Pottery Barn.
If ever there was a store that was further away from my vibe …
“Once my stuff from home gets here, I won’t need anything else,” I say, trying to keep the mood light. “My grandma does woodworking, so the bed is handmade. And my grandpa likes quilting so—”
“The Banks’,” Tess corrects, and I pause midsentence to look over at her. “The Banks like woodworking and quilting.” Her hands tighten on the wheel as she releases her breath and that trapped feeling comes over me again, like I wish I could unzip my skin and leave Mia Patterson behind forever. I only want to be Dakota Banks. That’s it. “Mr. Banks quilts?” Tess queries, like the idea surprises her.
“The shape of someone’s genitals doesn’t really affect if they can quilt or not,” I reply, and Tess heaves yet another sigh. She’s a conservative woman, for sure, and I would call myself … well, I have no idea what I am. Moderate, I guess. Free-floating might even be more accurate.
“Yes, well, it’s not a traditionally male activity,” Tess continues, and I wet my lips. The need to argue with her is so intense that I feel my skin aching.
“Does something about the penis stop a man from quilting? Like, does it physically stop him?”
Tess’ hands tighten even more on the wheel, and we end up sitting in silence for the rest of the drive. We climb out of the car and Tess leaves it to the chauffeur as I examine the only other teen girl that I see at Whitehall Gardens. She, too, looks like a senator. Everyone here does. Maybe most of them are?
We find ourselves seated at a table near the window overlooking the green. Old men play golf while we sit and each pretend to be absorbed in our menus. The fare is not what I’m used to.
“What is achiote rice?” I ask, wondering why every other item on the menu has goat or blue cheese crumbles on it.
“It has …” Tess starts, putting her menu down and beaming across the table at me in that way of hers, the one that both makes me feel inadequate and sad at the same time. “An earthy, peppery flavor. It’s used a lot in Mexican and Caribbean cuisine.” And also, the snootiest country club known to man, apparently.
“Roasted mahimahi with mojo shrimp and achiote rice it is,” I say, folding the menu and putting it aside. The waiter comes as if summoned and whisks it away, placing my cherry soda in front of me.
Tess and I stare at each other.
Awkward silence, my name is Dakota Banks, I think, chewing on my lower lip and searching desperately for something to say. I’m the sort of person who can’t stand the quiet stretches, who always has to fill it with chatter.
“Whitehall has a theatre program,” I offer up, hoping to spark a conversation that we can both enjoy. Whether or not Tess likes musical theatre, she’s clearly vested in my education. This should do it, right?
“Oh, I know,” she says with a lingering sigh as she unfolds and refolds her napkin in her lap. “Nobody ever got ahead by prancing across a stage singing songs from Grease. I’d just as soon they scrapped it altogether.”
I just stare at her.
Who are you? And how the hell did I come from one of your ovaries? I wonder as I fight the urge to scream.
“But … you’re an artist,” I say, confusion thickening my voice as I stare at the candle on the table instead of my bio mom’s face. When I finally get the courage to glance up, I see that she’s just as confused as I am.
“An artist?” she asks, like it hasn’t occurred to her that writing fiction novels is an art form. I always thought … the language she uses is so beautiful. How is this woman the famous author I’ve been idolizing since I read my first Tess Vanguard book at ten years old?
“You write novels,” I state, like it should be obvious, like I’m telling a grown woman that one and one equals two. “You wrote Abducted Under a Noonday Sun and—”
“I wrote that book to find my child,” she says, almost like she’s pissed off about it. “Writing is not art. It’s a job.”
This chasm opens between us, one that’s gaping and wide and impassable. We’re just so different. Is it possible for two people with such opposing views to get along with one another? Guess we’re about to be a real-life experiment in exactly that.
“Since you’ve found me now, are you going to quit?” I spit back, with more vitriol and hurt than I realized I was feeling.
“Maybe you don’t fully appreciate how much I like money?” she quips right back. More silence. I think about responding with something equally as snippy but decide against it. Dakota Banks, not Mia Patterson.
“I joined the theatre program,” I say instead, my voice flat and lacking emotion. “Not to act, because I can’t sing worth a crap, but to work on costumes and set design.”
Tess looks briefly mollified, and then frustrated.
“Theater isn’t exactly a door to success in life,” she begins, and I find myself choking on the very fact that we’re having this conversation. “You’ve got to have a plan, Mia.”
And there it is again.
Mia.
She doesn’t bother to correct herself this time, folding and refolding her napkin yet again.
“Why don’t I just write about my experience as the kidnapped child of author Tess Vanguard?” I quip back. “That should bring in some big money, right? Or maybe I should be a hedge fund manager and make money in a legal but morally twisted and broken and corrupt way?” Tess’ eyes flick around, like she’s looking to see if I’m causing a stir. That panicked feeling in my chest begins to rise again, and bile comes up in my throat. I want to go home. All I want is to be back home. “Or maybe I should be a plastic surgeon who offers their step-kid a freaking nose job for her sixteenth birthday that isn’t really her birthday at all?”
I shove up from the table and speed walk as quickly as I can to the front doors, ignoring the curious looks of the staff. My phone is clenched in my hand, but there’s nobody here for me to call, nobody to come and save me.
Instead, I end up sitting on the edge of the curb, looking out at the sea of luxury vehicles in the lot.
After a few minutes, Tess comes out and sits beside me.
For nearly half an hour, neither of us says a word.
“I had the kitchen hold our food,” she says, and I glance over at her, tears dried, emotions in a twisted tangle. It’s like, nobody asked me how I felt about all of this. Not once did the lawyers or the judge or Tess ever ask me how this whole situation was affecting me. “I know this is hard for both of us,” she explains, reaching out to cup the side of my face. I allow the contact, if only because physical affection from her is so rare it may as well be a shooting star. “And I know I’m making a lot of mistakes. I know that, but there’s no rulebook for this. No checklist that tells you how to make your estranged daughter love you. I thrive on rules and routine, Mia. I’ve had to, in order to survive losing you. There were times during those years that I thought I wouldn’t make it, that I …”
She trails off and exhales, dropping her hand to her lap.
“Please stop calling me Mia,” I tell her for what I’m fairly certain is the thousandth time. “I understand you picked that name for me, but it isn’t the name that I grew up listening to.”