Page 23 of The Someday Daughter
“Motherhood,” Cleo says, licking at her ice cream. We drift across the plaza toward a line of low-slung tourist shops. “Being a daughter.”
“Mmm,” Mick says sagely, like this is enough of an answer all on its own. “So we’re talking about the show.”
I wince—part brain freeze from my ice cream, part humiliation. Clearly, they’ve all talked about it without me.
“I thought it was kind of funny,” Mick says, shrugging. “That lady’s sopeace and loveall the time it honestly freaks me out. ‘Absolutely horrible’ is a little intense, but—”
“But you chose to be here,” I say, and all three of them turn to look at me. Like they’re surprised:she speaks. “I didn’t choose this. She’s always choosing for me.”
There’s a beat of silence before Cleo says simply, “That sucks.”
“But you’re almost in college,” Mick says, chocolate ice cream on his chin. “She won’t be able to tell you what to do once you’re gone.”
“I’vebeengone,” I tell them. “She sent me to boarding school in sixth grade.”
Silas stops, turning back to look at me. “You’ve been away from home sincesixthgrade? What is that, like eleven years old?”
I nod, surprised by his surprise. With all of us stopped, Puddles shuffles toward me and starts licking my ankle. I move it swiftly out of her way.
“How often do you see your parents?” Silas asks, and behind his shoulder Cleo drags Mick toward one of the shop windows to point something out to him.
I think about it, running through the last calendar year. “Twice a year, maybe? My dad tries to visit, and I usually see Camilla at the holidays.”
“Summers?” Silas asks, taking a step closer to me.
“Camp.” Ice cream drips onto my hand, and I lift it to my mouth to lick it off. “Or summer sessions at school.”
Silas’s gaze lingers on the back of my hand before coming up to mine. “That’s lonely,” he says.
The words move through me like ice. I feel cold, suddenly, andexposed. I feel eleven years old, gulping back tears at the Summit School while my mother flies home to launch her lifestyle brand.
“It’s what I’m used to,” I say. Mick and Cleo have disappeared into the store, so I step over to a bench and sit down. I don’t look at Silas as he follows, parking Puddles between his feet. I’m worried that if we make eye contact, he’ll see through this version of me into that younger one, scared and alone. “And it’s good to get ahead in my coursework.”
“Right,” Silas says, running a hand over Puddles’s head. She’s panting hard, her tongue so long I can’t quite believe it fits in her mouth. Silas going quiet makes me want to keep talking—to fill this weird, sympathetic silence between us.
“What does it mean?” I ask, and he looks up at me. I point to his hat. “GG’s Gardenshare?”
“Oh.” He smiles, adjusting it on his head. “My grandma runs this gardenshare program—like a CSA, but it’s just stuff from her garden. My cousins and I would help her out with the deliveries when we visited on summer breaks growing up. She makes us all call her GG because she thinksgrandmamakes her sound old.” I imagine a swarm of children moving between rows of vegetables; grandparents in overalls watching them from a back porch. It could be a fantasy, it’s so unfamiliar to me. My parents are both only children; I have one grandfather on my dad’s side, in a south Texas town we never visit. My mom’s parents died when she was twenty. “She lives in the mountains about an hour from Denver, little town called Switchback Ridge.” Silas looks up at me, sun in his eyes. “I’ll visit her in a couple weeks when we’re in Colorado. You should come.”
What?
“I get it now, you know.”
I blink at him, holding my ice cream like a shield. “Get what?”
“At the show in LA, that back alley. The centering practice.” He holds up his fingers and taps his thumb to each one in turn, the first time I’ve ever seen someone reflect my habit back at me. “You’re centering yourself.”
I picture him yesterday morning, eyes on mine in the pale morning light on the rooftop. Backstage at the show last night, reminding me with one quiet gesture of all the calm I contain. I want to push back—I want him not to be able to read me like this. But it comes out all on its own, one quiet word. “Yeah.”
He nods, looking down at Puddles. A few strands of hair fall loose from theGG’s Gardensharecap and brush his cheek, hide him from me. “Did she teach you that?”
“No,” I say. I picked it up during my first and only counseling session at the Summit School.When you start to feel ungrounded, the therapist had told me,find something concrete to focus on. Like noticing the colors around you. Or eating a piece of candy.
Colors were a shade too subjective—cast through the unreliable filters of our eyes, the time of the day, the slant of the light. And how often did I have candy on me? But I always had my same hands. My ten fingers.
I don’t tell Silas any of this. I say, “That one I learned on my own.”
19
