We were all quiet. The words she was speaking were what I’d been waiting for. I thought I’d feel differently, like some weight had been lifted. I waited for a bright light to glow from within. But, none of that happened. I was still the same person. I stared at the woman who was my mother and a megastar.
“What are you saying?” Lou asked, his voice cold.
“I want a second chance.”
- 48 -
Lou
A weird look came over Dizzy’s face. Shock and confusion all at once. She kept blinking. I thought, This was what you wanted. Georgia wants to be part of our lives, so why aren’t you saying anything? Why aren’t you jumping at the chance she’s giving you? Georgia’s words hung in the air, suspended, while Dizzy tried to make sense of them.
Georgia was willing to put her career on the line, make herself a target for reporters, tabloids. I knew we were going to have it bad, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be like for her.
Dizzy didn’t say anything. She went to her backpack, fished something out, and walked back to Georgia. Seeing the two of them so close to each other, I realized how much they looked alike. “Here,” she said and handed Georgia a photo and something else — a birth certificate.
The beeping on the machine by Dad’s bed was the only sound in the room.
“Take it.” Dizzy’s mouth was set with grim determination. I’d seen that look before. Georgia held up the photo. It was the one of our family. In it, I stood in front of Dad, who had his arm around Georgia, her belly round with Dizzy. She held it up and gave a soft moan. Then, she looked at the birth certificate. “Georgia Hay,” she murmured and sighed.
“I was going to show this to people, to prove who I was. But I know who I am. I’m Dizzy Doucette. Ray’s daughter.” Georgia looked up at her. She swallowed, her eyes swimming with tears. Dizzy balled up her hands into fists, as if summoning the strength for the next words. “You should go.” Dizzy’s voice cracked. She went to Dad, bending over the bed so she could rest her head against his chest. His arms encircled her as her shoulders shook with sobs. Dad rubbed her back with the hand not attached to the IV. “It’s okay,” he whispered.
Georgia opened her mouth to say something to me, but I shook my head. A silent don’t hung between us. She picked up her purse and took out a business card, held it up for me to see, and left it on the table by her chair. She slid the photograph inside her purse and composed herself. There were tears in her eyes, too. I shifted to let her pass by, an arm’s length away but still unreachable.
Dizzy didn’t see Georgia leave. Probably heard her heels tap across the hospital room floor, but she didn’t look up. Didn’t say goodbye. She stayed beside Dad until I went over and wrapped my arms around both of them.
I glanced back at the card she’d left behind and the empty chair where Georgia had been. She’d come in and out like a ghost. Like a memory of a mother we didn’t know. Like we’d never know.
- 49 -
Dizzy
I felt Dad’s ribs shudder under me as he took a breath. “Oh man,” he groaned. Tears leaked out the corner of his eyes, too. I’d never seen him cry, and the shock of it made me pull away.
“She’s gone,” he said.
Again.
“She’s a stranger,” I murmured. I guess that was what had hurt the most. I thought there would be an instant connection, some mother-daughter bond that would spring out of nowhere.
Lou moved to where Georgia had been sitting and picked a card up off the table. “She left this,” he said. “‘Stan Wertz, Manager.’”
Dad snorted. “That old dog’s still her manager!”
“Why’d she leave his card?” I asked.
Lou turned it over. On the back was another number written in blue ink. “Must be her cell,” Lou said. We both looked at it. “What should I do with it?”
“Throw it away,” I said.
“No!” Dad made a grab for it, but the tubes attaching him to the machines stopped him. “No, don’t throw it away.”
I looked at Dad. How could he still care about her? “One day, you might want that number. I know you’re mad now, but that’ll fade. Keep the card.”
Lou handed it over to me. I hesitated before taking it, feeling like a traitor for tucking it into my pocket.
My phone rang with the ringtone reserved for Maya.
“Get it,” Dad said, wiggling his nose and sniffling.
“How’s your dad?” Maya asked as soon as I answered.
“He’s okay. It wasn’t a heart attack,” I said. My voice was thick, choked by a hundred emotions.
“Thank God.” She sighed with relief and repeated my words out loud, probably to her mom. “Dizz, have you seen what’s going on at the store? You’re all over the news. It is crazy!”
“I know, we saw.”
“Are you okay?” she asked. “Like, I know you’re not, but you sound weird.”
“She was here, Maya. Georgia was here.”
Silence. “What?” she croaked.
“Yeah. She wanted a second chance. That’s what she said. After all this time.” I took a deep breath and looked at Dad. Colour had come back into his cheeks. He didn’t look so weak anymore. “But I told her to leave.” Had I made the right choice? Doubt hammered in my head. What if I’d sent her away and she never came back? Was that really what I wanted?
“Oh.” Maya breathed out on the other side of the phone. “Wow.”
There was so much more I wanted to tell Maya, but I couldn’t do it over the phone. Not with Dad still lying in a hospital bed beside me. “I should go. I’ll call you when we’re home.”
I waited to hear the dial tone before pressing the End Call icon.
“Can I come in?” Jeremy knocked on the door and opened it a crack, peering in. “Is she gone?”
“Yeah,” we all said at once.
“Didn’t see the security guard, so I figured it was okay to come back. What happened?”
“She wants back in,” Lou said sardonically.
Jeremy gaped at him. “No kidding. Cuz of Dizzy’s video?”
I shrugged and looked at Dad.
“Who knows? I stopped trying to figure her out a long time ago.”
Lou’s surprise at her sudden appearance had turned to anger. His eyes smouldered with it. “It was like she thought we’d drop everything to have her in our lives again.”
“I did go to her concert. And the video …” I let my words drift off. “She probably thought it’s what I wanted.”
Jeremy looked at me confused. “Wasn’t it?”
“It was. Until.” I glanced at Dad and hung my head guiltily. “I wish I’d never made the video.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Lou said, resigned. “At least we don’t have that to worry about.” He pointed to the sheaf of papers lying on Dad’s legs.
Dad shook his head and picked it up. “God. She had no idea the stress this caused me.” For a second, his eyes flashed. He’d worked so hard not to hate her.
“I found this in the safe.” I took the folded-up song lyrics from my bag and gave them to Dad.
“Her goodbye letter.”
“I thought there was no letter,” Lou said, reaching for it.
Dad’s mouth settled into a grim line but passed it to him. “Couldn’t really explain this to a kid.”
Lou read it, his eyes flying over the words and raised his eyebrows at us when he got to the end. “She was scared, wasn’t she?”
“Think so.”
“Of being trapped.” Lou blinked, as if he’d just realized something.
“Yeah, maybe. She never liked staying put,” he said with a sigh.
I thought about the photo and the way her eyes drifted off, like she wanted to be somewhere else. “Guess that’s changed, if she’s moving to Las Vegas.”
“We’ll see,” said Dad. “It’s been almost twenty years. She’s a different person now.”
Jeremy collapsed into a chair and groaned. “I’m putti
ng all the pieces together now. Like when I set up that display, the looks on your faces! God! That must have been killing you guys looking at those posters all day!”
Lou and I nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“I’ll take it down as soon as we get back to the store,” he promised.
The door to Dad’s room swung open and a nurse walked in. It was the same one who had shooed us out earlier. “Your friends left?” she asked Dad, bustling efficiently to his side. She pulled out the IV needle in a quick motion and rolled up the tube.
“Yeah. Does this mean I’m free to go?”
“Yes, it does. Drink plenty of liquids and get some rest. I don’t want to see you back here.” Her eyes lingered on me as she tilted her head, appraisingly. Get used to it, I thought to myself.
Dad swung his legs off the bed after she’d left. “Gimme a minute to get changed, then we can go.”
Leaving the safety of the hospital meant braving the reporters and photographers outside the store. Part of me wished we could stay in Dad’s room and avoid the circus outside. But no matter how long I hung out in here, sooner or later, I’d have to deal with it. May as well make it sooner.
We got home to find Barney and Rudy patrolling in front of the store. A few reporters sat in their cars across the street, but the news crews had cleared out. The reporters shouted questions at us as we hustled inside. I didn’t look up and passed them in a blur; my only concern was getting Dad somewhere comfortable.
“Think I’ll go have a shower,” Dad said. “Wipe this hospital smell off me.” He had a bandage on his arm where the IV had been. “What a day,” he said and shook his head.
Lou waited to talk until we could hear the spray of the shower in the bathroom. “Now what?” he asked.
“What if we do nothing? Maybe people will just forget about it.”
He snorted. “Ha! I don’t think so. She scheduled a press conference. It’s all over the news.” He held up his phone. The news app announced it on the ticker at the bottom.
“What’s she going to say?”
He shrugged. “You gave her the proof. It could go either way.”
“She said she wanted a second chance, though. Maybe she’ll do the right thing.”
Lou looked at me. “Which is what? Tell the truth and force us into the public eye, or lie and deny who we are?”
I frowned, the weight of things heavy on my shoulders. Neither option felt right. “I don’t know.”
“Me neither.”
I’d texted Maya to let her know we were on our way home. But every time I looked at my phone, I was ambushed by a new stream of text messages and notifications. I peered out the front window. A few more cars had pulled up, staking out their spots in advance of the press conference tomorrow, I guess.
“It has to be the truth,” I said quietly and moved away from the window. “She said she wants a fresh start. That’s the only way.”
Lou nodded. “Our lives are going to change.”
The doorbell downstairs rang and made us both jump. I peeked outside and saw someone in a navy peacoat standing at the door. It took me a minute to remember whose jacket it was. “It’s Maya,” I said, relieved.
I went down the stairs and unlocked the door. “It’s open,” I shouted. I stood to the side so the reporters couldn’t see me when she opened the door, but there were flashes anyway.
She bustled in with a flurry of oh my gods and hugged me. “Did you hear? She’s having a press conference.”
“I know.”
“She’ll say the video’s a lie. She has to. She won’t put you in the spotlight like that, not after the way she’s treated you.” We walked slowly up the stairs to the kitchen. Maya waved at Lou as we made our way to my room.
“But I started it. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t released the video. Maybe she thinks this is what we want.”
Maya pursed her lips. She reminded me of her mom. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t been a secret in the first place. I thought my life was a gong show, but yours is like —” She made a gesture of her head exploding.
I flopped on my bed, wishing the press conference would hurry up and arrive. I just wanted to get it over with and find out how I was going to spend the rest of my life: as Dizzy Doucette, or as Georgia Waters’s daughter.
- 50 -
Lou
“I’m calling her.” Dizzy burst into my room. “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to know what she’s going to say.” The business card Georgia had left in the hospital room was in her hand.
“Dizz,” I said, warningly. “Calm down.” Her eyes looked wild.
Dizzy kept talking like I hadn’t said anything. “She just came into Dad’s hospital room, like we wanted her there, and asked for a second chance. After ten years! I mean, fourteen, really, since the last time didn’t even count. Who does that?”
“You put the video out there, remember? You went to see her. You were the one who asked her why she hadn’t come to see us. She was reacting to you.”
My sister turned on me like I was the crazy one. Not that Dizzy was crazy — she’s usually logical and pretty together for a fifteen-year-old — but at the moment, I was hearing clown-car circus music in my head. Dizzy took a breath and collapsed on my bed, holding her head in her hands. “Oh my god,” she moaned. “This is all so screwed up.” When she looked at me, her eyes weren’t wild anymore. But they were sad and confused, and my heart sort of lurched for her. No, I said to myself. She set this in motion. Let her figure it out.
But she looked so vulnerable, and I thought of that day at the playground when I called her Deliar. I took a deep breath. “So call her. She gave you her number.”
Dizzy nodded. “What will I say?”
I threw my head back with an exasperated laugh. “I don’t know, Dizz! You’re the one who came into my room, remember?”
“I just don’t want to screw it up. I already feel …” She bent a corner of the card with her thumb. “Like I’ve made a mess of things. What if I make it worse?”
“Don’t think that’s possible.”
“Thanks.” She snorted.
I nodded to her phone. “Just call. You’re not going to be able to think about anything else until you do.”
“It’s ten o’clock here. Eleven o’clock in Montreal. She’d be off stage by now.”
I was trying to patient, but it was wearing thin. I squeezed my hands into fists, listening to her. “Perfect time to call.”
“I thought you’d tell me not to.” She looked at me suspiciously.
Me, too, I thought. I sighed again and looked at her. After years of bottling up my feelings and acting like it didn’t matter, Georgia was with us. Dizzy had found a way to bring her to us. In The Elders of Warren, it was Aldred’s long-lost mother who reappeared at the end with the power to free him from the cage. The book was a fantasy; together, their power was strong enough to defeat the evil wizard, and they lived happily ever after. Aldred even got together with the fairy who’d been following him, now freed from the wizard’s curse. I didn’t live in a fantasy, and Georgia wasn’t going to work any magic on me, but what kind of an asshole would I be if I didn’t believe it could happen?
“I want your eyes to be open. Make sure you know what you’re doing if you call her. She ditched us fourteen years ago. It’s not going to be sunshine and roses, no matter what she says.” A familiar fire flickered in Dizzy’s eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but I silenced her with a look. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”
She held her phone out in front of her and the card with the number, hesitating. “Seriously, Dizz! Do you want me to dial it for you?” Frustration won out and I grabbed the phone from her.
“No! I can do it.” She took the phone back and unlocked it. Then, she punched in Georgia’s number. She gulped, looking at me. For a second, I thought she’d chicken out, but she gritted her teeth and waited. One ring. Two rings. Aw, man. If Georgia didn’t answer …
“Hello?”
Dizzy stared at me, like a deer in headlights. I threw back my head, exasperated. She found her voice. “Hi. It’s me, Dizzy.”
There was silence on the other end. “Dizzy.” Georgia’s low, husky voice came through loud and clear.
- 51 -
Dizzy
I looked at Lou, sitting on his bed with his back up against the wall. Hearing Georgia’s voice on the phone made my stomach do a flip. I needed him beside me to take the first step and dial her number, but now that she was there, I knew I could do this on my own. “You left your number …” My words drifted off.
“Yeah, I’m glad you called.” She didn’t sound glad. She sounded surprised. “I just got off stage. Last show. The crew’s having a party tonight.”
“Do you need to go?” Don’t give her an out, I scolded myself.
She gave a laugh. “No. They won’t miss me.” I doubted that.
Now that I had her on the phone, I didn’t know what to say. I shut my eyes and focused.
“Are you at home? How’s Ray doing?”
“We got home a few hours ago. Dad’s tired, but they told him to drink lots and rest.”
“And how about you and Lou?” It was a loaded question and she knew it.
My mouth went dry. “We’re —” I looked at my brother. He had the veneer of calm, but I saw his jaw tense, his eyes careful and guarded even though she was nowhere near him. “I’m wondering about the press conference, about what you’ll say.” I finally got the words out and exhaled with relief.
“Oh.” Did her voice get colder? Disappointed?
“I just need to know. I mean, it’s my life and if you’re going to admit who we are —”
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