whenever he could—sometimes as a line cook, other times as a tour guide, other times teaching scuba diving. Although she’d grown up on the coast, Lindsey had never learned to scuba dive, and the idea of being underwater for so long mystified her. He told her that he’d teach her everything she needed to know, if only she came with him.

“Where are you going?” she’d asked. Lindsey couldn’t imagine leaving her mother and siblings behind, although her mother was distant and her sister was in college.

“Costa Rica,” Christopher told her. He said the name of the place as though it were a bit of magic.

At the time, Lindsey had hardly been able to picture such a fantastical place. Costa Rica. The white sandy beaches and turquoise waters and fluttering palm trees. Lindsey didn’t bother packing for college. She didn’t bother telling her mother that she had no plans for college, in fact. Instead, she packed up two backpacks, threw them in the back of Christopher’s car, and decided to call her mother later and tell her what she’d done. Better yet, she could tell her mother around Christmastime, when it was already clear that Lindsey had lost her chance at a college degree.

The trip from Nantucket Island to Costa Rica took nearly a week. Christopher had wanted to sail, but, as he didn’t have a boat of his own, they took his clunker car and swapped driving. It was late summer of 2001, and September 11th was just around the corner, but Christopher and Lindsey were none the wiser about how different the world would soon become. They often slept at divey motels, not bothering to think about bugs or anything that might make their trip more dangerous or more uncomfortable. They were very lucky to have made it to Costa Rica in one piece. By then, Lindsey was sure that she’d found the love of her life. There hadn’t been a single quiet moment between them. They’d always had something to say. She thought that they’d never run out.

When Stella Vanberg eventually figured out that Lindsey was, in fact, in Costa Rica and not at Massachusetts State University, where Stella had paid for a semester of tuition, Stella went hunting for Lindsey. This era went down in Vanberg family history, as Stella grew blind with anger and a desire to understand. But Lindsey hadn’t told Henry or Candice where she was, so Stella was required to go all-out on her quest. She threw money at private investigators. She called the police station and demanded that they call Lindsey a missing person. As there was more than enough evidence pointing to Lindsey as a runaway of sorts, they always refused.

Now that Lindsey understood that her own story echoed her mother’s, in that she’d run away from home to seek something else, she thought she understood what her mother’s thought process might have been back then. She imagined Stella, out of her mind with grief and confusion, demanding, didn’t I give my children everything? Didn’t I build a world for them that was far and away better than the one I ever had?

Of course, Lindsey hadn’t been running away from Stella Vanberg and the Harbor House. Rather, she’d been running toward adventure, toward Christopher, toward the open road.

When her mother’s private investigator tracked Lindsey down, she and Christopher were living in a wooden house with two rooms and a wraparound porch that was crooked on one end. By then, Christopher had already started the scuba diving instructor shop, and Lindsey had secured her diving license but not yet her instructor’s license. She was giddy, sun-tanned, and happy, inviting the private investigator in for dinner and a beer.