Athena's Daughter (20 page)

“What’s my daddy’s name?”

Elizabeth’s question drew Athena out of her
musings, and she drew in a breath. “Oh. It’s Derek Marshall.”

“So my name will be Elizabeth Marshall,
right?”

Whoa. That was something she hadn’t
considered. But given the way Derek behaved, she rather thought
he’d insist on it. “I’m pretty sure it will be. We’ll practice
spelling it so when you start to school next year you’ll know how
to write it.”

“And your name will be Athena Marshall.”

“Well, no, munchkin. I’ll still be Athena
Chandler.”

An obstinate frown appeared on Elizabeth’s
face. “Mama. Families all have the same name. You can’t be Athena
Chandler anymore.”

Oh, boy. How could she explain this one?
“You’re right that most families have the same name. But not all of
them do. Your daddy and I aren’t married, so I won’t have his last
name. But since you’re his little girl, you will. See?”

Small arms crossed themselves over
Elizabeth’s chest. “Then you’ll just have to marry Daddy.”

“Honey,” she said gently. “That’s not going
to happen.”

A huff of breath indicated Elizabeth’s
opinion on the matter. “We’ll see.”

Maybe after Elizabeth spent some time with
Derek she’d understand better. Athena was certain he wouldn’t
arrive in Memphis inclined to be any more civil to her than he
must. And like Elizabeth said earlier, when someone said “We’ll
see,” it meant “No.”

Derek hung up the phone feeling like he’d
just been run through a blender. With broken glass. And daggers. He
fell back on the bed spread-eagled and released a weary sigh. What
he really wanted was a stiff shot or six, but he couldn’t summon
the energy to get up and find the alcohol. Funny how the
after-effects of seething anger included a bone-deep exhaustion and
pounding head. Kind of like the after-effects of a stiff shot or
six.

He’d expected his parents to be shocked at
the news that they were not only grandparents, but grandparents of
an almost seven year old. After a solid half-hour of answering the
same questions over and over, Derek had moved on by informing his
mother that her granddaughter shared her name.

This brought on a whole new set of questions,
none of which Derek could answer since they all pertained to what
little Elizabeth was like. And once that subject was exhausted, the
fight had begun.

Derek shook his head at the ceiling. His
parents had loved Athena when they met her during that summer; how
could they spew such vitriol about her now? He cringed, knowing
he’d done the same thing. But it didn’t make it any easier to hear
his mum and dad eviscerate her over the phone. He had tried to
control himself since he could understand where they were coming
from, but when his father had told him – actually commanded him –
to stay away from “that whore,” Derek snapped.

“‘That whore’ is the mother of your
granddaughter,” he yelled into the phone. “She’s the same girl I
brought home seven years ago, and this character assassination ends
now. If you want to blame anyone for this fucked-up situation, talk
to your own daughter about the friends she keeps. It was Janie’s
friend Tina who started this, but I’m ending it here!”

Groaning, he rolled off the bed and trudged
into the suite’s living room in search of something to mellow him
out. A quick check of the bottles on the small table near the
window showed him he didn’t have enough booze to get buzzed, much
less toasted. Well, that’s what he got for kicking his personal
assistant out of her job. Yeah, because that was what bothered him,
the lack of a personal assistant.

He returned to the bedroom long enough to
scoop up his room key, and headed toward the door of the suite with
the goal of tracking down something that would numb not only his
mind but maybe soothe his heart, too. He jerked open the door and
dodged by reflex as Paul’s fist whistled past his head.

“What the hell?” Putting his hand flat on
Paul’s chest, he pushed the singer back into the hall.

Paul held his hands up in a sign of
surrender. “Be cool, mate. I was just knocking on the door. I
didn’t know you were going to open it.”

Closing his eyes, Derek let his breath out
slow. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.”

“Take what out on me?” Paul pulled the
elastic from his ponytail and raked his hair back with his fingers.
“What’s going on?” He re-secured his ponytail, and raised an
inquisitive brow.

Derek shrugged and looked away. “Told my
folks about Elizabeth. Now I need a little something to help me
relax.”

“Blonde or brunette?”

After a look from under lowered brows, Derek
turned and went back into his suite. “I was thinking more along the
lines of whiskey or weed,” he tossed over his shoulder. “Either or
both, I don’t care. As long as there’s a lot of it.”

“Not before the show you don’t.” Paul
followed him into the room and closed the door. “You can get
altered after if you need to, but not before.”

“Fine then.” Derek sighed and leaned on his
hands on the back of the couch. “What were my other choices?”

“How about sandy haired with grey eyes?” Paul
suggested quietly.

Derek dropped his head and gripped the couch.
After a moment, he took a deep breath. “Actually, that’s exactly
what I need.”

“I know.” Paul walked into the room and sat
down in an armchair, propping one ankle on the opposite knee.
“Haven’t you talked to her since?”

“No.” He bent forward and rolled over the
back of couch, landing with a plop on the cushions. “After the
things I said to her, I don’t want to try to start over on the
bleedin’ telephone.”

Paul frowned and scratched his ankle. “What
did you say to her, then?”

“What didn’t I say?” Derek propped a pillow
under his head. “I’ve only just realized how horrible I sounded
after hearing my parents say the same things.” Frowning, he sank
into his misery. “But I was saying it right to her face. Man, I
fucked up.”

“You didn’t mean it, though. Did you?”

“At the time maybe I did. I dunno.” He
crossed his forearms over his eyes in an effort to shut out the
memory. “I was in such shock that I don’t really remember much.
Just the picture of Elizabeth and the realization that she’s mine.
After that it’s pretty much a blur. Still is, if I’m being
honest.”

“Go slow,” Paul advised.

“What are you going on about?” Derek peeked
out from under his arms with a frown.

“With Athena. Go slow.” Paul’s mouth twisted
with exasperation. “You do still want her, right?” When Derek hid
his eyes behind his arms again, Paul snorted. “I’ll take that as a
yes. So don’t push her. I mean, she’s still Athena. Despite the
front she puts on, she always was a little timid, you know.”

“Yes, and insecure and full of self-doubt,
and I took all that, magnified it, and shouted it back into her
face. Fuck me,” he groaned.

“So you forgive her, then?”

And there was the rub. He couldn’t stop the
burn of anger he still felt when he thought of missing all these
years with his child, no matter how hard he tried to understand.
It’s not like Athena hid a kitten from him – it was his
daughter!

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’ll figure it out when you see her
next week.”

Derek doubted it. At the moment, he rather
thought he needed at least a couple of years to figure out just
what he felt. He peeked again when he heard Paul get to his
feet.

The singer grinned down at him. “Don’t try to
bullshit me, mate. You love the woman. It’ll work out somehow. But
you can take it all out on the stage tonight. Walk out into the
dark with thousands of people screaming your name, then the lights
come on and in an instant it’s so hot it feels like someone left
the door to hell standing open. The pounding of the drums and bass,
the scream of your guitar through the stacks, and all those people
lose their fucking minds. There’s nothing like it, man. Just sweat
it all out and leave it there for tonight.”

“Right. That’s the same.”

“Sorry.” Paul shrugged one shoulder and
grinned. “But right now it’s all you’ve got.”

After Paul left, Derek remained on the couch
with his eyes hidden. Yes, working it all out onstage was all he
had. For a long time it had been all he had. And then Athena came
back into his life, and he remembered what it was like to love
something other than his music, to have a life off the stage and
out of the studio. For ten brief, shining days it appeared he was
going to finally be one of those people who had it all. Then in the
space of five minutes it all changed.

His mind turned again to Elizabeth, and
anticipation so strong it was almost painful swept through him. It
was hard not to make up some half-baked lie about being too sick to
finish the tour, and fly straightaway to Memphis to see her. What
was she like? What would she think of him? Whenever he thought
about being a father, it was in some misty, far away future, a
mythical “some day” that he might or might not reach. But in one
quick, sharp instant he’d become one, although it still didn’t seem
real. Looking at a photograph of a little girl who was his spitting
image filled him with wonder, but at the same time he couldn’t wrap
his head around the fact that she was his daughter. Just the
thought of being face to face with her scared the living hell out
of him. What if she didn’t like him? What if she decided not to
accept him as her father?

Of course, that would all depend on what
Athena told her. But if he was honest, he had to admit he wasn’t
worried about that. Despite the ugly accusations he’d thrown at
her, deep down he knew Athena wouldn’t make him out to be the bad
guy. Still, Elizabeth would be seven at the end of May; she was old
enough to form her own opinions and make up her own mind about
things. He recalled all the things Athena had told him about her
daughter over the past few weeks – her longing for a puppy, but a
small one because she was afraid of big dogs, her obsession with
the color pink, her love of books, her ability to hear a song on
the radio and instantly learn it so that she could sing it with
perfect tone and intonation a moment later, her insistence on a
nightlight when she slept, her declaration that she was going to be
an astronaut when she grew up. Where would he fit into that life
that was already so fully formed?

And in a flash of clarity, he saw what Athena
had been doing. His arms fell back onto the pillow above his head,
and he stared at the ceiling. All those stories she told him about
Elizabeth had been more than just the ramblings of a proud mum.
They were her way of introducing him little by little to his
daughter so that when she told him the truth, he’d be familiar with
Elizabeth, know a bit about what she was like. Athena hadn’t been
lying when she said she planned to tell him after the tour ended,
and she had been laying the groundwork without his knowing it.

Athena. What the hell was he going to do
about her? Paul was right – he still loved her, but he wasn’t sure
that was enough to overcome the betrayal he felt when he thought
about Elizabeth growing up all this time without him. Paul was also
right about something else; as his child’s mother, Athena would
always be a part of his life, and when he thought of that, the
confusion he felt was enough to make his head explode.

He still loved her and he still wanted her,
but he didn’t know if he could ever forgive her for keeping his
child from him for so long. And if he couldn’t forgive her, then
everything was over before it began.

Two hours in to her first day back at work,
Athena was ready to pour gasoline over the store, set it on fire,
and tell God it was the wiring. The stock was a nightmare. They
were sold out of Bob Dylan’s
Blood on the Tracks
, Led
Zeppelin’s
Physical Graffiti
and David Bowie’s
Young
Americans,
the hottest selling albums in the country, and
Rondall hadn’t bothered to order any more. Instead, he let himself
get talked into buying one hundred copies of the live album put out
by The Osmond Brothers. The fucking Osmond Brothers! How the hell
were they supposed to move those? Athena made Hal haul them to one
of the unused rooms upstairs, and then spent an hour on the phone
begging for emergency shipments of the albums they desperately
needed.

Boxes of 45s that had arrived during her
absence were gathering dust in the back room, and she wondered what
the hell everyone had been doing for the past month. It sure didn’t
appear they’d been working. After the useless Osmond albums were
out of sight, she told Hal to start stocking. From the sideways
glances he kept throwing her way, she knew he wasn’t happy with her
brusque tone and clipped orders, but she really didn’t give a
flying fuck. She’d spent the last four years as manager whipping
Stax of Wax into a paying, thriving business, and she was mad as
hell that the employees let it go to pieces in one short month.

Compounding her unpleasant morning was the
addition of their newest hire. Tammy was a student at Memphis
State, and as far as Athena could tell she was only there to get
her MRS, like an institution of higher learning was nothing more
than a happy hunting grounds for a husband. It was also obvious the
girl thought she could improve her chances by working at a record
store where droves of boys descended for the latest releases; she
spent the first part of the morning doing nothing more productive
than reapplying her lip gloss. Once Athena was off the phone with
the record suppliers, she dragged Tammy and her glistening lips to
the front windows and set her to work replacing old posters with
ones depicting the new releases Hal was busy stocking. After having
to make two trips to the front of the store to reprimand her,
Athena was sorry she’d ever come back to work.