Invisible(18)

    They waited a full five minutes and Antonia sounded breathless and worried when she answered. She’d run all the way from her cabin.

“What’s wrong, Dad?” At least he was calling himself, so she knew he was alive. If he was dead, she had no idea what would happen to her. She thought of it sometimes.

“Nothing. I didn’t know how else to reach you. I’m sorry if I scared you.” For an instant she had worried too that he had heard that her mother was dead, but she didn’t tell him that. He put her on speakerphone then. “Lara and I have a question to ask you.” She waited to hear what it was, and couldn’t imagine. “We want your permission to get married. We wanted to get your okay first.”

Antonia let out a piercing scream which turned into a whoop of joy. “Yes! Yes! Yes! When?”

“Now, soon, tomorrow, we thought we’d just go to city hall and do it before you come home, and pick you up at camp. You’re okay with it?”

“I give you my permission, and I love you both.” Brandon couldn’t remember the last time she had told him she loved him, or that he had said it to her. Maybe he never had.

“We love you too,” Lara volunteered for both of them.

    “So do I,” Brandon added, and meant it. He felt closer to his daughter than he had in years. Lara had gently shifted the dynamic between them and changed their lives.

“You don’t want a big wedding?” she asked them, and Lara answered.

“I’d feel stupid in a big white dress. I’d rather do it this way.”

“So would I,” Brandon added, although he’d gotten married at city hall before. But this felt entirely different. He and Lara were both grown-ups and knew what they were doing, and who they were marrying. They’d had two years to get to know each other. Brandon knew this wasn’t a mistake, and Lara did too. And so did Antonia.

“See you in two weeks, Mr. and Mrs. Adams.” Antonia giggled. “I can’t wait to see you both.”

“We love you,” Lara said again before they hung up.



* * *



—

The next few days after that were a whirlwind. In the end, she did wear a white dress, a simple cotton eyelet one, and carried a big bouquet of white daisies. They spent five days at an inn in Vermont as their honeymoon, and picked Antonia up at camp in Maine as promised. She threw her arms around both of them when she saw them, and had her duffel bag and trunk packed and ready to go. Brandon put them in the SUV he had rented, and they headed for New York. His dreams of having a family had come true, just with a different woman. A much better one this time. It was a new beginning for them all.





Chapter 5


The rest of Antonia’s high school years were a different experience thanks to Lara. Brandon worked a little less than he had before and spent more time at home, and Lara had a busy career with her real estate business too. They all had their jobs to do, and Antonia had high school to get through and kept her grades up so she would get into a good college.

She still kept to herself some of the time, the attention that Lara gave her was unfamiliar to her. Lara tried not to intrude on Antonia, once she moved in. Antonia had spent so many years with no one paying attention to her, and no one to talk to, that Lara’s kindness was overwhelming at times, but Antonia was grateful for it. They became movie buddies every Saturday afternoon, and Brandon tried to communicate better with Antonia, but it didn’t come easily to him. No matter how hard he tried, and how different she was from her mother, Brandon couldn’t separate her in his mind from Fabienne. She was a constant reminder of his terrible experience in a disastrous marriage.

    “It’s not her fault, Brandon,” Lara said when he admitted it to her. “She’s not her mother.”

“I know she’s not,” he said, “but I can’t separate her from the memories.” Antonia sensed it too, and it made her sense that she should be invisible, in order not to upset him. He and Lara were so happy together that she still felt like an intruder at times. She knew that her father was waiting for her to leave, so he could be alone with his wife.

The time came soon enough. She was spared camp the next year, and Lara convinced Brandon to rent a house in Water Mill on Long Island for a month, and they rented it the following summer too. Lara improved the quality of Antonia’s life immeasurably. She had never wanted children of her own, but she loved Antonia as she would have her own child. She was a wonderful stepmother, and Antonia was only sorry that she had come into her life so late.

With strong grades, she applied to several Ivy League colleges. She applied to USC, for their film school. She still wanted to write screenplays after she graduated. But she had several backup schools, since her father didn’t want her on the West Coast. No matter how much she begged and Lara cajoled, he was adamant. So, she applied to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, for their classes on film. It was her first choice.

She was accepted in March, for the fall semester, and Brandon stubbornly said he wouldn’t let her go. He wanted her to go to Columbia, as he had, to Barnard, the women’s school, or any other school. But not film school at NYU. They had a division for actors too, and he was sure she would be seduced into the acting division, and wind up an actress like her mother, and he flatly refused to let that happen.