The Rock Star's Daughter (17 page)

And my father stepped into the hallway.

Our eyes locked and I instantly felt
nauseous.

Dad blinked twice with a blank expression on
his face, and then took a step backwards as if he was going to try
to disappear back into the room that he just stepped out of. His
mouth opened as if he was going to object to something, but then
nothing came out of it.

And in that awful, gut-wrenching moment as my
brain was on the brink of making the rotten assumption that my
father could only be exiting a guest room on the third floor of the
hotel for one terrible reason, it got worse.

The door opened again, and this time a woman
was handing my father his sunglasses, telling him he was silly for
leaving them behind. And she was wearing a cropped silk kimono, a
cheap one, something that looked like a knock-off bought at a mall
lingerie store.

And she was Jake's mom.

"Taylor, honey," Karina called after me as I
turned and ran down the hallway toward the staircase that led to
the lobby. I descended the stairs so quickly it was a miracle that
I didn't trip and slide down half of them on my butt.

I tore across the front lobby, not caring
that other well-dressed guests were turning to look at me as if I
was nuts, and was half-way across the parking lot before I realized
that no one was following me.

I whirled around twice out of despair. I was
in the middle of a parking lot in Ohio. I had no one on earth I
could call to come and pick me up and take me away. All of my worst
assumptions about my dad had just been confirmed: he was cheating
on Jill, he was deceitful with everyone he claimed to love, and
worst of all, he was behaving this way flagrantly right under
everyone's nose. It was almost as if he wanted to get caught.

My mind filled with questions that I didn't
necessarily want answered… did he pay for Karina and Jake to stay
in the same hotels as the band throughout the whole tour so that he
would always know where Karina was? How long had it been going on?
Had Jake known all along?

And worst of all, did my dad ever tell the
truth about anything?

I sat down on the hot blacktop of the parking
lot and stared straight ahead for what felt like hours. I didn't
want to go back to our hotel room. But I didn't know where else to
go. There was no avoiding it; my father and I were going to have to
have a very adult conversation about his conduct. I wasn't planning
on saying anything to Jill, but also wasn't sure how I was going to
keep myself from acting strangely around my dad in her presence. It
occurred to me multiple times to ask my dad if I could just go back
to Treadwell early. Surely he could use his fame and financial
clout to get them to open the dorm early for me.

The decision was certainly not simple; if I
left the tour early, I would never see Jake again. Which, given the
circumstances, should not even have been a concern of mine if I
were a rationally thinking adult. However, it's hardly fair to
expect a girl who is completely in love to think rationally. As
crazy as it may sound, the only thing I really wanted after sitting
in the hot parking lot all afternoon was to find Jake and drive as
far away from my dad, his mom, the tour, and my life as I now knew
it, as I could get.

CHAPTER
10

The drive from Ohio to Louisville was brief
but one of the most un-scenic and depressing of the tour. Two and a
half agonizing days had passed since I had witnessed my dad exiting
Karina's hotel room, and in those two days we had not yet had a
private moment. My father was going about his business as usual,
primarily ignoring me and never once hinting that there was
anything for which he felt a need to apologize. I had only made one
slight acknowledgement of what I had witnessed in the hallway; I
had rolled my eyes at him when he had asked me where I was at with
my summer reading list for Treadwell.

Seriously? As if my summer reading was really
a concern of anyone.

My stomach was in knots on the tour bus for
the entire drive to Louisville. I hadn't heard anything from Jake,
or seen high or low of him in Ohio. It was possible, and probable,
that he knew that I had discovered the truth about his mom and my
dad. I was strongly fearful that Karina had told him to stay away
from me, or worse, that they had left Ohio early and wouldn't be at
any of the remaining shows. I was not sure what I would do if I
didn't see Jake at all in the next three weeks, and our two days in
Detroit passed without any sign of him. The chance of spending time
with him alone was the only thing getting me out of the bed in the
morning.

The morning after the sold-out show in
Louisville, Jill announced in a very uncharacteristic manner that
she wanted to spend a day doing normal errands. The band was going
to a private event at the Slugger Museum, and Jill asked me if I
wanted to join her for what she called a "mundane day of suburban
delight," as an alternate option to a day immersed in baseball
history.

My heart skipped a beat when I realized that
Jill was driving our rental car in the direction of none other than
a good old-fashioned American mall. Our shopping list was as boring
as could be: new socks for Kelsey, a birthday present for Jill's
mom, a new pair of sandals for my father because he had left his
pair behind at the pool in Ohio.

"That's right, Taylor," Jill hummed, in a
good mood. "It's not all Vuitton and Louboutins. You can take the
girl out of New Jersey, but you can't take the New Jersey out of
the girl."

My spirits soared inside the mall; no matter
how upset I might be, the smell of Cinnabon and Sbarro combined
make all of my frustrations and disappointments disappear. As we
roamed through the mall passing other families shopping on a summer
weekday, I actually felt normal for the first time I had ever been
out with Jill and Kelsey. Not famous, not rich. Like just a normal
kid out with her stepmom and sister, shopping for junk on sale. A
few teenage girls stared at me when we stepped inside Hunter Lodge
and I lingered in front of a display of jeans, but not in a way
that made me suspicious that they recognized me. Perhaps they
thought they knew me from somewhere – a kid who had moved away to
another town in grammar school, someone who looked just like a
cousin who hadn't been seen in a while. For one afternoon I was
just a girl out shopping in a suburb of Kentucky, not the daughter
of Chase Atwood.

In fact, I even glowered at a poster in the
Hunter Lodge of Emma Jeffries squirming around in a tight pair of
jeans on a grassy lawn and found the pang of jealousy I felt to be
kind of a relief, like putting on an old pair of sneakers. It had
been a while since I had thought about Emma Jeffries.

I slowed my pace as we approached a Piercing
Pagoda in the center of the mall and Jill asked if I wanted to get
my ears double pierced. My mother had forbidden me from ever doing
such a thing, and on this low-key afternoon an invitation from Jill
to walk on the wild side seemed irresistible.

"I spent a whole summer doing this," Jill
reminisced, watching the teenage girl who was a few years older
than me clean off my ears with alcohol and mark the future puncture
spot with pen. Kelsey was too fascinated to ask questions.

"Getting your ears pierced?" I asked like an
idiot.

"No, working at an ear-piercing stand at the
mall," Jill corrected me with a smile. "At the Scotch Plains Mall
in New Jersey."

I couldn't imagine Jill ever being a teenager
and having a crappy job at a mall. "I cannot picture that," I told
her.

"Oh, sure," Jill said. "I wasn't pretty
enough to get a job at the Foxmoor. All the pretty girls from my
high school had retail jobs there. And I wasn't squeamish at all
about blood, so the Piercing Palace was a perfect fit for me."

The piercing gun squeezed and I gripped the
arm rests of the seat. A brand new tiny diamond stud was in my
right earlobe. "You? Not pretty? Now that I definitely don't
believe," I said. Jill looked like she was born beautiful and had
never had an ugly day in her whole life. It had been my assumption
that Jill had been Homecoming Queen, captain of the cheerleading
team, editor of the yearbook and everything else that the most
popular girl at a typical high school would be.

"Oh god," Jill rolled her eyes. "I was a
complete mess in high school. Acne, knobby knees, buckteeth, the
works. My mother was so embarrassed about my appearance she had
braces put on my teeth my freshman year of high school and made me
wash my face with medicated soap that she sent away for through a
medical supply catalog. Everyone in high school called me Gridlock
Cunningham because of those stupid braces. I've never forgiven
her."

"Mommy, what's going in Taylor's ears?"
Kelsey finally asked.

"New earrings," Jill told her patiently. "The
girl is using a special machine to put a tiny little hole in
Taylor's ear for earrings."

"I want it, too," Kelsey whined.

"Only when you're a big girl like
Taylor."

We bought Kelsey two six-pack bundles of
white socks with lace trim, and Jill found a cashmere sweater on
sale at Sears that she was convinced her mother would love. I
couldn't get over the oddity of seeing posh Jill in a regular old
mall. We were so far on the map away from Beverly Hills that I
doubted anyone passing us in the mall even recognized her high
heeled sandals as Jimmy Choo's.

"My mother doesn't give two hoots about
designer names," she explained to me as she paid for the sweater at
the cash register. "The only things that matter to her are whether
or not a garment was made in America – that's mandatory – and if
it's easy to wash. She doesn't understand dry cleaning and thinks
it's only for Europeans."

This made me laugh. How did Jill – with her
velour running suits and expensive hand bags - ever come from such
a practical family?

"Did you and your mom go shopping together a
lot?" she asked quietly as we sat at the food court.

I thought about it. Honestly even before I
went off to Treadwell there weren't many things we did together.
"Not really," I admitted. "Sometimes we went for long walks at
Runyon Canyon. Watched movies at home. She liked to make popcorn
the old-fashioned way, on the stovetop."

"It sounds like you and your mom were pretty
good friends. I have to admit, Taylor, I was pretty intimidated by
you last month when I met you. You seemed like a pretty cool girl.
It's been a while since I've felt so insecure," Jill admitted.

"That's crazy," I responded, uncomfortable.
"I'm only fifteen and you're like, a celebrity. How could I make
you feel insecure?"

"Come on, you're totally independent, you go
to boarding school, you grew up in L.A. and had a super bad ass
mom," Jill said. "A girl like you would have thought a girl like me
when I was fifteen was a total loser. I'm really happy you're with
us this summer. It gets very lonely for me when Chase is touring
and I really enjoy hanging out with you. And Kelsey just adores
you. I can't tell you what it means to me for her to have such a
great sister."

Jill was in a serious mood, and fiddled with
the straw in her bottle of water before continuing. "You know, your
dad often wished he could have been a bigger part of your life. He
was always worried about whether or not you were being taken care
of, if you were enjoying your life."

What had brought on this weird pep talk about
my dad's concern for me? Even though he and I were avoiding
conversation I didn't think anyone else might have noticed that we
were on the outs. I wasn't about to let Jill talk me into agreeing
with her that he was a great guy when I knew the ugly truth about
my dad and perhaps she didn't.

"Well, he could have been there," I said
smugly. "He knew where to find me."

"Sometimes things that appear really simple
and straightforward aren't," Jill told me. "You're really important
to your dad. More than you know. I think he may have been led to
believe that it was in your best interest for him to keep himself
at a distance. And I'm not sure it was the worst thing; our lives
are really disruptive and that might not have been good for
you."

I wanted her to stop talking. It was making
me angry that she was defending him, wanting so badly for me to
believe what a stand-up guy he was, when I knew that he was
cheating on her. I kept my mouth shut. We were having a relaxing
day and I was grateful to Jill for rescuing me from having to tour
a baseball bat museum with a bunch of old guys. The secret about my
father and Karina was on the tip of my tongue, but I suppressed it
with all my might.

"I'm getting the sense that you and Chase are
going through a disagreement," Jill said cautiously. "Do you want
to talk about it?"

"No," I said.

"Parents make mistakes, Taylor," Jill said,
making me wonder if she actually knew the reason why I was angry at
my dad, and if so, what was wrong with her that she hadn't choked
him to death already. "My own parents were heavy social drinkers.
Well, at least that's what they called it back in their day, but by
today's standards they were both alcoholics. I wonder all the time
if their bad habits contributed to Kelsey's health problems. I feel
very guilty all the time for not considering that risk factor
before having her. I fear that there's going to come a day when she
confronts me about it and I'm not going to know what to say."

I was baffled. Was Jill talking about me and
my father, or my father's emerging drinking problem, or was she
making a comparison between my father's infidelity and her parents'
alcoholism? As much as I liked to consider myself mature, I was
having an impossible time keeping up with Jill's conversation.
Either it was loaded with hidden meanings and metaphors, or it
wasn't at all, and she was clueless. I realized in that food
pavilion that I actually really did need to find someone to whom I
could talk about all of this stuff. I was starting to wonder if I
could trust my own thoughts.