“You really did spend some time on Yahoo today, didn’t you?”
He gave a sheepish little smile before lying back in the grass again. “Even I remember seeing it. I was eleven. Your face was everywhere for a few months—those enormous eyes. Where did you go? Did she kidnap you? Were you being kept from Ian? Had you gone into witness protection? All that stuff.”
Really, the truth as Mom laid it out was much more banal: cheating husband, toxic culture, mother takes the child and leaves LA to go live in a nowhere, Podunk town. It just happened that my father was one of the most beloved actors in the world, and it’s hard for the public to realize that the actor and the man aren’t always the same person. People couldn’t believe that he’d done something terrible to her, and the noxious Hollywood environment nearly broke my mother.
But again, what was the real story? In a weird way, it felt like we were talking about someone else’s life.
“I mean, I was a kid during all of this, right?” I said. “In a tiny private school with other actors’ kids, and we’re all insulated from this stuff. Basically, Mom came to get me during school one day. She had the car packed full of suitcases, and the dog. We drove for hours—it felt like forever, but seriously, it was like six hours.”
Beside me, Sam laughed.
“We got to Nana’s house on the river, and I think that was the first time I asked whether we were going to go home. Mom said no.” Pausing, I pulled up another blade of grass. “I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him.”
“Does anyone in Guerneville know who you guys are?”
“Probably some of the locals, yeah. I mean Nana has lived there forever, but everyone just knows her as Jude. I bet the only one who knows her last name is Houriet is Alan, the mailman. Mom grew up there, but she cut her hair, dyed it brown, goes by Emma now, not Emmeline, and we both use the last name Jones. Almost everything is in Nana’s name and it’s not like Emma Jones would mean anything to anyone.” I shrugged. “It seems like anyone left in town who knows who Mom is and why she came back also didn’t need to get into her business, if she felt like hiding.”
“But you have friends who know?”
“My best friend, Charlie, knows. That’s it.”
Guilt started to creep in, spreading from the center of my chest outward until I felt cold all over. It was both good and terrifying to talk about all of it. I was spilling everything. I knew Mom and Nana built this secluded bubble to protect us, but talking about it was a little like unleashing a creature we’d kept in a basement for years. Nice to be rid of it, but now the world could see the ugliness for themselves.
“There were some pictures of you from LAX, weren’t there?” he asked.
“Oh, right.” I settled back beside him, and he surprised me by taking my hand. My neck and face burned with nerves, but I didn’t let go. “It was the first approved visit I had with Dad after the divorce—when I was nine. Mom bought a ticket for me to fly down. She walked me to the gate, hugged me about a thousand times before she’d let me leave with the flight attendant. She was more freaked out about me flying alone than I was, and even more freaked out that I would be hounded by the press when I was out with Dad. I landed in LA, got off the plane with the escort, and waited.”
I told Sam about the rest of it then: about feeling like I was waiting a long time—long enough for some people to figure out who I was, and for a couple of them to take pictures of me. After a while I realized the airline people were figuring out which parent to let me go home with, because Mom flew down and got me.
“I guess she was too worried about me being in LA, and in the papers. She said Dad was waiting, but he would understand, and I guess he did, because she took me home.”
Sam went still next to me when he heard this, and his lingering silence made me uneasy.
“What?” I asked, after his silence started to feel like a thick fog.
“You really haven’t read the articles about this, have you?”
I turned my head, looking over at him. He wore the expression of someone who was about to break terrible news. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he started, looking back up at the sky, “the story that’s out there is a little different.”
I waited for him to tell me, but it was clear that I was going to have to confirm that I really wanted to hear it. “Is it that bad?”
“I… it’s pretty bad?”
“Just tell me.”
“I think your mom had to fly down because your dad didn’t show up,” Sam said quietly. “At least, that’s what I read.”
A chill spread down my arms. “What?”
“I mean, there’s not a ton. But I remember it because there aren’t any pictures of you after you left LA—except for these. I saw pictures of you waiting in LAX, and witnesses who said that the gate attendants were trying to get ahold of Ian Butler, but couldn’t.”
My history crumbled the tiniest bit. Did I really want the truth? Or did I want the story that let me feel better about my silent father? I supposed it was too late now.
“He put out a statement,” Sam said, and turned back to look at me, eyes searching. “You never heard this?”
I shook my head. The only time Charlie and I had worked up the nerve to look up Ian Butler online, the first hit was a strategically posed naked photo shoot for GQ, and that was enough to kill the urge to do it again.
“He basically threw his assistant under the bus, saying she had written the time down wrong, and explained how heartbroken he was.”
Shrugging, I said, “I mean, it could be… ”
“Yeah, that’s true.” Another long pause, and my hopeful grip on this possibility loosened. “Did he fly up to see you after that?”
I closed my eyes. “Not that I know of.”
Sam cleared his throat, and the uncomfortable fallout silence felt like a weight on my chest. “I mean,” he said, clearly scrambling for something to say, “maybe it’s for the best. Charlie sounds pretty nice, but if you lived in LA, maybe your best friend would be Britney. And we all know she’s a ticking time bomb.”
I laughed, but it sounded hollow. “Totally.”
I riffled through my thoughts, digging for something more to say, a different subject to discuss, but just when I thought my heart was going to roll over in my chest from the tension, Sam rescued us both: “You know, I have this theory about cats.”
I blinked over to him, confused. “Cats?”
“Yeah, I don’t like them.”
“That’s your theory?”
He laughed. “No. Listen. I don’t like cats, but whenever I go to a house with cats, they always come over and sit on me.”
“Because they take one look at you and think you’re furniture.”
This made him laugh harder. “Sure, that’s another theory. But here’s mine: those anti-cat vibes would be weird for a human—like when we sense someone doesn’t like us, and it’s just really uncomfortable—but maybe for a cat, those weird vibes are comforting.”
“Bad vibes are good for cats?” I asked.
“Exactly. There’s something about the tension they like.”
I stewed on this one a little, thinking. “If that’s true, cats are sort of evil.”
“Without a doubt they’re evil. I’m just finding the root of it.”
I looked over at him. “I think cats are cute. They’re not needy, they’re smart. They’re awesome.”
“You’re wrong.”
This made me burst out laughing, and I let it roll through me, pushing out the residual tension over Dad, and what I’d learned from Sam. But just thinking about it again brought some of the tightness back to my chest.
Maybe he sensed it, because Sam squeezed my hand. And then I knew he sensed it, because he said, “I’m sorry your dad sucks.”
This pulled a surprised laugh out of me. “I’m sorry your dad sucks, too.”
“I’m never seeing another Ian Butler movie ever again.” He paused. “Except Encryptio
n, because that movie is the fucking bomb.”
“Hey!”
“Sorry, Tate, it’s just science.”
three
MOM MUST HAVE SAID something to Nana—telling her to go easy on me, let me have some fun, something—because without any complaint or even a whiff of displeasure from my grandmother, Luther and Sam became our regular companions in London. Each morning I bolted from bed and raced through the process of getting ready, eager to sit across from Sam, to wander the city together, to see him. We talked for hours in the garden every night. He said he’d lived in a small town for all but the first two years of his life, but he had more stories and random theories than anyone I’d ever met.
At breakfast each morning, they were across the table from us: Sam with his flirty smile and plate piled high, and Luther with his highly sugared cup of coffee. On the street, they were usually a few steps behind us, wrestling with the giant map Luther insisted on using and arguing over alternative Tube stations when we found Paddington closed.
On a particularly gloomy day, we avoided the rain by visiting the Natural History Museum. Luther made up funny—and very loud—fictional stories about each of the dinosaurs in the Blue Zone, and even managed to coax Nana into dropping her plans for lunch at an old hotel she found in a guidebook. Instead, we ate burgers at a dark pub and laughed hysterically as Sam told us about things going disastrously wrong with the milking equipment on his first morning shift alone at the farm.
Not only did Nana not seem to mind our new traveling sidekicks, she genuinely seemed to enjoy Luther’s company. After lunch, they walked on ahead, and Sam came up alongside me while we strolled, bellies full, to the Baker Street station.
“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” he asked.
I took a few quiet seconds to think while Sam and I wove in and out of pedestrian traffic. Together, apart, together. His arm brushed against mine, and in a heated breath I registered that it didn’t feel accidental.
“Nana’s house is on the water,” I told him. “It’s raised on stilts, overlooking the Russian River and—”
“Wow—stilts?”
“Yeah, I mean, the river floods a lot, so most houses near the water are on stilts.” When his eyes went wider, I said, “Don’t get a mental image of some sort of elaborate castle. It’s really just a three-bedroom, plain house on stilts. Anyway, we’re not supposed to jump from the deck because it’s so high up. The river is pretty deep there, but our toes always brush bottom, and the depth changes year to year. Someday we’ll jump and it’ll just be riverbed.”
Sam’s hand brushed mine when we sidestepped a man on the sidewalk, and this time it was accidental: he apologized under his breath. I wanted to reach out and make the contact permanent.
“Charlie and I would jump off the deck when we were home alone. I’m not even sure why.”
“Of course you know why.”
“To be scared?”
“To feel a rush, yeah.” He grinned over at me. “What would you think about when you jumped?”
“Just… ” I shook my head, trying to remember the feeling. “Just that there was nothing else in that moment, you know? No school, no boys, no drama, no chores. Just jumping into the cold water and feeling crazy and happy afterward.”
“You’re pretty cute if that’s the craziest thing.”
I wasn’t sure whether I was more thrilled that he called me cute, or embarrassed to be exposed for being so tame. I held in a shaky breath and laughed. “You know me.” And in a weird way, I felt like he did. “What about you?”
Sam hummed. “Tipping cows. Drinking beer in the middle of nowhere. Weird races and games in cornfields. Trying to build an airplane.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s easy to be crazy on a farm.”
“Is it?”
“Yeah, I mean,” he said, ducking around a man walking aimlessly with his eyes on his BlackBerry, “everyone in Eden’s always saying when you live in the middle of nowhere it’s impossible to get into trouble, and I think it gives parents a sense of ease, like even if they can’t see us, what’s the worst thing that could happen? Drinking some beer in a field? But knowing they think that, I don’t know… it feels sort of like a challenge sometimes.”
“Did you ever get hurt?”
Sam shook his head. “Hangovers? Sprained my ankle once. But it’s mostly just a group of us being idiots. Most of the girls around are way smarter than we are and could kick our asses. It kept us from going too far.”
Nana turned around, waiting for us to catch up. “What are you talking about?”
I grinned over at Sam. “He’s talking about drinking beer in fields, tipping cows, and building an airplane.”
I expected Luther to say something about the cows or the beer, but he just nodded proudly. “That plane nearly flew, didn’t it?”
Sam looked down at me, grinning. He knew exactly what I was trying to do—get him busted—and when Nana and Luther turned back around, he dug a long finger into my ribs, tickling. “Looks like that backfired, missy.”
* * *
Mom called me that night, right as I was slipping out the door to meet Sam. I took my flip phone out of the room with me, not wanting to wake up an already-snoring Nana.
I’d been wondering whether Mom was lonely with us away in London, though I knew how much work it took to keep the café open, and even with a couple women from town helping her while we were gone, I was sure Mom didn’t have a lot of time to think about anything but work. Still, if it was nine o’clock at night in London, it was one in the afternoon at home; Mom should have been running around like mad handling the lunch rush. Unless…
“What’s wrong?” I asked immediately.
She laughed. “Can’t I miss my kid?”
“You can,” I said, “but not when you’re supposed to be at the café. Nana will lose it.”
“It’s Tuesday,” she reminded me. “We’re closed. I’m actually still in my jammies.”
I pressed the down button on the elevator, relieved. “I have no sense of what day it is.”
“That’s the best thing about vacation.”
This triggered a small, guilty realization. “When was the last time you took one?”
The only one I could think of was when she took me to Seattle for a weekend a little over a year ago. Other than that, it felt like Mom had become a happy, settled fixture of Guerneville. Just like Nana.
“Seattle,” she confirmed, and I felt a weird wiggle of guilt that we didn’t just close up the café and bring her along. “But don’t worry about me. You know I love summers here.”
I always had, too. The heat came rolling in across the river and down the dried creek beds bursting with fat blackberries. The air grew so sweet and the sun heated the beaches and sidewalks so hot, we couldn’t go barefoot for even a few seconds. If we needed a reprieve, we drove just a few miles west, where the ocean met the Russian River. On the coastal beach just past Jenner, we would be blasted with air so cold we needed jackets in the middle of July. The town filled with tourists and their money and there was always a line outside Nana’s café, all day long.
“Maybe once I start school, over a break we can go on a trip, me and you,” I said.
“That sounds nice, muffin.” She paused. “Are you walking? What time is it there?”
Guiltily, I admitted, “I’m sneaking out to hang out with Sam.”
“Do you think you two could make it work?” she asked. “Cross-country?”
“Mom.” A bright flash of genuine irritation jetted through me at how quickly she went from me hanging out with Sam to imagining a long-distance relationship. I loved her romantic streak, but sometimes it was more pushy than anything. “I’m eighteen, and we aren’t a thing.”
“I’m not setting you up to be a child bride, Tate. But to just… have fun. Be eighteen.”
“Isn’t it your job to discourage this kind of behavior?”
I could almost see her waving this concern away. “Y
ou get plenty of that from Nana. I’m just dreaming, you know me, having the fun conversation and what-ifs.”
“I like him but—I don’t want to get my hopes up and start talking about what-ifs.”
“Why not?” she asked. “It’s not like you won’t be disappointed regardless if nothing happens. I don’t know why people think permanent denial is better than temporary disappointment.”
I knew she was right, allowing myself a few moments of fantasy as I made my way from the elevator to the back doors that led to the garden. My only boyfriend to date lived a half mile down the road from me. What would it be like to date someone in another state, clear across the country?
“I mean,” I said, giving in, “he’s so cute, Mom. But he’s more than that, he’s really easy to talk to. I feel like I could tell him anything.”
Mom paused again, and in that silence I heard how quickly the unspoken question formed. Finally: “Did you?”
What was I hearing in her voice? Fear or excitement? Sometimes they sound the same—thin and tight, words clipped.
Would she be angry if she knew I’d told him? Or would she understand my desire to lay claim to this glimmering history of ours? Sometimes I got the weird sense that I was disappointing her by not rebelling and shouting from a megaphone who I was, who she was, where we came from. In London, I wanted there to be a reason for my small-town clothes, bland ponytail, outdated style. I told myself it could be fun, playing the role of the country mouse in a big city. But in the privacy of my own thoughts and as selfish as it sounded, I wanted the world to know that it was just an act, that I wasn’t meant to be a fish out of water in this land of cosmopolitan women.
Daughter of world’s most famous actor has been living a simple life in a tiny town and never learned fashion. She’s so down-to-earth!
But I told Mom a lie instead of the truth. “No way, Mom. I would never.”
She exhaled, humming quietly. “Okay, muffin. Let’s talk tomorrow?”
I blew her a kiss before hanging up, feeling the sour weight of the lie settling in my gut.
The guilt melted away as soon as I stepped out into the dark, glimmering night. Sam didn’t look up as I settled beside him on the chilly grass, but I could feel the way he shifted, sliding just a little bit closer.
Twice in a Blue Moon Page 5