I started out of the room.
“No, Mom. Where are you going? You have to stay and watch it with me.”
I shook my head as I handed her the remote. I patted her cheek. “This is between you and your dad,” I said.
“Hey, Em. It’s me, Daddy,” a deep, warm, Irish-accented voice said as I left. “If you’re watching this, it must mean you’re a big girl now. Happy Sweet Sixteen, Emma.”
I turned back as I was closing the door. Aidan Beck, the actor I’d hired and filmed with a vintage camcorder at the Hudson that afternoon, was smiling from the screen.
“There are a few things I want you to know about me and about my life, Em,” he said in his brogue. “First and foremost is that I love you.”
Three
DOWN THE HALLWAY, I went into a large closet, otherwise known as a Manhattan home office, and shredded the script I’d written to fool my daughter. I sifted the confetti through my fingers and let out a breath as I heard Emma start to sob.
No wonder she was crying. Aidan Beck had performed the script impeccably. Especially the accent. I’d met and hired the young off-Broadway actor outside the SAG offices the week before.
As I sat there listening to my daughter crying in the next room, some part of me knew how cruel it was. It sucked having to be a Gen-X “Mommie Dearest.”
It didn’t matter. Emma was going to have a good life, a normal life. No matter what.
The ruse was elaborate, I knew, but when I spotted Emma’s Google searches for Kevin Bloom on our home computer the week before, I knew I had to come up with something airtight.