Mom and the band are onstage, performing their last encore song.
After the concert, I peek out from backstage and see my father sitting in the front row. Even though I’ve never seen him before in my life, have no idea what he looks like — somehow I know.
Breath backs up in my throat.
Everyone else in the arena is leaving, but he claps on, tears of pride in his eyes for Rayne O’Connor. He thrusts a hand up toward her. Suddenly in his fingers — a single white rose wrapped in green cellophane and tied with a red ribbon.
Mom leaves the stage, oblivious.
My heart beats so hard it’s about to lift me off the floor. I shuffle onstage, legs trembling. Roadies are breaking down the set around me, but I pay no attention. I only have eyes for my father.
He looks at me, and the wrapped white rose crumbles to nothingness in his hand. Emotions move across his face. Recognition … shock … understanding …
Love.
His arms rise, held up toward me. He moves forward, and so do I. After all the years, I can’t believe this is happening. I’m meeting my dad. The missing, vital part of me.
We are twenty feet apart. I am so deliriously happy, I can’t even feel my legs moving.
Fifteen feet.
He smiles at me. I smile back.
As high as the stage is, somehow I know he’ll jump up on it with no problem. Because he wants to with all his heart. Because he won’t let anything keep us apart—ever again.
Even my mother.
We are five feet away from each other. His face is a blur through my tears. I hear, “Dad, Dad,” and realize it’s my own mouth calling him.
Two feet.
His muscles coil to make the huge jump. He bounds into the air like a deer.
The scene jars into slow motion. One of his legs drifts up off the floor, then the other, his hands floating, hair lifting in the breeze. His mouth creaks open, my name forming — Shhhhaaaalllleee …
His body hangs in the air, rising … rising … He is inches away.
Someone yells to his left. His head rotates toward it.
Terror stabs through me. “Daaad,” I scream. “Donnn’t!”
A shot splits the night. I see the bullet parting air in slow motion, aiming straight for my father. I want to stop it but I can’t.
My body turns to ice.
As if in water, my father’s limbs struggle to change course.
It’s … too … late …
The bullet slams him in the left eye.
His head turns toward me for one last look. I see the black of his empty socket, his right eye shining with love for me.
Light fades from that eye. Fades … fades. It flattens in death.
He sinks to the floor and out of my sight.
Grief cuts me in two. “Nooo!” I wail. “No, no …”
A rattled scream in my throat jerked me awake.
My heart raced, and sweat coated my forehead. For a moment I couldn’t even think. I stared up at the ceiling, fighting to see something, anything. With the heavy curtains closed, the hotel room was nearly pitch dark.
I could hear Brittany breathing as she slept.
My body wouldn’t stop shaking.
Just a dream, I tried to tell myself. Just a dream.
But it felt so real. My father seemed so real.
No matter how many times I’ve begged, my mom refuses to tell me who he is. Someone she dated in high school is all she’ll say. Someone she loved very much. Who gave her single white roses wrapped in green cellophane and tied with a red ribbon as a symbol of his love. By the time she was seventeen and gave birth to me, he was out of her life. He can’t even know for sure that he’s my father, she insists.
The dream echoed in my mind. I wanted it back. I wanted to see my father again.
It isn’t fair for Mom to keep him from me.
“How can he not know about me?” I’ve asked many times. “Didn’t he see you pregnant?”
When she learned about the pregnancy, he was already gone, she says — always with lowered eyes and pain in her face.
“Do you know where he is now?”
“No.”
The answer never changes. Still I ask. Because I don’t believe her. I think she does know. I think she doesn’t want to tell me.
What is she protecting me from?
A moan slipped from my mouth. I didn’t want to wake Brittany. I rolled on my side away from her, buried my face in the pillow, and cried. For Tom, the friend I had lost that day, and for the father I had never known. And then, irrationally, but terrifying all the same, for what I might lose tomorrow.