“Have you considered hypnosis?” he asks.
My brows furrow. “Hypnosis? That sound like a magic show.”
He laughs. “It’s not. It’s the real deal. I have a friend who did it to get over a fear of flying. They help you identify the root of the problem and therefore control it.”
Identifying the root of the problem isn’t the issue for me, but I don’t say that. I cut my gaze, and it lands hard on the newspaper next to his arm, with my father on the front page. Real just got really real, and I feel like a fool. “Who reads the paper anymore?” I say, giving him an opening to come at me, if that’s where this is leading.
“It’s a bookstore,” he says, matter-of-factly. “They all like paper and it was here when I sat down.” He grabs it and studies it. “Hmm. Look at that.”
I hold my breath, waiting for this obvious setup to blow. “Look at what, Logan?” I ask tightly, taking the bait, wanting this over with.
“The damn Broncos cut their quarterback again,” he says, tossing the paper in the chair next to him. “I guess I’m going to have to root for the Patriots again this year.”
I narrow my eyes on him, wanting to believe that he saw football, not politics in that paper. “I googled you last night.”
“Not until last night? Holy hell, woman. What does it take to get some interest? Did you like what you found?”
“Well,” I laugh in spite of myself, “there was no proof that you’re a serial killer or stalker.”
“The stalking charges were dropped years ago which means the neighborhood really is safe. I just wanted to walk you home.”
I laugh, and it’s been a long time since anyone made me laugh a genuine laugh. I’m still smiling when Megan appears at our table, sets a white mocha in front of me and then without a word, walks away. I blanch and watch her depart. “What was that?”
“I told you,” Logan says. “She’s an odd one. Back to me.”
“There’s the attorney in you,” I say refocusing on him, despite this Megan situation lingering in my mind. “Back to you,” I add. “Of course.”
“You did google me,” he teases.
“Your mother is an attorney.”
“A damn good one.”
“Your father’s a judge,” I state.
“He is,” he says, his tone as hard as the set of his jaw.
I notice. I let him know I notice. “Was that shift in mood about your father or my question?”
He narrows his eyes on me. “I thought we were talking about me, not my father.”
“We are,” I say. “Is a bench in your future?”
“No. That’s not my thing.”
“Why?” I challenge.
“I like to go to war and win, not watch everyone else do it,” I say.
“Sounds like a politician in the making.”
“Not a chance in hell, sweetheart,” he says, reaching for his coffee and sipping. “I want to get paid for my skills, not paid off and told what to think.” He sets his cup down and leans forward. “My turn. How long have you been painting?”
“Since I was a teen.”
“And you haven’t sold any work?” he asks.
“Asked and answered, counselor,” I say.
“Spoken like an attorney in the making. What’s that story?”
I study him, and it hits me that if he’s working for my father, he most likely knows my history. If he’s not, he won’t know who I am by a school choice that isn’t even close to public. “Okay. Yes. There is a law school in my future.”
“Stanford.”
In that moment, being here and being tortured by all the things I can’t have stirs rebellion in me. In this moment, I hope he does work for my father to repeat my reply. I’m going to law school for my father. I’m not going to Georgetown. Period. “Stanford,” I confirm.
He arches a brow. “And yet you hate attorneys?”
“Yes. They’re arrogant assholes. What better reason to beat them at their own game?”
“Let me guess. You’ll be disinherited if you don’t do what you daddy wants you to do?”
If only it were that simple. I have a trust from my mother I’ll inherit at thirty, and my father wouldn’t disinherit me. It would be bad press. “No. No, that’s not it.”
“Then what is it?”
I can’t answer. It’s the presidency, but in this moment, I’m not sure why my career is that important. Why am I going to law school? Because it’s expected, I silently answer. Because everyone around me is going. Because—
“Hailey?”
I blink Logan into view. “It’s complicated, Logan.”
“Understood. Probably more than you can imagine, but risking overstepping, let me leave you with one thought: Attorneys do what they do because it’s their craft. You have another craft. You shouldn’t leave it behind. And again, overstepping I’m sure, we succeed when we do what we love. Who made you think that wasn’t true?”
“We’d need something stronger than coffee for me to tell you that story.”
“That can be arranged,” he offers, oh so graciously.
“Why don’t I actually help you prep for your filing, instead?” I ask, but I don’t wait for an answer. “Did you find those facts to back up your filing?”
“On the case I was working on, yes. This is a new one. A big one actually.”
“Let me help,” I press again, hating that some part of me needs to validate my decision to go to law school to this man but still I add, “I really am better at this than you think an artist might be.”
“Which parent is an attorney?” he says, obviously not ready to let me off the hook.
“My father.”
“And your mother?”
“She was a doctor and yes, was, she’s dead. Don’t go there.” I move on, to ensure he doesn’t. “So, you see. I come from an academic family.”
“And art isn’t academic, unless you’re studying it,” he says.
“That would be a statement I’ve heard before,” I confirm. “Yes.”
“From your father,” he assumes.
“What are we researching?” I ask, pulling my briefcase over my head, and removing my MacBook.
“Based on that reaction, I know what topic is off limits: Your father. And I know what I’m up against. You have daddy issues.”
“What are we researching?” I repeat, not about to go down this path with him.
His lips twitch but he finally stops pushing. “Looking for case law to strike down a patent claim.”
“Can I read the claim?” I ask. “It’s public record at this point, if you’re responding to it.”
He considers me a moment. “You know more than I expected already.”
“I can assure you that I know much more than an average law student.”
His expression is impassive, but probing, I would even venture to say intensely probing. This should bother me. I don’t need or want this kind of attention but still I sit my butt in this chair and when he asks, “What’s your email?” I immediately give it to him,
Obviously feeling empowered, he pushes for more. “What’s your phone number?”
“I’m not giving that to you,” I say, still dealing with the whole Washington area code problem, I really need to address and quickly.
He studies me a moment and then glances at his computer, punches in what I assume is my email address and presses send. “Now you have the file and my phone number,” he says, his blue eyes darkening as he adds, “Just in case you need a friendly neighbor.”
Friendly neighbor.
If only this was that simple as well. I start reading the case, glancing up at him as I read the high-profile companies involved. “You’re right. It is a big case, and this is going to be a tough one to win on both sides.”
“I’ll win,” he says. “I just need to go into it armed and ready. There’s a number of online law libraries for research I can email y
ou.”
“I know them,” I say, since my father has actually made me take prep classes that amount to law school. “What do you have so far?”
“I just started working this case.” He turns a notepad my direction. “That’s from my head, before I even start researching.”
I read through his impressive list and then write down another case that immediately comes to mind that I believe to be quite relevant to this one. He turns the pad his direction before his eyes lift to mine, his expression impenetrable. “You’re smart and knowledgeable, but you know that.” He says nothing more, just staring at me, leaving empty space filled with unspoken words we both know that he is thinking, but not saying, a judgment, that I do not like. I am always judged and who is this man, who doesn’t know me to judge me anyway? Of course, I know the irony of this thought almost immediately, considering I’ve been judging him since meeting him.
Worse, I have a distinct impression that his ruling is my failure. I’ve disappointed him, and this bothers me. Like, really, deeply bothers me. This is not a judgment of the persona my father created, and that I have slaved to perfect, but rather a judgment of me, the real me, the person that I never allow to be seen, let alone, judged.
And when this man cuts his stare and looks at his computer, it actually feels like a slap that stings and burns, and then stings and burns some more. I don’t look away. I open my mouth to demand he say what he’s thinking when another prickling sensation draws my gaze left just in time to latch gazes with Michelle, who is clearly watching me. Her gaze jerks guiltily away, her attention stirring unease in me that reminds me of her pimping my father’s book. It’s now quite possible that my real life, the one that has claimed me as a future First Daughter, has officially destroyed this one.
I shut my computer, shove it in my briefcase, and I get up and leave.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven't time, and to see takes time—like to have a friend takes time.
—Georgia O’Keeffe
In those words, a quote by world-renowned artist Georgia O’Keeffe, I find a piece of me both past and present. Most certainly during that time I first arrived in Denver. It was then that I began to see myself as a flower, yet to bloom, visible but not seen, even by myself. I lived in the shadow of grief, guilt, and my father, and therefore he controlled me, but it wasn’t as simple as just me and him, father and daughter. There was so much more than me hiding in my father’s shadow. There were revelations about him, my mother, and yes, Danielle yet to be revealed. Revelations that could, would, and did, shatter lives. My father knew, too, and he didn’t care. To him, everything was a weapon he used with wicked accuracy and various degrees of force. He would just as easily let us, any of us, wilt and die, as surely as he would rip away one petal at a time until there was nothing left but weeds he’d discard and destroy.
The question for me though, became, what would I do to survive? Who would I become? Or was I already her?
***
THE PAST…
My father owns me.
Ten minutes after leaving Logan sitting at that table in the coffee shop, those words radiate through me with every step I travel in my return to my rental house. I do not like these words. I hate these words. I hate that they are true. Did he own my mother? Was she like me? Am I like her in ways I didn’t realize? The wrong ways? I’ve allowed this to happen because—well—it was expected. I’m his daughter. He’s running for President. I have a greater good responsibility and on some level, I accept this and even embrace it. I do. I always have. It’s what my mother wanted. It’s what she expected. It's who she was. There it is. She wasn’t strong and independent.
She was owned.
I’m owned.
The most screwed up part of this, is I know that I’m owned and yet, I still try to please him. So much so that I actually enjoyed sitting across from a man like Logan, knowing that despite being years his junior and without my law degree, I held my own. I’m that good. I made my father proud even if he hates me and I hate him. Therefore, I will go to law school and I will be top of my class, but even as I make this vow, it cuts and I bleed. In this moment, I have this sense of being everything and nothing and this is not the first time. I am my father’s destiny. My mother was not.
She’s dead. Danielle is dead.
Maybe my punishment for failing them, is that I lived.
“Stop, Hailey,” I whisper, but my mind continues to race. I’m spiraling and I don’t know where I’ll land if I don’t stop. I have to stop. I walk faster and I barely remember entering the rental and locking the door. I barely remember sitting down in front of a blank sheet of paper on my canvas to bare all. Emotions, I hate emotions, but they are here, they are now, and they bleed, like I bleed onto my page. Like my mother bled. Like Danielle bled. Like that woman on the cliff bled. One sheet after another is filled, and then torn away. I don’t study anything that I create. I don’t let myself. I just create. I don’t stop until the sun is lowering beyond the juts of the Cherry Creek rooftops and my hand is cramped, my stomach a dull, hollow ache. There is a stack of papers filled with my craft on the floor, none richly developed or for anyone’s eyes but mine, but they exist. They tell a story. A story I am not yet ready to hear.
I walk to the kitchen, pull a bowl of pre-cut fruit from the refrigerator, and open the well-stocked kitchen drawer to remove a fork. I stand there at the counter and eat, and in these next few minutes, with no sound but a ticking clock somewhere, I come back to me. This feels like me. The empty me with no emotion, no thoughts, nothing dangerous that can control me. All of those things are on the paper, just like my mother taught me. Only when I have eaten the entire very large bowl of fruit, do I feel as if I can really, truly fully breathe. I have just disposed of my fork and tossed the plastic container when my cellphone rings.
Crossing to the island, I pick it up, and my gut twists in knots at the sight of my father’s number. Okay, so maybe I’m not back to that empty place just yet. I know what this is about. So much for Logan being real and wanting me for me. He not only took my bait about Stanford, he clearly works fast. My father already knows. I decline the call and glance at my text messages that would normally be filled with Danielle’s musings, but there is nothing. Nothing. I wait for the emotion to follow, but I pass the test. My moment of relapse is gone. I feel nothing except good about feeling nothing.
I walk around the island, claim a stool and key my MacBook to life when my cellphone rings yet again, any hope that my father would be easily distracted from his daughter, gone. But then, this call is about Stanford and Stanford is about him, not me, thus it’s important. “Hello, father,” I say, answering the call.
“I trust you’re behaving?”
“I am,” I say, and as that deep hollow of nothing fills and overflows with resentment I add, “but based on what I saw on the news, you aren’t.”
“Discussing your drunken stupor in every interview has certainly been disheartening.”
The master at work, turning his bad behavior into mine; deflect, deflect, deflect is his motto, and I’ve learned well. “That’s better than asking about your infidelity,” I reply, enjoying the dig.
“You know—”
“The press lies,” I supply. “Yes, father. I know.”
“I loved—”
“My mother,” I say, because we’re having the conversation that was in my head early. “I was thinking about law school.”
“What about it?” he snaps, sounding irritated enough at the topic that I decide I’m wrong. Logan hasn’t talked to him, but I’m here. I’m wading in the water and I go deep.
“Stanford gets me out of Washington which keeps me away from your present wife,” I say. “It seems that might be a good thing for all of us.”
“You’ll be just fine with your step-mother,” he says. “Because your affection and involvement with her tells the press this cheating s
candal is the crock it is. Say it. Show it.”
“And yet I’m here, where I can’t do any of that.”
“Acceptable behavior considering the expected grief over the Danielle situation. Understandable, in fact. This gives you time to cool off, digest, and think about the bigger picture. The greater purpose we have in life. I expect when you return, you’ll be ready to shine.”
I suck in a sharp breath and breathe out pure, white-hot anger. “You used that drunken scandal to pull attention from the book, and then sent me away to contain my anger over its contents.”
“I’m containing much more than a book and your drunken stupor, now aren’t I, daughter? In other words, behave, Hailey.”
He disconnects.
My teeth grind together. Much more? What does that mean? I tunnel my fingers through my hair and let out a growl. Why don’t I know what that means? I push off the barstool and dash for the garden room, picking up the images I’ve created. The pages are oversized and awkward, but I don’t care. I carry them forward and drop them on the living room floor, where I begin to lay them side by side. I stop at one image, my breath hitching in my throat. On this page is Danielle standing with my father at a charity event about a month ago, with my father’s hand on her waist.
I press my own hands to my face and sink down to my knees, a memory pushes into my mind, half flashback, and half memory, which seems like an improvement. I’m at the table, and Drew’s leg is pressed to mine. Danielle is beside me. I wasn’t fighting with her, so I wasn’t sure that text was from my father. Not yet, but Drew winked at me, like we’d shared something intimate. It starts to come to me.
Danielle and I are eating dessert, but I’m disoriented, confused. Danielle gets up. Her phone falls to the ground. I pick it up and I read another message: North, South, East, West. That’s what I want.
I remember that well. Then, and now, I’m immediately back in a million moments with my father where he says we will own the world: North, South, East, West. But it’s a political reference, I remind myself. He’s talking politics when he uses those words. He calls me honey. Danielle is, was, like a second daughter to him, for what that is even worth. She was working for his office or was supposed to work for his office. It could have been work but it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t.
A Perfect Lie Page 19
