M
om and the band are onstage, performing their last encore song.
After the concert, I peek out from backstage and see my father sitting in the front row. Even though I’ve never seen him before in my life, have no idea what he looks like — somehow I
know.
Breath backs up in my throat.
Everyone else in the arena is leaving, but he claps on, tears of pride in his eyes for Rayne O’Connor. He thrusts a hand up toward her. Suddenly in his fingers — a single white rose wrapped in green cellophane and tied with a red ribbon.
Mom leaves the stage, oblivious.
My heart beats so hard it’s about to lift me off the floor. I shuffle onstage, legs trembling. Roadies are breaking down the set around me, but I pay no attention. I only have eyes for my father.
He looks at me, and the wrapped white rose crumbles to nothingness in his hand. Emotions move across his face. Recognition … shock … understanding …
Love.
His arms rise, held up toward me. He moves forward, and so do I. After all the years, I can’t believe this is happening. I’m meeting my
dad.
The missing, vital part of me.
We are twenty feet apart. I am so deliriously happy, I can’t even feel my legs moving.
Fifteen feet.
He smiles at me. I smile back.
Ten.
As high as the stage is, somehow I know he’ll jump up on it with no problem. Because he wants to with all his heart. Because he won’t let anything keep us apart—ever again.
Even my mother.
We are five feet away from each other. His face is a blur through my tears. I hear, “Dad, Dad,” and realize it’s my own mouth calling him.
Two feet.
His muscles coil to make the huge jump. He bounds into the air like a deer.
The scene jars into slow motion. One of his legs drifts up off the floor, then the other, his hands floating, hair lifting in the breeze. His mouth creaks open, my name forming — Shhhhaaaalllleee …
His body hangs in the air, rising … rising … He is inches away.
Someone yells to his left. His head rotates toward it.
Terror stabs through me. “Daaad,” I scream. “Donnn’t!”
A shot splits the night. I see the bullet parting air in slow motion, aiming straight for my father. I want to stop it but I can’t.
My body turns to ice.
As if in water, my father’s limbs struggle to change course.
It’s … too … late …
The bullet slams him in the left eye.
His head turns toward me for one last look. I see the black of his empty socket, his right eye shining with love for me.
Light fades from that eye. Fades … fades. It flattens in death.
He sinks to the floor and out of my sight.
Grief cuts me in two. “Nooo!” I wail. “No, no …”
A
rattled scream in my throat jerked me awake.
My heart raced, and sweat coated my forehead. For a moment I couldn’t even
think.
I stared up at the ceiling, fighting to see something, anything. With the heavy curtains closed, the hotel room was nearly pitch dark.
I could hear Brittany breathing as she slept.
My body wouldn’t stop shaking.
Just a dream,
I tried to tell myself.
Just a dream.
But it felt so real. My father seemed
so real.
No matter how many times I’ve begged, my mom refuses to tell me who he is. Someone she dated in high school is all she’ll say. Someone she loved very much. Who gave her single white roses wrapped in green cellophane and tied with a red ribbon as a symbol of his love. By the time she was seventeen and gave birth to me, he was out of her life. He can’t even know for sure that he’s my father, she insists.
The dream echoed in my mind. I wanted it back. I wanted to see my father again.
It isn’t fair for Mom to keep him from me.
“How can he not know about me?” I’ve asked many times. “Didn’t he see you pregnant?”
When she learned about the pregnancy, he was already gone, she says — always with lowered eyes and pain in her face.
“Do you know where he is now?”
“No.”
The answer never changes. Still I ask. Because I don’t believe her. I think she does know. I think she doesn’t want to tell me.
What
is she protecting me from?
A moan slipped from my mouth. I didn’t want to wake Brittany. I rolled on my side away from her, buried my face in the pillow, and cried. For Tom, the friend I had lost that day, and for the father I had never known. And then, irrationally, but terrifying all the same, for what I might lose tomorrow.
I
woke slowly, fighting the day. Fresh grief over Tom weighted me to the bed. How I wished his death had been only another nightmare.
By the time Brittany and I got up, it was past eleven. I felt almost drugged, like I hadn’t slept at all.
Brittany cocked her head and surveyed me. “What’s wrong? I mean, something new.”
I rubbed my face. “I had a dream.”
“About what?”
The scene rushed over me, trailing all the emotions. My father’s face. His love. The white rose. The gunshot. I focused on the floor. “My father.”
“Oh.”
Maybe it was the violent loss of Tom. Or my determination to help solve his murder. Whatever it was, at that moment I no longer merely resented the fact that Mom wouldn’t tell me about my father. I
hated
it.
And I was old enough to do something about it.
I gave Brittany a wry smile and shrugged. “You hungry?”
“Yeah.”
We ordered room service—two personal pizzas and salads.
I hung up the phone and turned on the TV, flipping to a cable news station.
Tom’s face filled the screen, followed by footage of our limo, surrounded by reporters, driving from the arena parking lot.
“Oh!” Brittany drew to the TV like a magnet.
Clutching our arms we listened to the reporter’s story.
Behind the darkly tinted glass of the limo, our faces were dim. I caught a glimpse of my own features, Brittany’s ducked head.
“Great.” she mumbled. “Mom’s gonna see this.”
I searched the faces of the crowd around our car but saw no paparazzi member I recognized. Their features were too blurred, the bodies in motion too chaotic.
The reporter turned to an interview of a San Jose policeman who’d been on scene. The officer disclosed very little. Nothing I didn’t already know.
The picture switched to a commercial. I changed channels, and we watched last night’s limo scene all over again from a slightly different camera angle.
“Why don’t they talk about Tom?” I cried. “So
what
if Rayne and Shaley O’Connor are in that limo. Tom’s
dead!”
Furiously, I punched in a new channel. News show after news show—the same thing. Tom’s picture and murder were overshadowed by reporters and talking heads stating opinions about what this might mean for Rayne and their tour.
I smacked off the TV. “They make me sick.”
Blurry-eyed, I paced the room, arms folded. “I swear if any reporter shoves a microphone in my face and asks about Tom like he’s no more than a dramatic entertainment story, I’ll knock that person flat. They don’t deserve to even
speak
Tom’s name.”
Brittany sank dejectedly onto her bed. “So … now what? Do we just stay in the room all day?”
I pulled to a halt. “No way. We’re going shopping,
just
like we planned.”
“Oh. But your mom said —”
“I know what she said. But can you imagine if we don’t go. We’ll have nothing to do but sit around this room all day. And
think.”
New tears burned my eyes. I couldn’t sit around thinking about Tom all day. It hurt too much.
Brittany looked dubious. “Will your mom let us go?”
“We’ll just have to persuade her. Let’s get dressed and all ready to go. Then it’ll be harder for her to stop us. You know, like in business — assume the sale.”
Truth was I would be playing on Mom’s weakness. Ever since Rayne rocketed to stardom she had far less time for me. Now what she couldn’t give me in personal attention, she tried to make up for in money and leniency.
Brittany mushed her lips and nodded. “Okay.”
We got dressed and put on our makeup, stopping to eat our pizzas and salads when they arrived. Sometime later, we knocked on the door connecting our room to Mom’s room.
It opened to reveal Mom in her silk charmeuse loungewear, no makeup. She gave us both a long look. “You two girls look mighty fancy to stay in your rooms today.”
I shot Brittany a look. “You know we’re not staying in our room. You promised us weeks ago we could go shopping.”
Mom’s eyelids flickered. “That was before Tom … died.”
I looked down at my feet and sighed. Part of me knew how shallow it sounded — fighting to go shopping a day after one of my good friends was killed. The other part reminded me it was either keep busy or go crazy with remembering. “Do you really want us to sit around and do nothing all day? You’ve got a photo shoot and interview in a couple of hours. It’ll take your mind off this — at least for awhile. We need something too.”
Mom shook her head. “Have you turned on the TV? They’re all over the story, as we expected.”
A chill blew over me. “We saw it.”
“So I can’t let you go out in this circus atmosphere.”
“I’ll go in disguise. They’ll never know it’s me.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
“It will.”
We surveyed each other. I could tell Mom was caving. She knew
what I’d been through yesterday. She knew I craved some semblance of my normal life back.
If you could call our lives “normal.”
“Come on, Mom. We’ll have a bodyguard with us. Two if you like. And if something happens, we’ll hop in the limo and leave right away.”
Mom’s gaze turned to Brittany. “You sure you want to do this? You got a little taste last night of how it can be if things get out of hand.”
Brittany nodded. “I know. But we’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. And Shaley especially—I think she needs to get out.”
I suppressed a smile. Brittany knew how to play Mom as well as I did.
Someone knocked on the room’s hall door. “Oh, that’s Marshall.” Mom glanced toward it, suddenly all business. “Look, I have to get ready. Go — and take Bruce. Wendell and Mick are with me today. Shaley, keep your disguise on. And
do not
stray out of Bruce’s sight.”
Brittany and I threw each other triumphant glances. “I will, Mom, don’t worry. Have a good interview!”
“Thanks, Rayne!” Brittany grinned.
“Yeah, yeah. I hope I’m not sorry later.”
Brittany and I backed into our room and closed the connecting door before Mom could change her mind.
“Whew.” Brittany flipped bangs out of her eyes. “That was close.”
I dug in my purse for the code list to call Bruce’s room. Now that freedom was near, we couldn’t leave soon enough. I wanted
away
from those four walls of bad dreams about my father and thoughts of Tom.
As I reached for the receiver, the phone rang. I picked it up, distracted. “Hello.” My eyes flicked from my suitcase to Brittany. I covered the receiver’s mouthpiece. “Would you get my short black wig out of there?”
Brittany moved to the suitcase. Someone — sounded like a young woman — was talking into the phone.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“This is the front desk, Miss O’Connor. Sorry to bother you, but someone left a gift for you here.”
A gift?
Some Rayne fan must have found our hotel. Wouldn’t be the first time. They usually left things for Mom, but after all the publicity photos I’d appeared in with her in the last couple years, now people followed me around too. Last year some older man kept leaving me “presents.” Photos of himself without a lot of clothes on. We turned them over to the police. The man stopped bothering me.
Rayne does have many wonderful fans, but unfortunately there are a lot of weirdos out there.
I watched Brittany pull out the wig and shake it. Ugly thing.
“Would you like me to send it up?” the desk clerk asked.
Brittany handed the wig to me. I took it, making a face. “Uh, sure, whatever. But do it now because we’re about to leave.”
“All right. It’ll be there in a minute.”
I clicked off the line, then pushed
talk
again to phone Bruce. He said he’d call for a car right away. “Thanks so much!” I threw down the phone and positioned myself in front of the mirror, sighing. “I wish I didn’t have to do this.”
“Freedom,
Shaley. That wig spells freedom.”
Brittany and her lawyer logic.
I stuffed my long hair under the wig and moved the thing around until it looked right.
A knock sounded. “Want to check the peephole, Brittany? It’s probably a bellman with that gift.”
She moved to the door. “Yeah, it’s him.”
“Okay, open up. I’ll get him a tip.” I snatched my wallet from my purse and pulled out a five. At the door I thrust the bill into the bellman’s hands and accepted a long white box. “Thanks for bringing it.”
“You’re welcome, Miss. And thank
you.”
Brittany shut the door and bolted it. “Looks like something from a florist.”
“Yeah. Let’s hope it’s nothing weird.”
I sat on the edge of her bed and studied the box. No florist name on it anywhere.
Maybe it would be on a card inside.
Like the settling of a fitful breeze, all my swirling anticipation to get out of the room and go shopping abruptly died away. Tom’s face blazed into my mind. His one open eye, the other blown apart.
His killer was still out there.
I should have questioned the girl at the front desk about who had brought this package.
Brittany sidled over to stand beside me. “You going to open it?”
I pulled my lip between my teeth and stared at the box. Ran a finger over its smoothness. “I don’t know. After yesterday …”
Silence.
Brittany swallowed. “It’s probably just flowers.”
“I know but … Do you feel something? Anything?”
“No.”
Not that this meant anything. Brittany’s weird ability to sense things showed up when it pleased.
I took a deep breath. “What should I do?”
“Open it. You have to know. If it’s something bad, we’ll call the police.”
It won’t be anything bad,
I chided myself. I was just being paranoid.
All the same, the back of my neck started to tingle.
“Okay.” My muscles tensed. “Here goes.”
Carefully I laid the box on the bed beside me. I placed my fingers on both sides of the top and lifted it away.
I gazed at the contents. My heart stopped.
My mouth dropped open, the tingles at my neck now like stinging ants. All breath bottled up in my throat.
In the box — a single white rose, wrapped in green cellophane and tied with a red ribbon.