Page 76 of The Someday Daughter
Tears blur my vision, hot and sharp. I think of the person Silas encouraged me to become, one little bit at a time. The studying I didn’t do, and the shadowing position I didn’t get, and the boyfriend I made plans with who’s gone now.“I let you ruin my life and you weren’t even honest with me.”
“Is that what I did?” Silas’s voice catches. “Ruined your life?”
Ruinisn’t quite right, but I nod anyways. Silas didn’t ruin me; he betrayed me by turning out to be the same as everyone else. I’d thought, for maybe the first time in my life, that I’d found someone who actually sees me. But Silas was interested in Camilla, not in me. He wanted to be around me because of something she did. Just like always, just like every other person.
I let him in like a fool, and he hid the truth from me all summer long. I trusted Sadie. I thought I might actually have a shot at a relationship with my mom.
I’ve always known I’m not thesomeday daughter, that she doesn’t exist the way the world believes her to. That even if she did, we were never one and the same. But this summer—with Silas and Sadie and my mom—I started to believe.
I shouldn’t be surprised now, but I am. Standing here in this musty Sunday-school room with two people I thought I knew.
Silas didn’t ruin my life; he gave me hope. I was better off without it.
I have myself to blame, really. The Audrey I was back in June would never have let herself be hurt like this, by these people. She’d never have let Camilla St. Vrain worm her way in. She’d never have fallen for the slobber-collared boy with no solid plans. But I let my guard down, and now I’m here: an idiot of my own creation.
I leave the Boston show in a rideshare by myself, shouldering past Mick and Cleo while Silas shouts after me down the hallway. I gather my things at the hotel and check myself into a different one, using the emergency credit card Dad gave me when I turned sixteen. When he calls me after midnight to say my mom’s in apanic, I tell him to tell her that I’m safe and to leave me alone. Exactly how I should have been all this time.
He presses for the name of my hotel, my room number, the reason I’m upset. But I know he’ll only tell her, and I don’t want her anywhere near me. I’ve spent my life furious with Camilla for building her fame off our fictional relationship—I don’t even know how to name what it feels like for her to have built her fame off pure fiction. If what Sadie’s saying is true, Camilla didn’t just embellish our mother-daughter relationship for her career. She lied about which daughter her career was built on in the first place. I’m more expendable to her than I could ever have imagined.
By the time morning comes, Silas has left me six voicemails. I delete all of them, one by one, without listening to them. I can’t deal with him, not when everything else is falling apart. This betrayal isn’t his—it’s my mother’s. But he’s twisted in it like a bug in a web, collateral damage. He could have told me, but now he’ll be devoured by my anger along with everything else.
When I text Sadie that I don’t want to see her at the internist visit, that I’m going alone or not at all, she gives in without a fight. I think of her in Nashville:Take your time.
I call United and cancel my flight to DC. This will be my last doctor visit, and only because it’s the one I’ve looked forward to most. I’ve given more than enough of myself to this tour, and there’s no reason for me to see it through now. Tomorrow I’ll fly to Baltimore a week early. Stay at a hotel until my dorm opens for move-in.
By the time I emerge from the T at Massachusetts General Hospital, Silas has called four more times. I put my phone onsilent, straighten my blazer, walk through the hospital’s sliding glass doors. I zip every awful feeling into the shell of myself. I do what I’m best at.
When I walk back through the doors two hours later, my mother is waiting for me on the sidewalk.
49
Camilla’s standing immediately in front of the violent redEmergencysign, which is exactly what this feels like.
“No,” I say, stopping in my tracks.
“Audrey.” She moves toward me, and when she pulls off her enormous sunglasses there are dark circles under her eyes. She’s wearing her same master-of-disguise baseball cap and her blonde hair in a ponytail. Jeans and a hoodie. The whole getup makes her look twenty years old, like someone young enough to have no idea what they’re doing. But she’s known. All this time, she’s known.
“Is it true?” I say, and then she stops, too. There are ten feet of hot air between us, humid and stagnant. Sweat breaks on the back of my neck.
She doesn’t beat around the bush, though it’s what I expect her to do. She doesn’t say,Is what true?, though there’s more than one lie between us. She just says, “Yes. It’s true.”
“Wow,” I say, the word punching out of me like a bullet. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard myself hit this volume. “You’re unbelievable.”
I sidestep her, making for Fruit Street and the T station.
“Audrey—” She reaches for my elbow and I yank it out of her hand.
“Don’t touch me.”
Distantly, I’m aware of people watching us: a father and his child headed into the building, someone in a uniform glancing up from their phone. My mother shoves her sunglasses back on.
“Can we please talk about this?” she says, following me.
“No,” I shout without turning around. “You’ve had eighteen years to talk to me about this.”
“Honey, that’s not fair—”
“It’s notfair?” I whirl around, bag jerking off my shoulder into the crook of my elbow. “No, Mom. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that you kept this from me. It’s not fair that you used me to boost your career without actually getting to know me.” I suck in a breath. “It’s not fair that I’m always trying to live up to some fictional version of me you’ve told the whole world about.”
