Secret Star by Nancy Springer Page B

were going to take you away from me, put you in a home or something.”
    There was a ragged edge of emotion in his voice. Tess stood staring down at him. “Why didn’t you let them?” she asked a little less harshly.
    â€œTess, you were all I had.” His voice hitched, stuck on the words. “Still are.”
    She stood stiffly in her sleep clothes, eyeing him.
    â€œI didn’t help you as much as I should have,” he said. “I was in a wheelchair, feeling sorry for myself. I should have done more for you than I did.”
    Tess knew damn well he had done the very best he could. Knew it and didn’t want to admit it. She said nothing.
    â€œSo you handled it your own way,” Daddy said. “You just quit remembering, and all of a sudden you were better. And once you buried it—I was scared to dig it up again.” He looked at the floor. “I knew you blamed me.”
    She knew she shouldn’t keep blaming him. Yet she wondered if she would ever be able to stop. The anger just wouldn’t let go.
    â€œGet out of my way,” she told him.
    He did not move except to stare up at her, his round face taut. “Where are you going?”
    She pushed past him, muttering, “Going to try to handle it better this time.”

11
    She took it to the drums. It seemed like music was the one thing in her life she could always count on. She spent the day at the drums, and the drums ate up the anger and liked it.
    They helped her sort things out. At first the bad memories kept playing over and over like a videotape—bang, bang, gunshots. Bang, bang, dead on the floor. But later, other memories started bubbling up with the drumbeats. Paradiddle, Yankee Doodle, riding a pony on the fourth of July . Soft-shoe brushes on the snare, Mommy brushing my long blond hair . Tess could remember her mother’s voice, her mother’s smile. That was worth something.
    Daddy stayed away from her until afternoon, then wheeled into the living room and asked her whether she wanted some lunch. She shook her head.
    â€œYou feeling any better?”
    â€œSome,” she admitted. She put down the drumsticks for a moment and looked at him. “What was my father like?”
    He hesitated, but then told it to her straight. “He was a dangerous man.” His eyes scanned her face as he talked. “Jealous. Violent. Never accepted that Teresa left him. While he was in jail it was okay, but the minute he got out—he was in my house. Busted in. Coming at me with the knife.”
    â€œHe was in jail?”
    â€œHe was in jail a lot. Doing things that might land him in jail was kind of his profession.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œThat’s how I knew—when Kamo came here—see, Rojahin is the name on your birth certificate, but God knows what the guy’s real name was. He went by Marcus Rojahin, Mark Rojohn, John Ryan, uh, Rory Jones, Rory Jamison—a bunch more I can’t remember. I figured it was a pretty good bet he wasn’t Kamo’s dad.”
    â€œGreat,” Tess muttered. “My father was a criminal.”
    â€œHe was big,” Daddy said quietly, “and good-looking, and exciting, and he never did a bad thing to you or Teresa, though sometimes he scared her. That’s why she left him. But she always loved him better than me.”
    The matter-of-fact way he said it made her gawk at him. He answered her stare for a moment, then wheeled away and left her alone with her drums.
    Bang, bang. How had it felt when she shot him down?
    When Tess finally headed toward her room to get out of her sweatpants and into some real clothes he was sitting in there waiting for her. “I don’t want you to go to work today.”
    Anger flared again. She pushed past him to get to her dresser. “Don’t you try to tell me what to do!”
    â€œNo. Tessie, listen.” He said it more softly. “I don’t want you to