My Double Life (6 page)

As Kari handed me my cheeseburger, I said, “Isn’t there some other way you could make money? You know, maybe some product endorsements?”

Ms. Pomeroy took the lid off her salad and sifted through it with her fork. “Kari actually lost a product endorsement after her MTV awards speech. What she needs is to get her next CD out, and that won’t happen unless she has time to work on it.”

Kari cut into her pasta and her voice took on a bitter tone. “My father could help me, but he won’t.”

Something else we had in common, apparently. That same sentence had run through my mind during my mother’s talk about college expenses. “Why not?” I asked.

“We’re not really on speaking terms. Mostly because he doesn’t speak, he lectures.” She shrugged as though it didn’t matter, but the tenseness didn’t leave her face. “He doesn’t like my spending habits, but I don’t see why he cares so much. He doesn’t need the money. He actually turns down product endorsements.”

I picked a french fry off my plate and nibbled at it. “Your father gets asked to do endorsements? Because he’s your father?”

Ms. Pomeroy leaned toward me like a teacher explaining directions on a test. “Kari’s father is Alex Kingsley.”

Even though she’d said it in a way that indicated I should know him, I didn’t.

She added, “The lead singer of The Journey Men.”

“Oh, The Journey Men,” I said. “We have all their CDs. My mother is a big fan.”

As soon as the words left my mouth, something clicked into place in my mind. No, actually that isn’t the right word. It wasn’t a click, it was a push—the push of a row of dominoes, each falling into another, tumbling, dropping, scattering until everything was a mess.

Kari took a forkful of fettuccine, then glanced over at me and didn’t eat it. “Are you all right? You’ve gone completely white.”

“I’m okay,” I lied. I could be wrong. I mean, what were the chances? I tried to picture the CD covers of The Journey Men and the posters I’d seen in my mother’s closet. The lead singer—he had sandy blond hair, but what color were his eyes . . . ?

“Which one is your father?” I asked, and my voice came out almost normal. “Is he the tall one with sandy blond hair and blue eyes?”

“Right,” Kari said. “That’s him. Usually front and center.”

I stared back at her without blinking. The last domino had hit the ground.

CHAPTER 4

My heart pounded so hard I could hear nothing else. I had to get away. I couldn’t look at Kari. I stood up, leaving my plate on the coffee table. For a moment I felt dizzy; my voice sounded detached, even to me. “I think I’m going to talk to my mother about this whole thing. Maybe we can work something out.”

Ms. Pomeroy saw me heading to the front door and called, “You can step into my bedroom to use the phone.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t having this conversation over a phone, not when my mother was somewhere in the hotel. “I’ll be right back,” I said.

I’m sure Kari wouldn’t have approved of my walk as I went down the hallway. It had no finesse, no strut, just a lot of resentment.

The elevator took me to the basement. I marched down the hall to the housekeeping office. I half expected Mom to not be there. She spends a lot of time checking the rooms, but when I went through the door, I saw her standing by her desk, talking with Don. The whir of the washing machines and dryers muted but didn’t cover their words.

“I’m positive,” he said. “She was in the room with that ditzy singer—the one who looks like her.”

“Kari Kingsley,” I said. “Her name is Kari Kingsley.”

They turned and saw me. My anger must have been evident. Mom said to Don, “I’ll talk with you later,” and he left.

I stared at her, emotion biting into the back of my throat. “Alex Kingsley is my father, isn’t he?”

The color drained from my mother’s face. She sank into her chair.

I always thought I’d be happy when I found out my father’s identity, but instead I churned with a rage I didn’t understand. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I said. “You knew Kari and I looked alike because she was my sister, and you never told me.”

Mom’s eyes registered shock. “She knows? She told you?”

And that hurt too—that Mom admitted the truth so easily now, when I’d never been able to pry it out of her before. I was not about to answer her question.

Tears pushed against my eyes. “All this time, we had pictures of him in the house,” I said. “I thought you hadn’t shown me any pictures because you didn’t have them. I thought it would be hard to track him down. But I saw him and heard him all the time, and I didn’t even know it!”

“Lexi—” she said, but I didn’t let her finish.

“Don’t call me Lexi!” I yelled. “You named me Alexia. You named me after him, didn’t you? How could you do that? You gave me his name and then made sure I had nothing else from him—not knowing who he was, not even knowing what he looked like. You could have just pointed him out on the CD covers.”

She had always known how badly I wanted to know what my father looked like. Every time I dreamed about him finding me and couldn’t picture his face—every time I scanned a crowd and saw a blue-eyed man with sandy blond hair, I had wondered about him and felt empty in side.

“Does he know anything about me?” I asked. “I want the truth this time. All of it.”

She let out a ragged breath, then looked away. I thought she wouldn’t answer, but she did—in a voice so calm I knew she’d rehearsed this speech. “When I was your age, I was obsessed with Alex Kingsley—you knew that already. He came to a concert in Charleston the end of my senior year, and I drove there to see him. He picked me out of the crowd and pulled me up on stage with him. Then when the song ended, he asked if I’d wait backstage for him. I already felt like we were destined to be together, and this was proof I was right.”

Her gaze flickered back to mine, and she shook her head. “I loved him so much, and when you feel that way, your mind stops thinking. I know you can’t understand this. You’ve always been so sensible, but I wasn’t like you that way. I was headstrong, impulsive.”

I’d never thought of my mother as being impulsive. She went to work every day and to class three nights a week. She did the dishes, paid the bills, and hardly ever lost her temper. I couldn’t imagine her even being my age, let alone my age and starstruck.

“Alex said he’d picked me out of the crowd because I looked so much like his late wife. She’d died eight months before from a brain aneurysm. Kari had only been a year old when it happened, just a baby. Alex was out on the road at the time and blamed himself for not being there. He could have gotten her to the hospital in time if he’d been home. We talked a lot after the concert, and he told me things he’d never told another person. I believed him about that; I don’t think it was just a line he used. He was hurting, and I wanted to make him feel better so badly.”

She kept her gaze on the desk. “I gave him my phone number, and he said he’d call me, but he never did, which stung. I was still thinking about our destiny together. In my mind I could see myself stepping in and being a mother for his daughter, that’s how crazy in love I was. I didn’t realize then that celebrities only care about people who are as rich and famous as they are.”

She pushed out a breath, and her gaze finally returned to me. “I also didn’t realize I was going to be the mother of his daughter after all. When I found out I was pregnant, I tried to call him. I got as far as his manager. I told him why I needed to talk to Alex, and he called me a gold digger and”—she paused and lowered her voice—“a few less flattering things. He told me to leave Alex alone and hung up on me. So the truth is, I never knew whether Alex found out or not.”

“Why didn’t you keep trying to reach him?” I asked. “You could have demanded a DNA test or something.”

She shook her head. “Your
abuela
wanted to hide my pregnancy, wanted to make sure no one found out.” Mom stopped for a moment, as though mentally correcting herself. “Well, it wasn’t just Abuela. I didn’t want everyone from school to know. That isn’t the sort of thing you announce at your graduation party. If I’d demanded a paternity test, it would have been in the tabloids. Besides, I didn’t want to take his money if he didn’t care anything about me.”

So it had been because of her pride. Hadn’t she ever thought I needed a father, that at least he deserved the chance to be one?

As though Mom had been able to read my mind, she said, “You have to understand, I adored him before I ever met him—that’s blind love, and it’s easy to get crushed when you have that kind of love. A daughter’s love for her superstar father—that would be blind love too. If I had told you he was your father and he rejected you the same way he rejected me—I didn’t want you to get hurt. I wanted you to have a firm sense of who you were, to be grounded before you met him, so no matter how it turned out, you wouldn’t be devastated.”

I wouldn’t listen to her words; I wouldn’t let them soak in. “You should have told me,” I said. “I shouldn’t have had to find out like this.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen. If I had known Kari Kingsley would show up here . . .” My mother gripped the edge of the desk, clenching it. “Does she know? Is that why she’s here?”

“No, she doesn’t know. She’s here to convince me to take the job, and I’m going to.”

The words made something in Mom’s expression change. She snapped back to being herself. “You can’t just drop everything and run off to California.”

“Yes I can.” I turned and headed toward the door. “I guess I’m more impulsive than you thought.”

My mother followed, switching into Spanish. “
Te tratarán como suciedad.”
They’ll treat you like dirt. “Is that what you want? Is the money worth your dignity? If it is, we might as well get a lawyer and just ask for back child support.”

“This isn’t about the money,” I said. “This is about me finally figuring out the other half of me—the half you’ve always kept a secret.”

She took hold of my arm, stopping me as I reached the hallway. “You don’t need to go anywhere to figure out who you are. You’re Alexia Garcia: a beautiful, smart, talented girl. Can’t you see that?”

I pulled my arm away from her. “You don’t understand this.” She couldn’t. She’d always known both of her parents. She hadn’t grown up half empty.

“I understand—you’re doing this because you’re mad at me. It’s a bad reason, Lexi.” She reached out again but didn’t touch my arm. “Think about it before you get caught up with these people.”

“Why should I, when you didn’t?” I turned and walked away from her, but I could feel her watching my every step.

I went to the service elevator, stood inside shaking, and stared at the buttons.

Despite the scene with my mother, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t even know what to say to Kari. Did I tell her she was my half sister? What exactly was the proper etiquette for announcing that sort of thing? It had been a huge shock to me, and I’d had at least a little forewarning. I’d always known I had a father somewhere, and I might have brothers or sisters. But how would Kari take the news about what her father had done? How would she feel about a sister—about
me
being her sister?

I looked down at my worn tennis shoes and their fraying laces, at my faded jeans, and my nondescript T-shirt. I compared them to her outfit, right down to her cosmopolitan red heels and flashy gold earrings. I was glad she didn’t know who I was, and I wasn’t going to break the news to her. Not now. Not until I’d talked to Alex Kingsley. Alex Kingsley—that’s who he was to me. I couldn’t call him my father, not even in my mind.

I imagined myself telling him. I saw his face now, where before there had only been a blurry guy standing beside a horse.

Was it possible he would be happy, that he’d want to be some sort of father to me?

But, then again, if he hadn’t cared enough about my mother to even call her, why would he care about me? Maybe he’d call me a gold digger too. I didn’t know anything about him or how he’d react.

I leaned against the elevator wall. Maybe my mom was right and it was better to have a lawyer contact him and ask for a DNA test. Only, getting a lawyer seemed like mounting an attack against him. If he felt attacked, I’d lose the chance to ever have a real relationship with him.

I pictured meeting him at some posh lawyer’s office. My mom and I would drive there in our beat-up Taurus with a three-inch crack in the windshield and a side mirror that had been superglued back into place after Abuela had knocked it off while backing out of the garage.

He’d be so impressed with us.

It was better to do it my way.

I pushed the button for the eleventh floor and in a couple of minutes stood outside of Kari’s door. I took a lot of deep breaths before I knocked. Ms. Pomeroy answered. I walked in and forced a smile.

Kari had finished her meal and was sprawled out on the couch with a
People
magazine. I looked at her profile, taking in our similarities again. It was so obvious now that we were related, a truth standing there in plain sight—no, not standing, waving its arms around, jumping up and down. Why hadn’t I figured it out the first time I saw her on a CD cover?

I knew I was staring, so I turned my gaze to Ms. Pomeroy. I kept my voice even and told myself they had no reason to suspect anything. Sometimes strangers look alike. “I’ll take the job on one condition. I want to meet Alex Kingsley.”

Ms. Pomeroy raised an eyebrow. “Why?”

“I already told you I was a fan. We have all his CDs.”

Kari laid the magazine on her stomach and craned her head around to look at me. “So when it was about meeting me and making a lot of money, the answer was no, but when there’s a chance to meet my father, the answer is yes?”

I shrugged. “I’ve wanted to meet him since I was a little girl.”

She picked up the magazine too quickly, and the pages rustled in protest. “Well, I feel special now.”