He studies her for a moment. “And what happens,” he says eventually, “if this doesn’t go well either?”
It’s bad enough, thinking about that last show she played.
It’s a million times worse hearing about it from her dad.
She assumed he was at least generally aware of what happened. It was hard not to be. But up until now, she had no idea if he’d actually seen the video.
Now she knows.
“The last one didn’t go well,” she says, choosing her words carefully, “because it was a week after Mom died. And because she wasn’t there that night, which just about killed me. And because I wrote that song for her, and that was the moment I realized she would never hear it.” Greta shakes her head, trying to tamp down her frustration. “I know you don’t get it. How could you when you’ve never even been to one of my shows?”
He looks offended by this. “That’s not true. I came out for the—”
“The album release? Yeah. But only because Mom insisted.”
“We both know that’s not exactly my scene,” he says with a shrug.
“You think it was Mom’s scene? She came to all those shows because she wanted to support me. Not because she was some huge closet indie music fan.”
His face softens a little. “Yeah, but she loved it.”
“That’s because she loved me,” Greta says, half-shouting at him over the wind. “How do you not get that?”
“I do,” he says, surprisingly contrite. “That’s why I went.”
“Well, it was hard to tell. You spent the entire night in the corner of the bar, looking like you’d rather be anywhere else.”
He gives her a level look. “Can you blame me?”
Greta opens her mouth, then closes it again. The wind is like static all around her. She’s tempted to pretend not to understand what he means, but she knows that’s not fair. That this conversation was inevitable. Even so, she doesn’t feel ready for it.
She remembers the first time she played “Told You So” for her mom, the way her mouth had tightened as she listened to the music come thumping out of Greta’s phone. The opening notes were harsh and propulsive; the opening lines too: Here’s to all the haters / the ones who didn’t think I’d get here. By the time they reached the chorus, Greta’s hands were damp, and she couldn’t bring herself to look up. It didn’t matter, anyway. Helen, her gaze fixed on the phone, was frowning as she listened to the song, which was tinny and vibrating and full of anger, a middle finger in musical form.
When it was over, the silence felt loud. Greta was already brimming with arguments in her own favor; she’d been preparing her case ever since those first few lines came to her on a trip to London, when she sat in a café and watched a father patiently teaching his daughter how to draw a caterpillar on the back of a children’s menu and thought: That’s the way it should be.
It spun through her head, that thought, until it eventually became a song. One she had every right to play. One she’d earned many times over.
But when Helen finally looked at her with a face full of disappointment, all of Greta’s defiance melted away, and her face went hot and prickly.
“I would never tell you what to feel,” her mom said slowly, each word precise, “and I would certainly never tell you what to do when it comes to your music.”
Greta dug her nails into the palm of her hand as she waited for the next part, the part she’d known would be coming ever since she’d jotted down those first few words.
“But what I will tell you,” Helen said, “is that this will hurt him. And before you continue down this road, I just want to make sure you know that.”
Greta nodded once without meeting her mom’s eyes. “I know” was all she said, and they never talked about it again. Not when it was released as the first single off her debut album and squeaked onto the very bottom of the indie charts. Not when the video dropped and the song continued to gain momentum. Not when the album came out and her parents flew to New York for the launch party, and she saw the way her dad looked so out of place in that bar, with his jeans and plaid button-down, scanning the room like he already knew what everyone was thinking: that the song they were all there to hear was about him.
And he was right.
She’d expected to feel triumphant. See? she imagined herself saying to him that night. I did it. You didn’t think I could, but I did.
I told you so.