My Double Life (25 page)

“That’s just great,” I said. “I went through my entire childhood without a father because you’re lousy at laundry and didn’t think any of it mattered.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

I wiped my face to clear the tears off my cheeks. “It mattered,” I said, and suddenly felt drained. I’d wanted to hear exactly what he’d said—that he was sorry and that he would have been there for me. I thought hearing those words would fill the empty places inside me, but I wasn’t even sure I believed him.

I said, “Maren told the driver to take me to the airport. I’ve got to change my clothes now.”

“Don’t go yet,” he said. “I just met you.”

I shook my head and picked up my street clothes from the counter. “I still have some stuff at Maren’s. If I don’t see her before I leave, can you ask her to send the schoolbooks back? I don’t care about the rest of it.”

“You don’t have to leave.”

“I’ve had enough of Hollywood. If you want to talk to me sometime, my mother is listed in the phone book. Sabrina Garcia, Morgantown, West Virginia.”

“I want to talk to you now.”

I turned and walked away from him, heading to the back of the room where the private bathroom was. As I reached for the doorknob, he said, “You haven’t even told me your name.”

I turned back to glance at him. “Alexia.” I watched the word hit its mark. He understood the significance. Then I went into the bathroom and locked the door.

I glanced in the mirror. I expected to look like a mess, with mascara stains running down my face. It had stayed put pretty well, though. I guess using high-priced waterproof makeup did have its advantages.

I undid my zipper and slid out of my skirt. I thought he’d left, but then I heard his voice close to the door. “Look, I know you have a right to be angry, but this isn’t completely my fault. I didn’t know about you. I had no idea.”

I pulled off the leotard with more viciousness than I should have. I didn’t want to be Kari anymore. If I could have yanked away the blond hair color and the extensions, I would have done that too. “When my mom got hold of your manager, he called her a gold digger and told her to leave you alone. She didn’t press it after that because she didn’t want me to get hurt if you rejected me like you’d rejected her.”

He swore loud enough that I heard it through the door. “I wouldn’t have rejected you,” he said, “and I didn’t mean to reject her, either.”

I should have been happy to hear this, but I thought about all the times I’d wanted a dad so badly; all the hurt I’d had to struggle through. My pain had been for nothing. None of it needed to happen.

There was silence while I pulled on my shirt and jeans, and then his voice came again, this time sounding softer. “Do you sing?”

I bent down to put on my shoes. “Not as well as you or Kari.”

“Are you going to college?”

“WVU offered me a scholarship.”

“What are you majoring in?”

I tied my first shoe slowly. “I don’t know. Maybe biology, maybe physics.”

“Physics?” He let out a low whistle. “You must get that from your mother.”

I didn’t answer. To tell the truth, I didn’t know if she had liked physics or not.

“How is your mother?” he asked.

I tied my last shoe. “Good. Busy. She’s working and finishing her business degree. She’s had to support my grandmother and me, but she’s always been there for us. She worries about me a lot.”

“Good,” he said, but I wasn’t sure what he approved of.

I smoothed down my hair, trying to shake as much glitter out of it as I could, then I stepped out of the bathroom.

He was waiting by the door, his hands in his pockets. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the dressing room door swung open and Maren stepped in. Her gaze ricocheted between my father and me, then settled on me. “The driver is ready for you.”

I folded my arms and didn’t move just to show her I wasn’t taking orders from her anymore.

“Maren,” my father said. “I’m glad you’re here. I want to ask you a favor.”

“Anything.” Her voice grew smooth and soft again. “Really, I’m so sorry about this—I was trying to help Kari—”

“I know,” he said. “And that’s why I know you’ll be able to handle things with Alexia.”

“I’ve already taken care of it.” She slid a challenging glance in my direction. “Alexia knows her place.”

He stepped over to me, putting his hand on my shoulder. “No, I don’t think she does, but I want to make it clear to her.” To Maren he said, “You didn’t know this before, but Alexia is my daughter.”

The smile froze on Maren’s face. She didn’t look at me, just blinked at my father. “What?”

“She’s Kari’s half sister. I just found out myself.”

Maren still stared at my father. Her voice came out high-pitched. “What?”

My father smiled, appraising me again. “It’s incredible, isn’t it? Can you believe how much she looks like Kari?”

Maren stepped toward him but her gaze sliced over to me. “She can’t possibly be your daughter. It’s a fluke that she looks like Kari—” She let out a sound that was half scoff, half snort. “Whatever she’s told you, it isn’t true. I found her in
West Virginia
, for heaven’s sake.”

My father nodded. “West Virginia, I know. That’s where I found her mother too.” He opened his hand and turned the sapphire pendant over in his palm. His eyes went to mine, and his voice dropped. “You tell your mom I’m sorry. Tell her—well, I’ll give her a call myself.” He slipped the necklace into his pocket and faced Maren again. “I imagine Kari will have to let most of her staff go until she can get her finances back in order, but I’d like to hire you to do some things. First, I want you to make sure Alexia has a first-class ticket to get back to West Virginia; a private plane would be better. I don’t want her bothered while she’s traveling. And pack up and send Alexia’s belongings back to her house. Can you manage that?”

Maren took a couple of breaths, then gulped. Her voice, usually so silky, cracked. “Of course. I’ll take care of it right away.”

“Great,” he said, “because I’ve got some people to sing to.” He gave my shoulder a pat and then in lower voice said, “I will call you.”

He turned to go, but before he could leave, I said, “Can I ask you for one thing?”

“Sure. Anything.”

“Can you explain this to Grant?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t you rather do that yourself?”

I shook my head. Grant had already made himself clear about what he wanted in a girlfriend, and I didn’t fit the bill.

“Okay,” he said, but his eyebrow stayed raised like he didn’t believe me.

“One more thing.” I grabbed my purse from the counter, pulled out a pen, then walked over to my father. I took hold of his hand and turned it over in my own until I could see his forearm. Then I wrote my home phone number in one-inch lettering up the length of his arm. “That’s so you don’t lose it.”

He took my hand and squeezed it. “I won’t.”

I gave him a smile, then walked to where Maren stood in the doorway. “I’m ready to go now.”

CHAPTER 16

As soon as the limo pulled away from the coliseum, Maren turned and stared at me. I had seen and talked to her hundreds of times since I came to California, but this was the first time I’d ever seen her flustered.

“So,” she said, “is it actually true you’re his daughter?”

I suppose I deserved that comment after spending the last month and a half lying to people about my identity. “It’s true,” I said.

Her lips pursed together. “Really? And who is your mother? Why didn’t this surface before?”

Out the window I could see cars passing by as though the world hadn’t just changed. It seemed odd when everything felt different for me. I wasn’t even upset about the things Maren had said earlier or was saying now. Suddenly she didn’t seem very significant. “My father knows who my mother is. I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

Maren leaned back against her seat, turning to see me better. “So you’re saying it was a coincidence that I picked you—Alex Kingsley’s secret daughter—out of the millions of girls in America to be Kari’s double?”

“It wasn’t coincidence,” I said. “You picked me because I looked like her, and I looked like her because she’s my half sister. Our mothers resembled each other too. If he wants a DNA test for proof, that’s fine. But I doubt he’ll ask for one. He knows who I am.”

I think it was at this moment that Maren believed me. She let out a sharp breath and laughed. Not regular laughter—uncomfortable, stumbling laughter.

“Well, isn’t that ironic. All this time. You’re his daughter.” She put her hand over her chest as though checking to make sure her heart was still beating. “You should have confided in me from the beginning. Things would have been different.”

“Oh. You mean like you wouldn’t have slapped me back in the green room?”

She winced. “I’m sorry about that. It was the stress of the moment. If I had known you were Alex’s daughter—”

“Then you wouldn’t have threatened to press charges against me if I crossed you?”

She attempted a smile. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

“The wrong foot? I’ve lived under your roof long enough to know you don’t have any right feet.”

She gave a little laugh as though I’d been joking and unclipped her phone from her belt. “I’d better see about getting you a plane to West Virginia.”

I didn’t mind the break in the conversation. I called my house. Mom was out with Larry, so I told Abuela I was on my way home and would get the flight information to her later.

After several minutes on the phone, Maren wrote down an airline and flight number on a piece of scratch paper and handed it to me. “You’ll be in first class on the next flight out. I’ll send your things to you tomorrow.”

When the limo finally pulled up to the airport, Maren leaned over and put a hand on my arm. She might have been talking to Kari for all the sweetness in her voice. “Really, Alexia, I would have helped you. I still want to help you. So we should forget the past, especially certain . . . r egrettable parts.”

I stepped out of the car, pulling my arm away from her as I did. “Thanks for your help. But I’m still going to tell my father everything you’ve done.”

CHAPTER 17

The flight was long, made longer by the fact that people in the airport kept staring and whispering. Several people came up and asked for my autograph. “I’m not Kari Kingsley,” I told them. “I’m her sister.”

I didn’t explain about the glitter in my hair. I figured they could think it was a family trait. We all glittered, just like the Cullens in
Twilight
.

Oddly enough, they still wanted my autograph. “That’s so cool,” one said. “Do you get to tour with her and meet celebrities and stuff?”

That’s when it hit me that going back to being Alexia Garcia might be more complicated than just dyeing my hair brown again. I didn’t want to give them a lot of personal information, so I said, “Sometimes.”

All during the flight I worried that Abuela might not have been able to get hold of my mother with my flight information and I’d have to take a cab to my house, but when I got to the airport, Mom stood waiting by the baggage carousel. I could see the lines of worry etched on her face as she searched the crowd, and then her eyes flew open wide when she recognized me. She hurried over and hugged me. “Your hair is so long—just look at you! You look—”

“Exactly like Kari, I know.”

“I was going to say older.” She held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down. “And more . . . I don’t know, like such a sophisticated lady.”

“It’s the clothes.”

She led me a few paces away so we weren’t standing by the crowd. “So tell me everything. Did you ever get to meet him?”

“I met him right before I left. He was really nice.”

“Really?” she asked, but she sounded more alarmed than pleased. “Are you going to see him again?”

I shrugged. “He said he’d call me, so I hope so.”

“He said he’d call you?”
The words dropped from her mouth in disbelief, and I knew what she thought. He had said he would call her too.

“Mom, he left your phone number in his jeans pocket and accidentally sent it through the wash. He didn’t have any way to reach you. And his manager never told him about your phone call. He didn’t know about your pregnancy.”

She blinked repeatedly like she didn’t know what to make of my words, like she couldn’t take them in. The years of not having a father stretched before me again, and this time I wasn’t sure whom I felt worse for, my mother or me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said it, but I added, “Why didn’t you try to contact him again? You wouldn’t have had to tell me about it if he had rejected us. Why didn’t you at least try?”

She tore her gaze away from me and swallowed hard. She stared at the baggage carousel for several seconds before she turned to me again. “I always told myself I kept the truth from you because I didn’t want you to get hurt, but when I saw you walk up just now, looking like you belonged in Beverly Hills—well, that wasn’t the whole reason. I can’t compete with him, Lexi. He can buy you anything and take you anywhere. What child would want to live with her poor, struggling mother when she could live with her famous, rich father? You’re my whole life. I didn’t want him to come and take you away.”

Her eyes teared up, and I pulled her into a hug. “I wouldn’t have . . . ,” I said, but I couldn’t finish the sentence.
I wouldn’t have left you for money
. Up until I went to California I had been too preoccupied with my lack of money, my secondhand clothes, and my small house. I’d been so eager to make a bundle of cash for being Kari’s double. If my father and mother had had joint custody of me all along, would I have been too ashamed to live with my mother?

“The money doesn’t matter,” I said. “No one has ever loved me as much as you have. Nothing is going to change that.”