a sound she hadn't heard before

eleven.

Late Friday evening, Taylor and Ayla leave New 42nd Studios both very tired and very happy. They've assembled a full cast and will be calling their new cast members tomorrow to begin workshopping on Monday. That does give Taylor anxiety. She has been writing as much as possible but it has only been a few weeks, so the score of the show is far from done. Levi and Ben, though, are assuring her that not only is that perfectly fine, but might even be for the better. They think that having actors who can try things out for them will be the best thing for the development of this new musical, so Taylor decides to trust them. They certainly know the process much better than she does, as an outsider to this whole theatrical world. By setting her mind on this decision, she's able to be simply thrilled about the cast that they've put together as a group.

Ayla gave her stamp of approval to the list as well. She liked that the "nice man who talked to me" got cast as Mr. Fadler, and she also likes that Sage, one of the four little girls who scored the role of Izzy, was wearing the same dress that she has back home in her closet.

"Ayla," Taylor says to her daughter who is skipping along the sidewalk, "what would you say to a little bit of a walk through the city and getting ice cream at 16 Handles?"

"Really?" Ayla asks, wide-eyed. She can't believe that her mom wants to walk through Times Square, especially when she doesn't even have a wig on. Ayla doesn't understand why, but accepts the wig as just a "weird grownup thing." She, however, doesn't point out the lack of a disguise to her mom, because that would ruin her chances of ice cream. "Can we please Mommy?"

Taylor chuckles. "I think that it sounds like a great idea." She doesn't even think about not having any way of hiding her identity, short of the sunglasses that are pretty much permanently perched on her nose whenever she is outside of a private room. That might slide in a tiny Jersey suburb where nobody pays her much attention, but New York is a different story. Had Taylor have thought of that, she probably wouldn't have suggested a walk. But she didn't think of it, so she takes her daughter's hand and the duo begins to walk in the opposite direction of the parking garage. Taylor is just so excited about everything that her team has accomplished this week and she wants to celebrate.

Soon, the two find themselves at the ice cream shop, but not until after Ayla pointed out every billboard for a Broadway show in Times Square and asked to see it. Taylor is pretty sure that between how much she loved The Lion King and watching her mom work on creating a piece for the stage, Ayla has fallen head over heels in love with the idea of 'Broadway.'

After getting their ice cream, Taylor and Ayla decide to just eat it while walking back to their car. It's getting very late for the little girl, and Taylor is starting to catch yawns from her daughter every few minutes. Even her pink Converse, which usually give Ayla the magical sudden power to skip and jump around because she's so excited about having pink shoes with sparkly laces, can't give her energy to do anything more than walk this evening.

By the time the two are back at the car, they're done with their ice cream. Taylor throws the dishes and spoons away then straps Ayla into her car seat. It has been a long day, even longer than the other days this week, but it's finally time to head home to Jersey.

She doesn't regret anything until the next morning, when she wakes up to a frantic string of texts from everyone in her life who is maybe a little bit too invested in her maintenance of a public image. At least, that's what she was thinking when she was walking through Times Square without a care in the world, holding her little girl by the hand as the two of them giggled and skipped like a normal mother and daughter. She was starting to think that the world of total privacy that Tree had created six years ago when Taylor was pregnant wasn't necessary anymore; that people had forgotten and she could let her guard down a bit.