Page 5 of The Someday Daughter
“You’re the most important part, honey.” I lifted my head, met her pixelated gaze. “On the anniversary ofLetters to My Someday Daughter, touring live for the first time with mysomeday daughter.”
Fallon mimicked vomiting, and for a minute we stared at each other over the computer screen. Being a pawn in my mother’s speaking career was nothing new; Camilla had built an entire empire on hersomeday daughter—me. The world thinks we have some idyllic, beatific bond, when the truth is all Camilla actually has time for is running her Saint wellness retreats and curating healing gemstone product lines.
“It’ll be wonderful,” she continued. “Eight weeks, ten cities, plenty of room to breathe and explore between each one. Like a summerlong vacation.”
This pitch was a case in point of how very little she knew me. The last thing I wanted was a summerlong vacation, and the thing I wanted even less than that was a summerlong vacation with her.
“If you’re worried about running off course before college begins, I’ll hire someone.” Her evergreen, tried-and-true solution: just hire someone. “I’ll find a professor to tour with us, take you to local hospitals so you can keep learning about medicine.”
I was still looking at Fallon, who shook her head in sheer disbelief.Find a professor?What did that even mean? People had jobs; they couldn’t just pick up everything because she wanted them to.
“And besides.” Camilla’s voice softened to something almostvulnerable, and I finally looked back at her. “This summer is our last chance, Audrey.” She said this like someone was dying, like there was something sinister at stake. “You’ll only get busier from here.”
I’ve been busy, I thought.So have you.But then—
“Please,” she said. Didn’t look away from me. “I want to share this with you.”
I felt something shift in me, reluctant and squishy and too shameful to name. She wanted me with her, and I didn’t want to need that.
I really didn’t want to.
But now, here I am. Alone at the beach, over a month later, and about a million miles away from Fallon.
I’d thought I could do this summer. Thought maybe Camilla had meant it, that flickering moment over video chat:I want to share this with you.But it came through last night with full-sun clarity: she only needsmeto share withher. And she only needs me to do it so this tour succeeds.
But I don’t explain that to Fallon, because these aren’t things I can ever say out loud. Not even to my closest friend, my roommate since the sixth grade. These feelings, at least, get to be mine, and mine alone.
I’m cutting out, I tell her instead.First class at Penn isn’t until Wednesday, so I should be able to make it. You packed?
really???she replies.how didcamillatake that?
Then a selfie: Fallon’s blunt blonde bob and dreamy expression, flanked on both sides by an airport gate.
packed, she sends.airported. melatonin andbenadrylon tap so I can sleep through this interminable flight instead of thinkingabout how my one precious life is suspended in midair above theatlanticocean!!!
I smirk, glancing up as a seagull screams overhead. The beach is empty, like it always is, but full of motion: wind shifting loose sand higher up the shore, waves licking at the waterline, tiny mole crabs peeking their domed heads above the dunes. I’ve spent the last seven years in Colorado, and the whole earth has a different rhythm on the coast.
Commercial planes never crash,I tell her.1 in 1.2 millionchance.
Fallon’s going to Uganda for the summer to dig wells and repair critical infrastructure. She’ll study civil engineering at Colorado School of Mines in the fall, farther from me than I care to think about.The Colorado bug bit me, she said, the day we submitted our applications side by side in the library’s cavernous reading room.No going back to ’Bama now.Her whole family is in Montgomery: happily married parents, ten-year-old sister, older brother playing football at Auburn.
Fallon replies,1 chance too many!!and then my phone starts buzzing in earnest.Dad-o, the screen says. But I know he’ll only try to talk me out of what I’m about to do—so I send him to voicemail, take one last breath of salt air, and stand to face the imposing edifice of Casa Camilla.
5
There’s a box on the dining room table that wasn’t here when I got up this morning, set at one end of the great glass slab with its top cut open. I can hear Mags and my mother talking in the kitchen, their voices drifting toward me like the warning music in a horror movie.
I open the box’s top flap to find, no surprise, that everything inside has the Saint logo embossed onto it in bright, unmissable white. The first bubble-wrapped layer is glass water bottles with crystals at their bottoms, no doubt intended to purify your H2O—as if supergluing a sparkly rock to a jar imbues it with healing powers. I push them aside to get at the small stack of velvety bags beneath, each embroidered in gold Saint stitching and bound by a slim, shimmering rope. When I pull one open I let out an unintentional yelp. It’s a vibrator. A Saint-branded, lasciviously matte black vibrator.
“Audrey?” my mother calls. “Is that you, honey?”
I drop the vibrator, pressing my palm to my shorts like it scalded me. “Yeah.”
“Would you like to join us for some coffee?”
Boy, would I. I press my eyes shut, quickly count off four fingers, and make for the kitchen.
They’re seated next to each other at the island, which is so massive it’s more of a continent. Magnolia is forty-five to my mother’s fifty-four, but they both look a decade younger, many thanks to the frequent procedures that Camilla calls “treatments.” I’ve known Mags forever; she’s been my mother’s assistant since the book came out, since all this began, since she was only twenty. She’s Camilla’s best friend and ultimate groupie. They’re only more intimidating when Laz is with them, when their power trio feeds off its own chaotic energy like a pack of circling tiger sharks.
