by Megyn Ward
Lauren isn’t there, either, and when I finally turn toward Diana, Kylie and Zach are behind her, panting from their sprint to me.
That’s when the panic rises in my chest. Something’s happened. “What’s wrong? Where’s Lauren? Is it Ellie?”
Diana puts a hand on my arm and it seems like she’s moving so slowly. “What? Tell me? Where are they?”
“They’re okay,” Diana says. But they aren’t, I can tell by the alarm in Diana’s brown eyes. But I know she won’t tell me until I stop acting like a frantic idiot and stop to listen.
I inhale and force myself to be calm. “What happened?”
Kylie and Zach are staring at Diana, waiting.
She begins. “It’s not like life or death or anything. But this afternoon, Jonas and Simone came to get Ellie.”
Kylie lets out a gasp. “Oh my god. They kidnapped her?”
Diana’s eyes fill and she blinks, her voice getting hard. “It was my fault. I didn’t think it would be wrong for Ellie to go with her grandparents.”
It’s the hardest thing in the world not to take off on a run but I needed to know where to run. Lauren needs me. My daughter, Ellie, needs me. “Where are they?”
Diana looks uncertain. “I don’t know for sure. Lauren took off from here without telling me anything. I’ve been trying to call Mrs. Knightly. I thought she might have some idea what’s going on.”
Kylie shakes her head. “Gram won’t answer the phone and today is Deborah’s day off.”
Diana gives Kylie an exasperated look. “I discovered that. After about two dozen phone calls. I kept hitting redial because Lauren wouldn’t answer her phone and I didn’t know what else to do. I paced and every time I passed my phone, I punched it again. I guess she got tired of the ringing because she eventually answered.”
Zach stands close to Kylie, lending his support. Kylie leans toward Diana. “Did Gram know anything?”
“Not at first. But she eventually found a flyer and called me back.”
This whole story is taking too long. “Just tell me!”
“Our best guess is that Jonas and Simone took Ellie to the open auditions for a new show. USA Sings or USA Talent or whatever the fuck it is.”
Kylie’s mouth drops open. “That would be Lauren’s worst nightmare.”
Diana nods. “I know. But I’ll bet she went after Ellie.”
And when she gets there, someone will recognize her. All those show people wanting a piece of Lauren. “Where is this place?”
Diana handed me her phone. “It’s punched in. Go!”
Chapter 37
Chapter
I close my eyes and hold Blake in my vision. Slowly, my breath comes back to me, filling my lungs.
The shouts of the crowd fade and become nothing but white noise. They mean nothing to me. The girl they’re after never existed.
Blake. Calm and strong. That is his daughter in there, ready to be thrown to the wolves. I can’t let that happen. If I’d told him about Ellie from the start, she’d never be in this situation. I have to protect her. Now.
I open my eyes and push away from the hot building. With purpose I shove the people closest to me, the woman shouting in my face about how awful I am to treat my mother the way I did.
I make it back to the front of the line. “I’m going in.”
With little effort, I slip past him. My flip-flops slap as I run down the corridor.
In the corridor, several little girls form tight circles with their supporters. Mothers dab little lips with lipgloss and fluff silky baby hair, filling the air with the serpent hiss of hairspray. There are tears and sharp-tongued replies.
Of course there are other hopeful performers but it’s the little girls that grab at my gut. This is like a Jon Benet Ramsey horror show. It brings so much back to me.
Days when I’d rather run barefoot through the creek behind the trailer court. Afternoons spent dangling from the tree at the edge of the chainlink, reading Little Women again and again. All the missed birthday parties. The giggling slumber parties. The move from the trailer to the condo and being jerked from school to spend time with the private tutor between takes. The GED instead of walking across the stage with my old friends. Old friends who didn’t know me anymore. No new friends to replace them.
I want to run through these knots of dysfunction and scream at the little girls to run. Like you’d scatter a flock of grouse under the aim of hunters.
But I can’t take the time. I have to find Ellie.
The sound of a big band filters from double doors leading into the auditorium. Applause and hooting. One performer apparently completed their audition. Was it Ellie? I run to the door, wind my knuckles around the handle and start to jerk the door open.
Strong hands clamp my shoulder and pulled me back. A quiet voice says, “You can’t go in ‘dere now. You must wait until the intermission and the next bunch of little girls.”
I wriggle free from him and lunge at the door again. “I have to get in there.”
He pulls me back again. “I’m sorry, miss. That is the rule. These artists get distracted so easily. We do what we can to keep them from bawling.” At another time, his words coupled with his accent might be funny. But not today.
“My daughter. She’s going to perform and I—”
He drags me a few feet away from the door. I jerk my arm from him and hold my hands in the air as if he points a gun at me. “Okay. Yeah. That’s fair. I’ll just, um, I’ll wait over there.” I pointed down the hall.
He smiles and watches me walk away. As soon as he turns his back, I dart around the corner and down another corridor. It’s true my film work mostly entailed being in real places and I may not know much about stages, but an auditorium like this will have a stage door. Or something.
I open one large metal door after another. All the while I fear what will happen when Ellie hits the stage and Jonas reveals she is the daughter of Liesa Temple. The cameras will start again. Following us. Paparazzi popping out from behind trees or parked cars. Ellie constantly on the newsstand in every grocery store in America and maybe Europe, as well. Her childhood will be gone.
I enter some kind of maze and have to double back and try a different route. All the while the audience cheers and groans, applause and the muffled sound of a man on a microphone waft through the walls like a ghost haunting my dreams.
There. A double door with bright light slipping through the cracks between the doors and the floor. On the other side of that door is the stage and Ellie.
I reach out and pull on the door, hoping it will slip open quietly and not draw attention to me. If I can locate Ellie, I'll have the element of surprise. I will grab her and we’ll be long gone before anyone raises an alarm.
The door opens and I slip into the wings of a large stage. Several people stand in front of me, their focus on the stage. Tom holds an iPad, almost exactly like Jeri had when she’d directed Liesa’s Life. He refers to it and then back at the stage. He grins like a tiger with a gazelle in his sites.
The first note of a song stabs me through the chest, nicking my heart. Her little voice, so clear and strong is like that of an angel. But I know the devil behind it all.
I rush forward, knocking a mother with her eight-year-old who was all elbows and knees. The little girl grunts and the mother stage-whispered, “Cunt.”
I skirt Tom and slide to a halt just inside the curtains.
Ellie stands in the middle of the stage decked out in the Shirley Temple dress. She smiles, does a tap dance and keeps singing. When did Jonas teach her this? “On the good ship, Lollypop.”
I should go get her. Just walk out on stage, take her hand and lead her off. But someone will figure it out. Maybe Simone or Jonas have planned this all along to bring me out in front of people, expose me. They’ll make a fortune selling the story to the tabloids or maybe even convincing me to go back in front of the camera.
Ellie suddenly stops and the piano dribbles away with a few last
clinks. She folds her arms, so much like Gram and Kiley and me. She gives the audience a serious look. “This isn’t my favorite song.”
Someone hollers from the audience. “What’s your favorite, honey?”
She sits down and yanks off one patent leather shoe, then the other, rips the socks from her feet. I swear she would pull her dress off if the buttons weren’t in back.
Go out there, Lauren. Save her.
I take a step and my breath fails me. Sweat cascades down my temples and pools at the small of my back.
Across the stage, in the wings on the other side, Jonas grins at Ellie, nodding and encouraging her. Simone stands next to him, her eyes glittering with greed.
My baby, in their clutches. I need to save her and yet, my feet won’t move. The lights waver and I fight for control.
Tom presses in behind me. “She’s great, isn’t she? The world is going to love her.”
Ellie stands up and grins, loving the stage and the attention. She squares her shoulders and keeps time by tapping her chin nearly to her chest. “Eleanor, gee I think you’re swell. And you really do me well. You’re my pride and joy, etcetera.”
“She must take after me. Because you never sounded that good.”
I hear the words. Know the voice. And understand I’ve lost my mind this time. I’ve finally come untethered and they’ll lock me up. Ellie will be raised by Jonas and Simone and her life will be ruined.
Tom speaks and it surprises me he seems to be addressing the phantom voice in my head. The one that sounds exactly like Blake. “Hey. Dude. You can’t be back here.”
The voice answers exactly what I’d want him to say. “She’s my daughter. I’d say I have every right to be here.”
Ellie keeps singing. “You’ve got a way about you. I just can’t live without you. I really love you Eleanor baby.” She’s belting it out.
The crowd is clapping and eating up her adorableness.
Behind me, my imaginary scene continues to play out. I need to go out and stop Ellie but the audience loves her and she loves them. This is her moment and maybe I should let her have it.
A scuffle of feet and slap of skin. Tom grunts. “I’m going to call security.”
Phantom Blake says, “You do that. Just as soon as you pick yourself up off the floor.”
Then the smack of a fist on bone and Tom moans.
Jonas’s head jerks to the wings where I’m standing, fighting to conquer my fear. He sees me and his eyes focus just behind me. He doesn’t look happy.
Warm breath caresses my ear. “You can do it.”
I whip around. The sensation of his breath, the vibration of his words can’t be my imagination. “Go get her,” he says.
I shake my head and back up. “I can’t. Please, Blake. Go. They’ll see me. They’ll know who I am.”
He smiles at me. “You are Liesa Temple. And Lauren Knightly. A strong, smart, capable woman. You raised that amazing little girl and you’re the woman I love.”
The tears are hot on my cheeks.
“It’s time for you to stop hiding. Show everyone that you’re ready to live out loud.”
Ellie is still singing at the top of her voice. “Let’s go out to a movie. I really think you’re groovy.”
I swipe at the tears running down my face and step into Blake’s arms. His kiss is gentle and accepting, giving me all the love I need to see me through whatever storms are ahead.
I pull away and wink at him. Then, still in my swimsuit and flip-flops, I strut onstage.
Ellie smiles up at me and finishes her song. I take the microphone from her. “She’s pretty fantastic, huh folks? Please give a round of applause for my daughter. I’m Liesa Temple and you won’t be seeing either of us on stage or in front of a camera again until this little tyke is over twenty-one. You might, however, see either of us at the local ice cream shop or in a gallery on opening night of my art show. Thank you.”
Ellie skips off stage with me. “Did you see that I knew the words? Can I take this dress off? Can we really go to the shop with the white chairs and pink curtains? I want the sprinkles.”
Blake is grinning at Ellie. “You sing pretty well.”
She opens her eyes wide. “You came to see me!” She throws herself into his arms and he lifts her up. “Can he come for ice cream, too?”
I can’t resist raising onto my toes and giving him a long, promising kiss.
The End.
