Page 10 of The Someday Daughter
“I’m Audrey,” I say flatly. When I turn back to my article, Mick takes the hint, brings Puddles with him to sit down. But Silas presses on.
“Why aren’t you sitting with her?”
“What?” I look up at him, five shades past exasperated. His T-shirt is covered in dog hair.
“Your mom.” This morning’s rain has come and gone—a cloud parts outside, sending sun into his eyes. They’re so light brown they nearly shine gold, flecked with the same green of his baseball cap. “Why aren’t you sitting with her in first class?”
“Would you want to?” It’s out of my mouth before I’ve thought it through. Next to Silas, Dr. Stone looks up at me. “Spend an hour and a half trapped next to her in a hurtling metal tube?”
Silas’s eyebrows lift just the tiniest distance. What I don’t tell him is I’m the reason we’re in this airport at all: if it were up to Camilla, we’d be flying private all summer. But those tiny jets terrify me. The fragility of them, their propensity to fall out of the sky. It was one of my conditions, that we fly commercial, and now my mother has to disguise herself at a public airport. Now I have to field questions about how, no, I don’t want to sit next to her in first class.
“Okay,” Silas says slowly. “What’s the deal with you two? I mean, this feels maybe related to what went down in the alley at—”
“Silas.” He glances back at Dr. Stone, who’s watching us with an inscrutable look on her face. “There’ll be plenty of time to interview Audrey this summer, okay?” She meets my eyes, but I look away. This isn’t how I want her to know me—the flustered daughter of a woo-woo celebrity. “Let her breathe.”
I can feel Silas look back at me. I stare at the same word in my article until my eyes burn.
“Sure,” he says finally. “Yeah, okay.”
8
SAN FRANCISCO
“Sadie Stone and Audrey St. Vrain.” Dr. Stone presses the intercom button with one finger, her chin jutted forward to speak into it. “We’re here for Dr. Osman.”
There’s a crackle of static, a chirped, “Come on in,” and then the door buzzes open. It’s fifty degrees but clear in San Francisco, and we’re standing before a rainbow-painted door on a steeply angled street in Cole Valley. Dr. Stone pulls it open for me and gestures me through.
I glance at her as I step forward. She’s wearing a simple black sweater and forest-green barrel pants, her hair wrapped in the same bun as usual. When I met her in the hotel lobby thirty minutes ago, she was crouched on the floor with Puddles’s front paws on her knees, their faces nose to nose. All three interns were there, too: Silas, Mick, Cleo.
“We’re going for breakfast,” Mick had said, his black hair gelled into an oil-slick wave. “Want to come?”
I was freshly showered, hair still drying over my shoulders, wearing slacks and a button-down. I was carrying the leather briefcase Fallon had given me for my birthday, deep navy withAudrey St. Vrain: Definitely going to save your life one dayembroidered in pink thread on the inside flap. Couldn’t he tell, just from looking at me, that I meant businesses?
“We can’t,” Dr. Stone said, saving me from responding. “We’re meeting a pediatrician this morning.”
She stood up, and Puddles leapt at her ankles. The dog got snorty when it was animated, huffing excited breaths through its mashed little face. I took a step backward to keep its slobbery maw away from my pants, and Dr. Stone looked at me. “You ready to go?”
I nodded. I could feel the three of them watching us as we left, and resisted the urge to look back. Magnolia had pushed our nextLetters to My Someday Daughtershow until Friday night “to give Audrey time to recover from her food poisoning,” which meant the interns had three days in San Francisco with nothing to do but explore. I, on the other hand, had my first appointment with Dr. Stone and plenty of time with Mags and Camilla to look forward to, going over talking points so I don’t bungle the next show like I did in LA.
Now, Dr. Stone and I stand next to each other in the ascending elevator. I clear my throat.
“Dr. Stone, there’s dog hair on your pants.”
She glances down, brushes at it. This is why dogs don’t do it for me: the hair, the smells, the fluids. I’m already in my briefcase, pulling out a pocket-sized lint roller and handing it to her.
“You come prepared.” She takes it with a smile. “And please, call me Sadie.”
“You can never be too prepared,” I say. “I’m, um. Surprised Silas brought the dog on a trip like this.”
For a moment there’s just the sound of the roller, squeakingfaintly. She hands it back to me as the elevator doors slide open, and the distinct smell of Doctor’s Office wafts toward us: antiseptic, hand soap, adhesive. I breathe it in, feel my shoulders relax.
“Silas got Puddles when he was fourteen,” Sadie says as we step into the hallway. The floors are pale wood, morning sun glancing across them, and our heels tap us toward a door markedRainbow Pediatrics. “It was the year after his mom died, and Puddles was already six. She really needed a home, and Silas really needed a dog.” She meets my eyes briefly and reaches for the door handle. “Your mom okayed it.”
I feel like I’ve been put in my place, checked so thoroughly and simultaneously so gently that I can’t even muster a response. Silas’s dead mother—and my living one, who knew about this and agreed to travel with a pint-sized slobber farm all summer. Silas motherless at fourteen.
“Sadie freaking Stone!”
A woman in a white coat peers over reception at us, arms stretched out like she wants a hug. Sadie beelines for her and they embrace over the desk, swaying back and forth like a slow dance. I hang back, taking in the room: board books on low tables, kid-sized chairs next to parent-sized ones, a tank full of clown fish gurgling beneath the window. And, overshadowing all of it in my brain: Silas with his goofy laugh and his uncomfortable familiarity and no mother.
