Roman Holiday: The Adventure Continues (18 page)

“You could have called,” Ashley said.

“You don’t return my calls,” her father answered.

“I don’t return calls from your aides.
You
haven’t called me in years.”

“Let’s not start this.”

This
, meaning Ashley being a brat.

Which she was. She
was
. He was pompous, and she was a brat. She never could help it. Her relationship with her father had been arrested when he turned her over to her grandmother at thirteen. Though she tried to fight it, her feelings toward him remained a thirteen-year-old’s—yearning and resentment, unpleasantly mingled.

“How did you even know where to find me?” she asked.

“Carmen told me where to go. There’s an airstrip a few miles from here.”

When they reached the edge of the lawn, her father caught her arm and steered her toward the road. Ashley floated along, insubstantial as a piece of dandelion fluff in the breeze.

It was like this with him. He made her feel invisible.

There had been a time, once, when she loved her father without reservation. Before the divorce, before her mom had died. She’d often wished she knew how to get back to that version of their relationship, but she could never figure out how to rebuild all the bridges they’d burned—how to forget what had come after her mother’s death, when Ashley was taken by a nanny to live with her dad, like so much unwanted property.

He’d been a state senator then, focused on his campaign and his work, with no time for a grieving daughter he barely knew. Ashley had done everything she could think of to make him see her. She’d chopped off her hair and shortened her skirts. She used to clomp around the house
in Tallahassee wearing huge boots and a dog collar, her black eye makeup smeared so thick that she looked like a cartoon.

When he’d finally noticed—when she’d finally managed to antagonize him into anger—their relationship had shifted for good.

She still remembered the strange expression that had passed over his face the first time he accused her of thinking of no one but herself.
You’re inexcusably selfish
, he’d said, and it was as though the conclusion quenched something in him. As though it
relieved
him, because he’d finally figured out how to slot her into place.

Selfish.

Ashley was selfish, just like his mother—two selfish people—and after that, it had only been a matter of time before she was banished to live with her grandmother.

She pulled her arm from her father’s grip.

“You know why I’m here,” he said.

“Not really.”

“Carmen called me. She filled me in on the situation at Sunnyvale.”

“What does it have to do with you?”

“There’s a video on the Internet with people talking about you chaining yourself to the palm tree. You didn’t think that would get back to me?”

“What video?” Roman had taken pictures with his phone, but no video. She couldn’t think how anything might have leaked to her father, not unless he had spies or something, and even then—

“We had an arrangement,” he said. “I’ve got to protect my image, and you’re jeopardizing it.”

“I’m not jeopardizing anything,” she shot back. “I’m on vacation.”

“Spare me, Ashley. Carmen told me what’s going on. You’re sleeping with the developer, manipulating him, lying about seeing Key deer—it’s unconscionable.”

His volume was rising now. When his voice boomed this way, her heart raced.

Shouldn’t there be some cutoff, an age she could reach after which her father could no longer make her feel like a badly behaved child just by raising his voice and using five-dollar words like
unconscionable
?

Ashley looked toward the water. You couldn’t see it through the brush and the trees
unless you knew it was there, but if you knew, it winked at you. It reminded you that there were open spaces to counteract suffocation. Cool breezes that settled and soothed.

If you looked.

She had to keep looking, because she wasn’t a child, and if she’d behaved badly, she could take responsibility for her own mistakes. She was a woman worth loving, whether her father could see that or not.

“That’s not what’s going on,” she said slowly. “Roman and I—”

Her father raked both hands down his face, and that was all it took to bring her to a halt. She’d seen that gesture hundreds of times. The precursor to countless lectures. He wouldn’t hear her. Nothing she said would get through to him.

He began to pace. “You know, whatever you think is going on, it doesn’t even matter. What matters is how this is going to look—my daughter the leader of some rogue protest at the property my mom used to own. Can you imagine the headlines? Because I can.”

“I don’t see how—”

“You get yourself into these situations—”

“I’m not in a
situation
.”

“You’re in a classic Ashley situation. This is your M.O. You find the last man alive who might be good for you and throw yourself at him. I keep thinking you’re going to grow out of this phase.”

“I’m not in a phase.”

“You’re in your tenth year of a childish, rebellious phase where you do everything you can to make me pay attention to you.”

Anger welled up, knocking against the wall of her chest, and it was all she could do to keep it contained. “I didn’t call you here. You’re free to go anytime—I’m just trying to have lunch.”

“That’s another thing,” he said. “Why are you visiting Esther? Your grandmother’s dead.”

“I’m aware of that. Esther, however, is still alive.”

“Dragging that trailer around all over the country, talking to my mother’s friends—what’s your agenda? Did you run out of other ways to get at me?”

“Do you actually have spies?”

“She’s
dead
, Ashley. She’s dead and buried, and you’re making a spectacle of yourself to humiliate me because humiliating me is the only way you know to make yourself feel better.”

“This has nothing to do with you!”

“It has everything to do with me. She was my mother!”

“You never even talked to her!”

“I don’t talk to you, either, but you’re still my goddamn daughter!”

Bellowing now, with sweat beading at his temples, her father appeared utterly rattled, and she was so small. She tried to search for the water. The shine of the sun, a wink of light. She
tried
, but she felt …

She
felt
.

Ashley felt the whistling breath of the cool, damp air of the well. The lid torn off.

She felt everything inside her rising up, reminding her of what it was like to be around this man. How much she’d needed him to love her. How, instead of loving her, what he did—what her father always did—was tell her what she was like.

She couldn’t stand it.

“Your grandmother was not a nice person,” her father said. “She was a bad mother.”

“You were a bad father.”

“And you’re never going to let me forget it.”

“Why should you get to forget it? My mom died, and you dumped me on
your
mom, who you didn’t even like, because you couldn’t be bothered to talk to me.”

“You were impossible! You didn’t leave me any choice, and then you turned into her.”

“She saved me.”

“Saved you.” He laughed, incredulous. “From what?”

“From turning into you! Grandma taught me how to be happy. She was beautiful.”

“She was
nuts
.”

“She loved me.”

Her father snorted. “Of course she loved you. You were her meal ticket.”

Ashley’s heart stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I had to beg her to take you, Ashley. I had to pay her.”

The words pushed into her gut, and she had to wrap her arms around her middle. “Room and board,” she suggested, her voice weak. “Expenses.”

“More than that. Thousands of dollars extra so she would keep you for the school year, thousands more if I wanted her to take you on those trips of hers in the summer.”

“You didn’t.”

“I most certainly did.”

He paid her. Paid her to take care of me
.

And she never loved me. Not the way I loved her. She cut me out of her life when she was sick, cut me out of Sunnyvale’s sale, left me with nothing, didn’t even think about how I would feel
.

Because she didn’t care
.

Ashley wanted to crumple to the ground under the weight of all of it—her folly, her idiotic hope, all the years she’d spent thinking she was a free spirit, a whirling spark, when she’d been nothing of the sort.

She wanted to fall to the road and tear at her hair and cry.

But if she did that, her father would only tell her to quit being such a fucking embarrassment.

Ashley looked for the lake, but she couldn’t find it. She closed her eyes.

Behind them, she saw Roman.

You, sweetheart, are
not
other people
, he’d told her.

He’d said it with so much affection—as though her weirdness, her hopeless confusion, was totally okay.

As though it was just part of life, this struggle, and he didn’t mind sitting with her on the lawn, talking her through it. He understood.

I could take care of this for you
, he’d said, because he saw her fear and wanted to help.

Ashley squeezed her eyelids more tightly shut and held on to Roman like a talisman.

Twelve days ago, she’d chained herself to a palm tree with a hurricane coming because she was afraid of losing the last thing she understood—what it felt like to be loved by her grandmother, to be seen and cared for by the one person in the world who seemed to think she was worth something.

She’d been afraid because her grandmother had left her alone without a guide, but when she’d sat alone at night by the palm tree, she hadn’t needed a guide. The wind had scoured her clean, and the road she’d traveled with Roman since then had given her a sense of purpose.

Roman’s trust, his
allegiance
, had given her confidence.

Ashley knew who she was, and she knew what mattered. She didn’t need her father to tell her. She didn’t need anyone to. She
knew
.

“Dad—” she said, but he cut her off again.

“You’re my daughter,” he repeated. “And I’ve tried to be a good father. I send you money. I got you that job in Bolivia, thinking you’d finally found something to do with your life that wasn’t completely selfish. And now this.”

This
. As though the indignity of
this
were a foregone conclusion.

Ashley fisted her hand around the invisible feeling of what it was to believe in
this
. Her quest. Her right to do as she pleased, take to the road, claim Roman, fight for a future.

She squeezed her fingers tight around the memory of how it had felt to rest her head against the palm tree and sing to the stars.

“Do you have any idea,” her father asked, “what it’s like to meet other people’s daughters? I talk to them about their careers and their children. I see their fathers’ pride, and I think of you. My daughter, the perpetual teenager. Why can’t you just be normal?”

“I
am
normal, you self-important prick.”

Her father pointed an accusing finger at her. “Watch what you say. I’m your father, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t like it. You’re being condescending and pushy, and I don’t like it one bit.”

“Yeah, well, get used to it. I’m the only family you’ve got, and you have nowhere to live and no money and no better options. I’m taking you home.”

“You’re not taking me anywhere.”

“You’re going to get in that plane with me, and I’m going to fly us both back to Florida so you can tell those protesters to call off this insane stunt.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your swamp people.” She must have looked as baffled as she felt, because his gaze sharpened. “Your friends. The Georgia people, the protesters at Sunnyvale.”

“There are people from Okefenokee at Sunnyvale? Who?”

“How should I know? Some kind of bottle-and-can man broke into the office, and he called all these hippies, and now they won’t leave.”

Ashley laughed. “Really?”

Gus? And Mitzi? A deluge of hippies, video on the Internet—and her father was beside himself.

Mitzi had been
busy
.

“Stop smiling,” he said.

“It’s not my fault,” she said. “I had nothing to do with it.”

She wanted to skip. To sprint. She wanted to
move
.

When she was a girl, he would make her sit at the dining room table, and he would pick her apart until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She’d have to kick her leg, jiggle her knee, drum on the tabletop—and then he would make her stop.

He made her sit with his disappointment, take in her faults,
bear
it, and he never let her move.

But she was twenty-four years old. She could walk away from this conversation whenever she wanted to.

She did.

Ashley walked away, eyes focused on the spot where she would see Roman when she got close enough to have a view across the lawn.

She listened to her feet hit the pavement. The slap of her foam sandals against her skin.

She didn’t listen to her heart, because it hadn’t slowed down yet. It beat out the familiar rhythm of her panic, her inadequacy, a lifetime’s conditioning, but
she didn’t have to listen
.

She didn’t listen to her father. Not until he said Roman’s name.

“You care about that man? Roman Díaz?”

Ashley stopped.

“If you care about him, you’ll think about what you’re doing. Because you’re ruining that man’s career. You’re putting everything that matters to him at risk.”

She wasn’t. They’d talked about this. They were just taking a few more days to adjust the plan, and then—

“Your people at Sunnyvale, they’re doing everything they can think of to get attention. The story’s going to hit state news channels soon. If this gets bigger, it’ll poison the whole development.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

Her father was right behind her now. He’d caught up, his voice low and smooth. “Díaz
will run into trouble with local people, environmentalists, government. It’s tricky trying to build something that large. Complicated. And if the wrong person puts pressure in the right place …”