The Rock Star's Daughter (3 page)

"Hi," I said weakly. I thought about adding
Dad to my greeting but I don't think I had ever actually called him
that.

He was on his feet and hugging me in a
second. He smelled like expensive, spicy cologne and he had stubble
on his jaw offsetting the goatee that I guessed was from travel and
not part of a really misguided attempt at being sexy. It was kind
of weird that I was only a few inches shorter than him. The last
time I had seen him it had been much clearer that I was a child and
he was an adult, but now, looking at him, I was far more aware of
his fake tan… and of his nose looking a little straighter than it
had looked in photographs I had seen in magazines.

"Hi, baby," my father said, messing up my
hair. I was seated in a hard plastic chair next to him at Lois's
desk.

"Now. Taylor, your father tells me that he
has never before had custody of you," Lois began, getting down to
business.

"That's correct," I said. "I've lived with my
mom my whole life."

"And you are in the tenth grade, going into
eleventh?" Lois asked, reviewing forms that apparently my father
had filled out while I was upstairs. He had known my social
security number. I was momentarily impressed.

"Yes," I said.

"And where are you enrolled in school?"

"The Treadwell Preparatory Academy," I said,
a little choked up. What a jerk I had been to my own mother. I had
wanted to get away from her so badly that I had demanded boarding
school and had made her go to my father and grovel for money. In
the days following her death, the slightest regret could cause me
to burst into sporadic tears.

"And where is that located?" Lois asked,
clueless.

"Massachusetts," my father interjected.

Connie, the other administrator who had met
with me at the hospital, entered the office with a manila folder
that had BEAUFORTE typed on a label on its tab. "There's a small
complication," Connie announced. "You are not listed as Margaret's
father on her birth certificate."

My father looked stupefied. "Well, I'm not
contesting that I'm her father."

"Who's Margaret?" I demanded to know,
confused as to why they were suddenly referring to me by a
different name when I was sitting right there, mere inches from
them.

Connie lowered her glasses to inspect my
father more closely, completely unimpressed by how famous he was.
"That's not the issue, Mr. Atwood. The issue is that we are not
authorized to release her into your custody."

My father began to object. "Well, I'm her
father. What do I have to do to prove this? You want to do a
paternity test? Let's get this over with."

"Why did she call me Margaret?" I nagged my
father.

"That's the name on your birth certificate,"
he informed me. I craned my neck trying to see the document in
Connie's hands.

"It's not that simple, Mr. Atwood," Connie
explained calmly. "This kind of thing can take weeks to make its
way through the courts."

My father looked at me carefully and cleared
his throat. "And what happens to Taylor during those weeks? Can we
rent a house in Los Angeles and keep her with us?"

Connie shook her head as if my father was a
complete fool. "Mr. Atwood, our standard policy would be to place
the child in a home that has been previously approved by the
state."

"You mean, like foster care?" my father
bellowed. He was starting to get somewhat worked up. "Taylor, would
you mind if I have a word alone with these ladies for a
moment?"

I stood, surprised that I was being asked to
leave. My mother never asked me to leave a room so that adults
could speak in private. In fact, my mother would have never even
contested what Lois and Connie told her. She was never very
tenacious in arguments.

"You can go wait in the car outside," my
father informed me.

I left the office but lingered outside the
closed door, a little afraid that my father was not going to win
this battle against two middle-aged ladies. I also did not want to
brave the paparazzi alone. In all honesty I was pretty sure that my
father was going to leave me in Los Angeles and I was going to be
dropped off at some weird foster home in the Valley.

A moment later, my father exited the office,
grabbed my wrist, and led me toward the main lobby of the facility.
Over his shoulder he called to Lois and Connie, "You can send
information about the court date to my management in Beverly
Hills."

And that was that. A storm of flashbulbs and
a slam of a limo door later, I was in my dad's custody. I
recognized the host of Extra when he knocked on the window on my
side of the limo and yelled, "What's it like having Chase Atwood
for your father?"

"You good?" My father asked before the
limousine pulled away from the curb.

"Yes, I think so," I said.

"Did you have anything in there with you?" he
asked, nodding in the direction of the building.

"No. In fact, it would be nice to stop by my
house and pick up some stuff," I suggested, hoping he'd agree.

"Sure, no problem," he said. "Jill and Kelsey
are at The Beverly Hills Hotel. You can take all the time you
need."

"How come no one ever told me my legal name
is Margaret?" I asked after we pulled away from the curb.

My dad shrugged. "You were named after my
mother. Taylor is your middle name."

We drove the long expanse of Wilshire back to
West Hollywood in an awkward silence. If you've never been to Los
Angeles in early summer, I'll mention that the city is at its
height of beauty. There isn't a single street that doesn't have at
least one flowering bush on it, and the breeze is pungent with
floral perfume. Usually June in Los Angeles is gloomy – days on end
of gray skies – but that morning the sky was a hue of blue like no
other. It was nearly hypnotizing, I was thinking, as we rounded the
corner to North Laurel Avenue. Focusing on the hydrangea just past
the window of the limo was easier than thinking about how the man
in the backseat with me was basically a stranger, and that it was
perhaps the last time in my life I would ever be driving down these
familiar streets headed toward my home.

When we rolled into the driveway my heart
sank, because the house looked so unassuming and serene it was
impossible to believe that anything had changed since I had last
seen it in daylight. I felt certain as I climbed out of the limo
and closed the door behind me that the last two days had been some
kind of twisted dream, and that when I entered the front door Mom
would be stretched out on the couch in her robe, watching TV. I
raced up the stone path to our front stairs while Dad called out
behind me, "Taylor, wait a second."

At the front door, I realized I didn't have
my house key. Leaving the house without a key is so unlike me; I
have never lost a school ID or set of keys in my life. Dad caught
up to me on the front landing and just before I had a chance to
tell him that we were locked out, the front door opened and Julia
was embracing me and planting juicy kisses on my cheeks.

"Taylor! You're home! Thank god! Those awful
people at the hospital wouldn't tell me where you were taken," she
cooed. She was wearing a mesh t-shirt over a black one-piece
bathing suit and her hair was wet. She smelled of chlorine, and it
disgusted me to realize it, but vodka, too.

"Julia…" I said, at once both relieved to see
her and profoundly disturbed that she had clearly been hanging out
in my house all day, swimming in the pool where my mother had died
just two days ago, and raiding my mother's liquor cabinet. "What
are you doing here?"

"There are things to take care of, Taylor,"
Julia said offensively. "I had to be here early this morning to
have the pool drained and refilled. I've been on the phone with the
funeral home all afternoon." Her eyes narrowed and she directed her
next comment at my father. "I'm glad you're here, Chase. We need to
talk."

"Yes, we do," my father said sternly.
"Taylor, go pack a suitcase. Take your time."

He followed me inside the house and without
even saying a word to Julia, passed through the kitchen and out to
the backyard to make an assessment of her presence in the house
that day. It struck me as a little odd that he was so familiar with
the layout of our house, when as far as I could remember, he had
never been inside. I had never given much thought to how much a
part of my mother's life Dad had been before I was born, but
naturally he knew Julia from when they were young. Julia and my mom
used to go to concerts together and hang out on the Sunset Strip
before my mom and dad met. It was obvious that my dad was not fond
of her.

I reached the top of the short set of stairs
to the second floor and lingered in the doorway to my bedroom for a
moment. The lamp on my nightstand was still on, presumably from two
nights earlier. My blankets were still pushed back, and my bedroom
window was still cracked open. I was overwhelmed by the desire to
crawl back into bed and try to rewind the last few days… so that's
what I did. I scurried beneath my covers, pulled them up over my
head, and wished and prayed as hard as I could that I could just go
back in time, and this time notice my mom falling in the pool, or
yell at her more harshly to end the party… anything I could have
done differently to have prevented this nightmare.

Despite having my eyes squeezed shut and not
having any intentions whatsoever of eavesdropping, I could hear my
father and Julia exchanging words from the backyard.

"We'll take it from here," Dad was assuring
Julia.

"Oh, sure you'll take it," Julia retorted
sarcastically. "Just like you're going to take care of Taylor. Just
like you took real good care of Dawn."

"Now you hold on a second there, Julia. Look
around. I took good care of Dawn. She never had to lift a
finger."

"Oh, right. Leaving someone like her to raise
a child alone, that's just great," Julia berated him. "You knew
Dawn could barely take care of herself."

My father's voice got very steely, and even
though I could tell he was trying to lower the volume, he sounded
louder at the lower pitch. "That kid up there is fantastic, so
whatever Dawn was doing, she was doing it right. What she didn't
need was deadbeat friends like you looming around all the time for
happy hour. What kind of person shows up and drinks cocktails all
day at her dead friend's house, Julia? You have no right to be here
on this property."

I covered my head with my pillow, wanting to
block out all of the ugliness that I was hearing, but the voices
carried through. What had been so wrong with my mother that Julia
considered her unfit to raise me?

"Someone had to clean up the mess left in
this house. Someone had to plan a wake and funeral, Chase. These
kinds of things can't just wait until your G5 flies in from Europe.
Speaking of, Dawn had no life insurance and the funeral home is
going to charge fifteen thousand dollars," Julia yelled. "Where am
I supposed to come up with fifteen thousand dollars? The bank won't
release any of Dawn's assets because she didn't leave a will."

The bickering continued and at some point I
nodded off to sleep. When I woke up, my bedroom was cool and dark.
It was twilight beyond my window, and the sky was striped with
ribbons of orange and pink from the setting sun, the kind of
amazing electric sunset you only see in Los Angeles. The house was
silent and for a few minutes I sat still in bed, wondering
hopefully if Dad had left me there alone. Being in such a state of
panic was amplifying my crush on Allison's brother so much that I
almost wanted to faint at the thought of leaving Los Angeles and
not being near the Burchs' house. I convinced myself that I could
just pack a duffel bag and take the bus over to Allison's house,
and never worry about this matter of custody again.

Then I slowly became aware that the
television set was on in the living room.

Dad was sitting on the couch looking through
one of Mom's photo albums containing my baby pictures. The nightly
news was on, featuring yet another car chase on the freeway, which
is pretty typical news for L.A.

"Hey there, sleeping beauty," Dad said.

I sat down in the armchair. "What time is
it?"

"Eight-thirty," Dad informed me after
checking his fancy mobile phone. "You're probably starving for
dinner."

I hated to admit it, but I actually was. And
if memory served, the only food in our kitchen was frozen stuff
from Mom's last trip to Trader Joe's. But my legs felt like they
were made out of cement. I didn't feel like leaving home again, not
for takeout burritos (my favorite) or the fanciest restaurant
dinner in the whole city. I knew somewhere a few miles away, my
father's wife and other daughter were biding time in a hotel room
waiting for us to show up. This was probably my last chance to
plead my case with my dad – to convince him to just leave me here,
where I could take care of myself and the house. At that point I
was even thinking I wouldn't even want to return to Treadwell; I
could just stay in Los Angeles and finish high school nearby.

"Listen, Dad," I began carefully. I was on
the debate team at Treadwell and knew that I had some serious
persuasive powers within me. "I really do not want to be any more
of a burden on you than I've already been. I was thinking it might
be the most practical thing for me to just stay here, take care of
Mom's arrangements, finish out school until I get my diploma-"

"Taylor," Dad interrupted me. "You're fifteen
years old."

"Yeah, but," I defended myself, "I can take
care of myself. And you're on tour, I'm just going to be in the way
of your life."

"The tour's cancelled until further notice,"
my father said firmly. "We called off Europe and are going to start
rescheduling dates in the U.S. You are my responsibility now and I
am not going to leave you all on your own in a city like Los
Angeles."