Page 9 of The Quiet Rebuild

The investigator was hilarious, Lindsey remembered. He was in his late thirties, with fuzzy red hair and big glasses. He looked too conspicuous to sneak around for a living. Sitting cross-legged on a pillow on the front porch, a beer in hand, he told them that her mother had hired him, that he’d been all over the East Coast looking for them.

“To be honest, I figured out where you were about two weeks ago, but I wanted to milk Stella Vanberg for a bit more of her cash,” he bragged.

Lindsey, being young and naive, laughed and said she’d call her mother right away and explain everything. She didn’t call her for another few days, or maybe a week. By then, the private investigator had bought a house in Costa Rica. As far as Lindsey knew, he still lived there. He’d infiltrated the community. He belonged more than she did, now.

5

It was the morning of Thanksgiving. Bright sunlight swelled through the bay windows of Taylor’s Beverly Hills house, making the sofa and chairs glow. Taylor had been awake since the crack of dawn, prepping the turkey, the pies, and the stuffing. Now, she was in front of the television, smelling all the divine smells from the oven, yet doing a yoga routine, praying that her sculpted arms and legs would show her friends and other Los Angeles loved ones how good she was doing, regardless of the divorce, regardless of having lost the part in the B-movie.

This was the first week that Taylor had been back in Los Angeles since she’d left for Tokyo. Over the previous months, she’d been almost always on the move, flying from Paris to Milan, and from Milan to Stockholm, and Stockholm to London, and London to New York, and so on, until she’d made herself dizzy and resolved to come home. Via her lawyers, she’d learned that her beloved husband, or ex-husband, Jason was going to spend the holidays in Europe (presumably with the mistress), which meant she could return to her favorite of their shared houses. Of course, before she’d arrived, she had a cleanup crew come through and remove all photographs and anything at all that might have reminded her of Jason. She hadn’t reckoned for how much the place itself, the walls and the floors and the light, would remind her of her husband. Taking a photograph off a wall was simple. You couldn’t do the same thing with your memories.

Once her yoga routine was finished, Taylor hurried to shower and do her hair and makeup. She’d told her LA friends to come around noon so they could day-drink a little before they dove into her feast. She couldn’t wait to hear what they said about the food. She’d never before made an entire Thanksgiving feast by hand, and she imagined that, beyond anything, it would prove how great she was. She even had a few fun travel stories, in which she gallivanted and flirted and learned new things and spoke new languages. Those stories would blot out the old stories. They had to.

The first people to arrive for Thanksgiving were Steven and Lydia, a couple of screenwriters Taylor and Jason had met more than fifteen years ago. They were the same age as Taylor and Jason, but because they weren’t on screen, they’d let their wrinkles form, and they’d gone gray. This was a rare thing in Hollywood, and it endeared them to Taylor. She threw her arms around them and led them to the kitchen, asking, “What can I get you to drink?”

“Just wine for me, Taylor,” Lydia said, smiling. She was watchful, as though she were searching for something amiss with Taylor. “We can’t believe you’re back in town!”

“We were going to keep it low-key today,” Steven said. “But we couldn’t say no to an invitation from Miss Taylor Charron.”

“Ha.” Taylor poured them three glasses of wine and raised hers. “To old friends.”

“To old friends! Back together again!” Lydia said.

Soon after, more of her guests arrived, all of whom worked in show business: actors and actresses, makeup artists, sound guys, directors who’d come in and out of vogue, and so on. Taylor was overjoyed to see so many friendly faces, especially after traveling for so long. She made sure to sit with all of them and ask them questions. She smiled and laughed and pretended she was having a good time, praying that soon she would actually start having a good time. As it was, all she could think about was the person missing from the party: Jason.

At one thirty, they sat for dinner. A few of her friends made speeches, thanking her for coming home and inviting them all over. Taylor gushed with love for all of them. She refilled her glass with wine, then passed the red to Lydia, who sat on her right. Lydia, who was kind of a wine snob, looked at the label, then smiled. “Oh! This again!”

It was the first bottle of its kind that Taylor had opened today, so she gave Lydia a curious smile. “What do you mean? Where did you have it before?”

Lydia turned to look at Steven, clearly confused. “We’ve had this recently. But I can’t for the life of me remember…” She tilted the bottle.

It was then that a look of panic came over Steven’s face. Lydia echoed his, and the two of them said, “Oh, right. Of course.”

Taylor tried to laugh. “What’s going on?”

But Lydia and Steven wanted to cover up whatever this was.

“Oh, nothing. I think I got it from the grocery store the other week,” Lydia said hurriedly.

“You must have,” Steven said. “I remember we drank it with the steak.”

“That’s right. The steak.” Lydia smiled.

But it was so clear that they were lying. Taylor set down her glass and swallowed the lump in her throat. She could see that everyone else at the table was uncomfortable, as though they knew something she didn’t. She had the sensation of tipping forward, of nearly falling. She glanced again at the label of the wine bottle, reading it more closely. It was from Spain.

“Spanish red wine,” Taylor said quietly. “You said you bought it here? Here in LA?”

“We did,” Lydia said. But her voice shook in a way that told Taylor everything she needed to know. She was lying.

It wasn’t till after dinner, before pie, that Taylor got the story out of Lydia. In the kitchen, Lydia cried quietly as she explained that she and Steven had been in Europe for a job. Jason had reached out to invite them to Spain, and they’d gone without thinking much of it. “Well, I mean. We were sad you wouldn’t be there, but we saw no reason to say no.” There, they’d spent a weekend with Jason and his new girlfriend, his mistress, the woman he’d cheated on Taylor with.

Taylor was breathless, watching her friend’s face.

“I felt like I betrayed you,” Lydia said, pressing her hands against her chest. “I hated myself for it. But Steven said Jason’s just as much our friend as you are. We don’t want to abandon him, just because…”

Taylor leaned back, waiting. But it seemed that Lydia was too frightened to say it aloud.

“Come on,” she said. “Say it. Say you don’t want to abandon him just because he fell out of love with me.”