Page 25 of The Someday Daughter
“Okay,” I say slowly. “What do you want to know?”
“Are you having fun?” Dad says. The question is so off base I don’t know how tobeginanswering it, but he keeps going. “Are you learning with Dr. Stone? Is something going on that you want to tell us about? Because you don’t seem yourself.”
He’s right, something whispers inside me, reverberating with truth. I’m not myself—I haven’t been myself. I don’t know how to be myself, this far out of context.
“Good morning!” a bright voice chirps, the door to our room jangling open. A waiter in a waist apron steps inside and starts passing out water glasses, carefully looking at anything but Camilla. There are three types of people in public: those who have no idea who she is, those who know exactly who she is and slobber all over her, and those like this guy. Who clearly knows who she is and is going to do everything in his power not to act like it. Myfavorite type. “Can I start y’all with anything to drink? Coffee, tea? Mimosas?”
“Mimosa?” Dad asks, pointing at Camilla. She shakes her head, smiling up at the waiter. “Chamomile tea for me, please. Lemon wedge and honey on the side, if you have it.”
“We sure do,” he says, taking notes on a little pad. “Mimosa for you, sir?”
“Why not?” Dad booms, and I order my coffee, and the guy leaves. Both my parents swivel to look at me, and I feel heat rise to my cheeks.
“Honey?” Camilla prompts softly, like she’s trying to compensate for Dad’s volume. She sounds so sincere I actually think, for a moment, that she’s really going to try here. That my dad—too wordy and too loud but genuine down to his bones—might actually have brought out the good in her. But then she says: “Tell us why you said what you said in Santa Fe.”
And that’s what it’s about; that’s what it’s always about. Me marring her public image, failing to fit into whatever box she’s constructed for me on whatever given day. It doesn’t matter to her that I don’t seem myself. She doesn’t know what I seem like when I’m myself.
My phone buzzes, half-wedged into my hipbone. I wrestle it out of my shorts’ pocket and, seeing Ethan’s name there after two days of resolute silence, unlock the screen. He’s texted me twice: one photo, one message beneath it. The message is just three words:Who is this?And the photo is of a social post with nearly three hundred thousand likes, a candid shot of Silas and me. Silas and me.Silas and me, on a gossip magazine’s feed.
ST. VRAIN STRIKES OUT, the overlay says. Beneath it: Silasleaned forward with his elbows suspended on his knees, Puddles’s leash knotted up in one hand. She’s between his feet, tongue hanging to the side. And the photo, it’s—shit. It’s not that Silas is looking at me, because he isn’t. It’s not that we’re touching, because there are two solid feet of space between us. We aren’t even smiling. The problem is me—the way I’m looking at him, captured so clearly there in full color. Like Silas is a math problem that I haven’t figured out yet; like he’s the only thing I want to spend my time on until I’ve cracked it. I’m so absolutely focused on him.
It’s a dishonest portrayal, of course. It’s showing something that isn’t there, a trick of timing. The photographer must have captured me in the exact, exact moment I was scrambling for something to change the subject after Silas told me howlonelymy life seems.
“I have to go,” I say, pushing back my chair.
“What?” Dad’s wide eyes track me as I make for the door. “Audrey, sit back down, we aren’t—”
“I’ll be right back.” Camilla is the last thing that registers before I leave the room, the way she looks at my dad, like:See? She’s impossible.
I know I’ve made myself look like the problem. I know. But as I dial Ethan’s number and push through the restaurant, phone lifted to my ear, I also know I can only put out one fire at a time.
“Audrey,” he says by way of greeting. I step through the restaurant’s front door, looking for somewhere quiet. I hang a left and beeline down the porch toward a pair of unoccupied rocking chairs.
“Ethan.” I sit down so forcefully the chair whacks into the house. “How did you find that?”
There’s a beat of silence. “Does it matter?”
“I, no—I mean, I guess not.” Ethan’s hardly on social media; someone must have showed it to him, which somehow makes it worse. “I just can’t believe anyone would follow me, or even want that picture? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” he says calmly. “You’re the child of a celebrity. And it looks”—he hesitates, the word coming awkwardly like he’s forcing it through a straw—“suggestive.”
Oh, Ethan. Oh, Christ. “It’s not,” I say quickly. “Ethan, I barely know him.”
“Who is he, Audrey?” He doesn’t give me a chance to answer. “You cancel our last call, and then I barely hear from you—and here I am, thinking you’re so busy with the tour, and with Dr. Stone, and then I find you on the internet eating ice cream with this person you’ve never even mentioned to me?” He draws a breath, and I press my eyes shut. “I’m sorry I haven’t been returning your calls, but I didn’t even know how to bring this up. It took some time to process.”
“Ethan,” I whisper. My chest feels like someone’s taking a hammer to it from the inside, cracking each of my ribs in turn. How have I let everything get this bad, this fast? Who would I even have, if I didn’t have Ethan? I want to transport us to Miami, where we’ll be together in person—where nothing will feel this wrong. “He’s nobody, I swear. He’s just one of the interns.”
“I thought you said the interns were annoying?”
“Theyareannoying,” I say. “We have nothing in common. I didn’t even want to be around them, but it was right after theshow in Santa Fe, and I kind of tried something there and it didn’t work out, and it made things really tense with my mom, and going on this road trip with the interns kind of got me out of doing something with her and I didn’t feel like I had a choice; I shouldn’t have slipped on the readings, it’s just honestly been a lot, but I’m going to get it back together, I’ve read all of this week’s lecture notes and I’ve been wanting to talk to you about them but I haven’t—”
“Hey.” Ethan’s voice comes through the line, softly, like a hand pressed to a racing heart. “Audrey, slow down.”
I suck in a rush of air, open my eyes. My dad is coming right at me down the porch, looking none too pleased.
“Ethan, I have to go, I’m so sorry, my dad is coming to get me—”
“Your dad is there?”
