I thought this last part was hyperbole, but it was hard to tell. “Is Roberta still in touch with him?”
“She sends him cards on holidays.” Sam squinted, thinking. “I think they talk a couple times a year, maybe. But I know he never calls. If they talk, it’s because she’s calling him.”
“He sounds like trash. Is it weird that I’m imagining Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman?”
“Actually, that’s disturbingly accurate.”
“And it doesn’t bug you that he’s so… lame?” I asked.
“Honestly? Not really. Luther and Roberta are the best parents I could have had.”
God, he was so levelheaded. And what different lives we’d lived. Me, cherished, but held beneath two sets of very neurotic thumbs. Sam, given all the freedom he could handle—and then some—with just as much love.
The elevator doors opened, and we stepped apart. Usually, Sam went to his end of the hall and I went to mine, and we would wave at the door before ducking silently inside. But that night, he walked me down the hall to my room.
“I don’t like what you said,” he whispered outside the door, stilling my hand before I could use the key card. “Earlier. About it just being sex for me. You think I’m like that?”
“No. I don’t.” I looked up at him, taking in his tight, controlled expression. “It’s just this awesome-terrible situation. I feel more for you in the past week and a half than I did for Jesse in three years. And it’s going to end. It just… sucks.”
He pulled back, alarmed. “Why’s it going to end?”
“Because—”
He bent, cutting off my words with his mouth, the sweetest kiss, stopping me in my mental tracks. Pulling away, he cupped his hands to my face and looked me square in the eye. “Because nothing,” he said, “okay?”
I nodded, a little breathless. “Okay.”
Sam kissed me one more time and then hesitated. His cheeks flushed just before he admitted, “I think I’m falling in love with you. Is that crazy?”
Biting my lips was the only way to hold in my elated scream. Finally, I managed, “No. It isn’t crazy. Because, me too.”
eight
I COULDN’T EVEN LOOK at him at breakfast when he arrived at our usual table, because I knew I would burst into a giant, stupid grin and Nana would realize not only that I was infatuated with this guy, but probably that we’d had sex and were pretty much thinking about only that whenever we were together.
I think I’m falling in love with you.
“Where’s Luther?” Nana asked.
But at this, I looked up. Usually Sam grabbed his plate after a quick hello and made a beeline for the buffet. But that morning, he looked haggard, pulling out a chair and sitting heavily down. “He’s still in bed.”
Sam caught my gaze, and his normally smiling eyes were oddly flat. He winced, opening his mouth to speak before seeming to think better of it, and broke his gaze away, looking out the window into the garden. I watched him lift a hand, chew his thumbnail, and we all fell silent for a good ten seconds, unsure what to say.
My lungs, heart, and stomach seemed to fall away. Nana and I exchanged anxious looks.
Worry etched another crease into her forehead. “Are you okay, hon?”
Blinking back over, he inhaled sharply, as if he’d forgotten where he was. “Yeah. I’m good. Hungry.”
Without another word, he stood, walking away toward the buffet.
Nana watched him go, but I focused on my mostly empty plate. His mood very well might have had something to do with Luther, but he’d been worried about Luther this entire trip and hadn’t ever been cold to me because of it.
The only thing that had changed from yesterday was that he’d told me he loved me.
“Well, he doesn’t seem like himself.” She picked up her fork. “But then again, Luther’s been looking pretty gray lately. Wonder if that has Sam in a mood.”
Sam returned with his usual loaded plate and proceeded to shovel food into his mouth.
“Sam,” I said quietly, as soon as Nana stood to get some fruit.
He looked up at me, chewing, unspeaking, with his brows raised.
“You sure you’re okay?”
We held eye contact for ten bewildering seconds before he swallowed and looked down to spear another forkful of eggs. “Not really.”
He didn’t look back at me, so we finished breakfast together in silence broken only by the scrape of silverware on porcelain.
* * *
I couldn’t talk to him on the elevator ride back up to our rooms because Nana was there. And when I knocked at his door while Nana was using the restroom, no one answered.
He and Luther were nowhere to be seen when we were ready to head out for the day.
Sam wasn’t in the garden after dinner.
He didn’t come to breakfast the next day.
“I wonder if they left for the Lake District early,” Nana mused, staring distractedly out the window. It must have been weird for her, too, to have them so abruptly disappear.
“Sam told me that he thinks Luther is sick,” I told her.
She nodded. “I think so too.”
And with that, I didn’t feel like eating. Everything tasted the same: bland and gluey.
“Honey,” she said gently, “I know you were fond of him. I’m sorry.”
Fond.
I was fond of chocolate. I was fond of my red Doc Martens. I was fond of sunny days out on the water. I was not fond of Sam.
But still, I nodded, trying to work a piece of grapefruit down my throat.
On the phone with Mom after breakfast, I knew I sounded flat. She was used to me talking more, and when confronted with my monosyllabic answers, she grew concerned—asking about Nana, about Sam, about me. I gave her the barest of facts: that Sam and Luther had left, and no, I didn’t think we’d keep in touch. That Nana and I were heading to St. Paul’s Cathedral that day.
A wave of nausea rocked me when I remembered what he’d said about coming to California, traveling with me to LA and supporting me when I reunited with my dad. It wasn’t that it couldn’t happen without Sam, but he was the first person in my life to encourage me to try. He gave me a bravery and sense of strength I hadn’t felt before. I had no way of finding him. He didn’t even have my number, either.
I hung up and slid the phone into my purse.
Numb, I followed Nana down the hall, into the elevator. I let the flatness take over. It was like folding a piece of paper, tucking it under a stack of books, letting the weight of some other story take over whatever interesting thing had been written there.
“Ready to explore?” Nana said too brightly. I could tell she was trying to put on a happy face, to show me how one soldiers on from a disappointment.
I grinned back at her, feeling the shape spread across my mouth, knowing it was more of a grimace.
“Okay, hon,” she said with a gentle laugh. “Let’s go.”
She marched ahead, shoulders squared, chin up, pushing through the doors to the sidewalk. And because I was looking at the ground, I didn’t notice when she pulled up abruptly. I walked into her back, causing her to stumble forward.
An explosion of cameras caught the awkward collision on film. I’d see the photos everywhere for weeks to come. A chorus of voices shouted my name—they knew my name. Nana turned, grabbing my hand and jerking me back into the hotel. It took me a long time—far longer than it took her—to figure out what was going on.
nine
LOST NO LONGER:
Tate Butler Steps Out in London
The famed daughter of Ian Butler and Emmeline Houriet surfaces, and tells her story of a life of hiding, secrecy, and fear.
Screen legend Ian Butler’s only daughter vanished completely from the public eye when she was only eight, spurring wild conspiracy theories that would plague him and enthrall fans for years. But this week in London, Tate Butler has resurfaced and spilled the details about her life in seclusion.
&nbs
p; Once a doting husband and father who was often photographed on the red carpet with his wide-eyed and smiling daughter in his arms, Ian became tangled in scandal following an affair with co-star Lena Still. His wife and daughter fled Los Angeles, leaving the public without a clue to their whereabouts. Indeed, for nearly a decade the world has wondered what happened to the girl with her father’s million-dollar smile, and—moreover—what happened to her mother, rising starlet Emmeline Houriet.
The truth about what happened next comes from the daughter herself, Tate Butler, now eighteen. A close friend of Tate’s tells the Guardian that she has graduated from high school; is attending college in Sonoma, California, this fall; is obsessed with the idea of following in her father’s footsteps; and “is ready to move beyond her secretive past.”
As it turns out, Tate was taken by Emmeline to a small town north of San Francisco, where she assumed the name Tate Jones. Emmeline—who managed to stay under the radar as Emma Jones—has lived a quiet life in the small resort town of Guerneville, California. Although custody battles raged behind the scenes, eventually Emmeline won full custody of Tate, and worked to keep her away from Ian, and the spotlight.
Tate’s first trip out of the country was to London, and it was here that she told a trusted confidant everything.
“I don’t get the impression that he was a very good father,” the source says. “Despite his side of the story, Ian didn’t make many attempts to connect with Tate. She has been incredibly sheltered. No one—except maybe three or four people—knows who she is. It was a priority for her mother and [her grandmother] Jude to keep Tate out of the spotlight, and they’ve done that. But she’s an adult now. It’s time for her to start living her life freely.”
ten
I WAS HYSTERICAL ON the phone—a bubbling cauldron of panic. After Mom admitted that there were photographers outside the house back in Guerneville, she could barely get a word in edgewise.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I’m so sorry.”
“Baby girl, listen,” she said, “this was going to happen at some—”
“But I told him everything. I told him about you,” I choked, “and Dad. What is Dad going to say? Is he going to sue us?”
At this Mom laughed. “Don’t be silly.”
Don’t be silly.
She sounded so sure. So unworried.
Meanwhile, Nana paced the room behind me, on the phone with the airline, trying to rearrange our flights. Once that was sorted, she called Mom’s old agent, coordinating to have someone meet us at Heathrow, to get us home without incident.
I was just holding the phone to my ear, listening without hearing the words Mom was sending across the line. Soft sounds of reassurance, telling me she loved me, it would all be okay.
But it wasn’t okay. I knew I’d made an enormous mess.
And a small voice in the very back of my head kept whispering, He’s going to remember he has a daughter now.
* * *
A man met us at the airport. He opened the door as our car pulled up to the curb. Before I could catch a glimpse of his face, the door closed again and he shuttled Nana past a throng of photographers, into a tight circle of airport security guards. And then he came back, holding his hand out for me.
He smiled. “Hey, Tate. I’m Marco.”
He was in his late twenties: fine, carved features, jet-black hair, penetrating blue eyes—and yet somehow he managed to exude calm rather than panic, like he’d navigated this sort of thing a thousand times before. I took his hand; it was warm. His skin was soft, but I could feel the strength of the tendons and bone beneath when he tugged me forward, out of the backseat.
To my surprise, Marco didn’t pass me off to a crew of security guards. He ushered me in under the blinding hail of flashes, hiding me beneath his own coat. The airport wanted even less to do with this madness than we did, so they let us through a private security line and into a secure room while we waited to board our flight.
Nana stepped out, telling me she needed to call Mom, needed to get water. To me, it felt like she needed to get away from me and my terrible decisions for a few minutes. My eyes were puffy; so puffy I felt like I could see my own eyelids. My nose was sore from being wiped on tissue after tissue, my lips were chapped. I hadn’t brushed my hair.
I looked up at this polished, composed stranger, and his expression was exactly the same as it was when there were a hundred photographers on our trail: mouth a faint upward curve, eyes steady.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Are you kidding?” I ran a shaking hand over my hair. “I’m great. You?”
He burst out laughing, but I couldn’t keep up the surreal joke. I felt the tears swell in the back of my throat.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” I told him, voice thick.
“Of course not.” He waved like my intention was the least of his concerns, and a smile lit up his entire face. He was too pretty to be very masculine. Elfin. I remember seeing Lord of the Rings with Charlie and laughing for hours when she quipped that Legolas was the prettiest woman in the movie. Marco was like that.
“Ian has been on four major magazine covers this month,” he said. “So finding you is the biggest story anyone has on either side of the ocean. There’s no way around this circus.”
Whether we were past it or not, I needed to know. “Not to be rude… but who are you?”
He pressed an apologetic hand to his chest. “I’m sorry. Of course. My name is Marco Offredi. I’m a PR manager. I was hired by your trust to handle all of your publicity-related concerns for as long as you should need.”
“My… trust? Hired you?”
He laughed. “Technically. The trust pays my salary, but your father called me.”
I squeezed one eye closed, squinting the other at him. My thoughts were windmilling around my head. “I’m so confused. I haven’t spoken to my dad in ten years. I didn’t know I had a trust.”
If this surprised Marco, he hid it. “From my very basic understanding, all the money your father owed in child support was set aside.” He spread his hands, and the gesture opened my entire world. “The trust covers anything you might need after you leave home.”
Slowly, my head started to spin. I was a carousel, gathering speed. “Who’s in charge of the trust?”
“You are, as of your eighteenth birthday.”
“But,” I spluttered, forcing the right questions to form in my mouth, “who was in charge of it before me?”
“Your parents.”
Blackness threatened at the edges of my vision, and Marco became blurrily framed. “Both of them?”
“Ian and Emmeline.” He leaned in, his light eyes steadying me. “When the news broke, Emmeline called Ian, and Ian called me.”
“I didn’t even know they were speaking.”
“They hadn’t been,” he said. “Not outside of the occasional legal correspondence, anyway.”
But they were now.
“There is nothing sinister happening,” Marco assured me, maybe sensing my panic. “Your parents don’t get along, but the priority here is you. I am not here for Ian, or for Emmeline. I am here for Tate Jones, Tate Butler—whichever Tate you want to be. I work for you.”
This entire situation was a chaotic mix of titillating and alarming. Beneath the guilt and devastation I felt, there was a curiosity lurking, an odd sense of power.
Marco seemed to see this reaction pass over me. He reached into a leather laptop case near his feet and produced a bag of trail mix, handing it to me. “Want to tell me everything?”
Managing my first smile in what felt like days, I admitted, “Not really.”
“I’m not here to judge,” he said. “I know the story of your mom and dad, but I don’t know anything about you after you left LA. Why don’t you tell me a little bit about who I’m working for?”
I glanced anxiously at the door. No sign of Nana yet.
When I looked back to Marco, he didn’t look away. He blinked slow
ly, giving me that same gentle smile. There was something in his posture—he exuded a sense of tenacity and loyalty that made me want to go sit next to him and cry for an hour. I wanted to trust him, but I trusted Sam and look where that landed me. What if my internal compass was broken?
“I confided everything to the wrong person,” I told him. “That’s how we ended up here.”
“I’m sure that makes it hard to say it all over again. Can you tell me about him?” When I remained quiet, he added, “It will help me know how to best manage this for you.”
“I thought he felt the same way I did,” I said quietly. “We… yeah.”
My face crumpled, and his expression morphed from gentle calm to genuine empathy. “He broke your heart.”
So I spilled it all. Every last detail. I told him about the garden, about meeting Sam every night. I told him about all the things I confided and about our day of freedom in the paddleboat. I admitted that I slept with him that day and nearly every day after. I told him that Sam seemed like the first person who knew me as me—the Tate I felt like I’d never been allowed to be.
“What do you want to do?” he asked once I finished.
“Whatever Mom has planned.” I shrugged, feeling sick. It was both the truth and a lie. I wanted to do whatever made this easier for her and Nana, but there was something else glittering there, winking at me from a distance. “I’m not sure what she and my dad will want me to do once we’re home.”
“I’m not here for them. I’m asking you, Tate,” he said. Marco leaned his chin in a cupped palm. “What do you want to do now?”
Shaking my head, I asked him, “What do you mean?”
“Do you want to live in the sun?” he asked quietly. “Or do you want to go back in the shadows?”
eleven
SEPTEMBER
Now
IT’S NOT UNTIL I’M facing the entrance to Twitter headquarters that I realize I’ve personally only tweeted from my account twice in ten years. Even so, I have over four million followers and I’m supposed to do a live chat in ten minutes. I can already see an enormous crowd of bodies just inside the doors and have no idea how I’m going to do this without screwing up.
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