I mean, I really was the daughter of a rock star. I allowed myself to have a Holy Hell moment before the anger set in. I was the daughter of a man who people camped out for hours outside of a venue to catch a glimpse of. People spent hours analyzing the lyrics to his iconic songs and then had those lyrics tattooed across their rib cages. People full-on worshipped him.
But the giddy surrealness of it all faded quickly to anger. Because if all my suspicions were correct, where had he been my whole life? Why had he abandoned my mother? Had he known she was pregnant? And why hadn’t he answered any of my letters? Not. A. Single. Response.
He sat on the floral upholstered couch Mom and I had picked out from the Anthropologie catalog two years ago. His knees bounced up and down like he was having difficulty controlling his energy. I remembered how one Rolling Stone interviewer had described him as “manic.”
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I said. I was still standing, which I knew probably made this insanely weird moment even weirder. But I couldn’t bring myself to sit.
Harlow, though, had plopped down in the wing-backed white leather chair that sat squarely across from the couch, folded her hands in her lap, and seemed to be perfectly content waiting for this conversation to unspool. She also took a not-so-discreet photograph of him with her phone and was presumably texting it to Quinn. I wanted to be mad, but I couldn’t really blame her.
“I know,” he said, not looking me in the eye. His focus darted around the room. He paused on a photograph of Mom and me taken on a trip to Hawaii last summer. “It must seem odd to you.”
“Uh, yeah. That’s an understatement. All of this seems beyond odd to me.”
He turned to stare at the framed Quran passage that hung on the left wall. The dark ink of the Arabic calligraphy contrasted with the creamy parchment paper. Mom wasn’t particularly religious. Actually, considering that she frequently had a glass of red wine with dinner, did not wear a hijab, and hardly ever attended a function at the mosque, it might be more precise to say Mom wasn’t religious at all, but she was a tricky woman to figure out. Because while she was not overtly religious, and she never fasted during Ramadan, she still hosted late-evening dinners for single Muslim women. When I was little, I used to slip out of bed and scoot down the stairs, spying on them as they broke their fast with dates and water, later moving on to the lamb-stuffed okra and mounds of rice my mother had uncharacteristically cooked.
I’d once brought up all these contradictions to Harlow and she’d squinted at me and said, “Tal. Faith is a complicated thing.” Which is a very Harlow thing to say.
I didn’t exactly know what the Quran passage said, since I couldn’t read Arabic. But ever since Harlow had said that, I’d translated the calligraphy to read: Faith is a complicated thing.
I glanced at Julian and thought: Paternity is an uncomplicated thing. Fatherhood is a complicated thing. Being a daughter is a complicated thing.
He met my gaze. I couldn’t quite get over how strange it was to stare back into eyes that mirrored my own. “I got all your letters.”
“When?”
“What?”
“When did you get the letters?” I pressed.
“About a year ago.”
I frowned. “I sent the first one over three years ago. You’re a little late.”
“I know.” His pale eyes widened in the same way mine do when I’m trying to cultivate sympathy. I looked away.
“But you have to understand—”
I interrupted him. “I don’t have to do anything.”
“Whoa.” He leaned back into the couch and put his hands up. “You have your mother’s temper.”
“How would you know?”
“Taliah,” he said softly. “I love that name, by the way.”
My skin felt itchy, like it was suddenly three sizes too small. “It was Mom’s grandma’s name.”
“I know.”
I heard a beeping sound and turned toward the kitchen.
“Oh!” Harlow said, jumping up from the chair. “That’s the cupcakes. I’m going to …” She trailed off and slinked away to the kitchen. Leaving me alone with Julian Oliver.
“I can’t believe it took you this long,” I said slowly.
“I know, and I can’t offer you any good excuses.” He stared at his hands. He had prominent knuckles. That was something I’d noticed one late night when I was Googling him and had zoomed in on one of the famous photographs that Annie Leibovitz had taken of him. “But in my defense, I didn’t even know your letters existed until a year ago.”
“So you say.”
“It’s the truth. The girl who …” He fidgeted on the couch.
“It’s okay. It’s not like I’m naive enough to think that people like you sit around all day reading letters from all the random people that adore you.” I realized my tone was bitter, but hell, I think I had the right to be bitter.
“People like me?”
“Famous people.”
He blanched. “It’s not like that.”
“Okay. Whatever you say.”
He nodded quickly. Another nervous tic. “So. As I was saying, the girl who reads the mail, she began to notice that we were getting a lot of letters from you. And she brought the letters to Mikey.”
“Mikey?”
“Our manager.”
I nodded. That’s right. I’d come across that name in my online sleuthing.
“And Mikey, of course, recognized the last name.”
“Mikey knew my mother?”
Julian bobbed his head quickly in agreement. “Oh yeah. Mikey grew up in Oak Falls with me. I used to work for his dad. He was there the day I met your mother. Heck, he was there for everything.”
“Everything,” I said. Something about the infiniteness of that word made me feel sad. And lonely. Mikey may have been around for everything, but I surely had not been. And no one had even bothered to give me the SparkNotes.
His eyes softened and I noticed he had a ring of green around his irises that I didn’t possess. “Yes, everything. And now that I’m here, Taliah, I want to share everything with you.”
I could feel my resolve fading, my anger giving way to melancholy. I crossed my arms. “Then why did it take you a year to get here?”
“I called Lena.” His eyes locked with mine. “I mean, your mother.”
Lena. It was unbelievably odd to hear that name coming out of his mouth. “What happened when you called her?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, I called her multiple times, actually.”
“Dude. This isn’t Little League softball or something. You don’t get points for participation.”
He gave me a small, sad smile. “I know.”
“But what did Mom say?”
“She demanded that I stay away.”
“Stay away,” I repeated. That was a finely tuned euphemism if I’d ever heard one.
“Yes. She begged me not to answer your letters. Not to call you. And certainly not to try and see you.”
I gripped the armrest of the chair that Harlow had recently vacated. “And you listened to her?”
“I felt like I had to. I owed her that at least.” Something crossed over his face. Guilt. Or maybe regret.
I could feel my face flushing with heat. “Why? Don’t you think I should have had some say in that decision?”