Page 60 of Hidden
“I never knew her growing up,” she started. “I knew who she was. Her name is on my birth certificate. She and my father were dating when I was conceived, but they never married. Two days after I was born, she walked out of the hospital and never looked back.”
“That…that was not what I was expecting,” he said, hugging her tighter. “And your dad?”
She smiled. “We’re very close. But you know that. He’s an amazing man with a huge capacity to love and stay optimistic. It wasn’t always easy, but he made it work for us. I’m sure there were weeks, months even, that were a lot harder than I, as a kid, realized, though.”
“Did you talk about your biological mother growing up?”
She nodded, her head rubbing against Asher’s chest. “When I was old enough, yes. Mostly he said she just had to leave. That some people aren’t meant to be parents and that she made the best decision she could.” She paused then added, “Now that I’m older, I agree that not everyone is cut out to be a parent, and in some ways, I admire that she made that decision for herself. And for me. I like to think that knowing she was leaving me with someone as wonderful as my dad made it easier.”
“I hear a ‘but.’”
“But I’m not sure she ever gave it that much thought. I’m not sure she was capable of thinking of anyone but herself. I always got the sense that she didn’t want to be a parent, so she just decided not to be. Regardless that she participated in the act that brought me into this world.”
Asher remained silent, his fingers gently tracing lines up and down her arm. “Has she ever tried to contact you? Or you her?”
“Yes, and that’s part of the reason I have that opinion of her. She wasn’t a part of my childhood at all. But a few months after I won my first Oscar, right after I signed my first big movie deal, she tried to reach out to me.”
“Tried?”
“She contacted my father to get my information. He refused to give it to her until he talked to me first. When we discussed it, we agreed that the timing of her contact was suspect. That she was likely more interested in my burgeoning career than me, her daughter.”
“What did you do?”
“I asked my agent to investigate her. I wanted to be sure my instincts were right before I spoke with her.”
“And what did the investigation reveal?”
“She lived month to month in New York, living off bit parts in Broadway and off-Broadway shows. Very few with actual lines. She dated a string of men, usually wealthy. But none took for much longer than a few months.”
“Your instincts were right.”
She nodded against his chest. “She didn’t want to connect withme. She wanted fame and fortune, and she wanted to use me, and my rising stardom, to get it.”
“I’m sorry,” Asher said. “It’s her loss.”
Intellectually, Ellie agreed. Emotionally, it still sometimes hit her. But that was another topic she might take up with JJ.
With a sigh, she finished her story. “I had a very forward-looking agent, and she didn’t want anything to blow back on me. She suggested that I talk with Evelyn—that’s my mother’s name—and agree to pass her CV on to my agent. That way, if she ever went to the press to complain about me, I could honestly say I did what I told her I would do. That I connected her with my agent.”
“And it was hardly your fault that your agent couldn’t find any work for her. I’m sorry you went through that, but it was a good plan.”
Ellie nodded. “It was. And the entirething—whatever you want to call it—went down exactly the way we expected. When Evelyn and I finally talked, she didn’t ask a single question aboutme. She just wanted to know who I was working with and what I could do to help her.”
“Bitch,” Asher muttered. It was such an un-Asher thing to say that it startled a laugh out of her. And lightened the situation.
“Yeah, she is,” she said, still chuckling. “But I got my dad out of it. And I’msograteful I didn’t have her toxicity in my life. When I think about it in the abstract, when I think that my mother didn’t want me, it doesn’t feel good. But then when I think about the alternative? When I think about what it would have been like to have a mother like her? I’m fucking grateful that she walked away.”
He hugged her again and kissed her head. “Like I said, you are an amazing woman.” She wasn’t sure about that but wasn’t going to argue. Instead, she handed Asher the glass of wine, and he took a sip.
Several minutes passed before he spoke again. “I know this is a little out there, but do you think Evelyn could be the person behind everything happening to you?”
She hadn’t ever given that possibility any thought. But even when she did, she came to the same conclusion as her knee-jerk response. “We can ask HICC to confirm, but I don’t know that she has enough money to travel from New York to LA. I also doubt she has the technical skills to do what’s been done.”
“When you talked to her, that one time, did you meet her in person?”
She nodded. “I did. We met at a restaurant in New York.”
“So if she was close enough to you to clone your phone, like working on the film crew, you’d recognize her?”
