Page 37 of Love, Amy

I shove my face into the frame, smiling brightly at the Instagram livestream. “Dad, did you forget about practice? I thought you wanted us to get an early start!”

My cheeriness and emphatic use of “Dad” catches Beck by surprise. He sputters. “Amy—”

Before he can say another word, I wave to the camera. “Hopefully, y'all don’t mind if I steal my dad away. We have a Grand Slam to prepare for! I hope to have your support at my first match on Sunday. See you then!” My smile is so wide it feels like it’s splitting my face in half.

I click off the livestream.

Beck immediately turns his fury on a new target. “Amy. Bowman.” He grits his teeth. “What do you think you’re doing?”

I cross my arms, leaning back in the seat. “What are you doing? Rafe about had a heart attack. And just you wait until Sara sees your little stunt.”

Beck folds his arms, too, regarding me. “Did you see the article? Did you read it?”

My heart starts racing a little, but I don’t let it show on my face. All I can hear is Beck saying, “we hardly know the woman” over and over. I wish the statement didn’t feel so right and so wrong at the same time. “I did see it,” I finally say. “This isn’t the first time she’s talked to the press about us.” I say us, but most of the article is about Beck and his megalomania. She hardly mentions me, her daughter, at all. I try not to let it sting.

Beck slams his fist against the steering wheel. “She’s never gone this far before. She must be desperate for money.” I don’t dare disagree with him, but I can’t help but feel bad when I visit my mother in her cramped Vegas apartment, which smells of cheap perfume and moldy carpet. The contrast between our gated Malibu mansion and her home feels like a gaping wound. Last year for Christmas, I tried to give her a check for a few thousand dollars, but she refused. Unfortunately, Beck and I have become conflated in her mind, and she will not accept money from that man.

Even though I’m the one who won it.

I work to keep my tone steady. “Is anything in the article true? Is that why you’re so angry?”

I only skimmed the email, but a few quotes stood out to me.

“Dinah claims that when she first became pregnant, she reached out to Beck for financial help. He accused her of trapping him and cut all contact.”

“When Dinah couldn’t afford to raise Amy on her tips from waiting tables, she decided to do what was best for her child: reach out to Amy’s millionaire father.”

“Beck was skeptical of Amy’s parentage when she first came to live with him. He forced Dinah to pay for paternity tests. Later, he only agreed to help Amy if he could raise her the way he wanted—within the world of tennis.”

“Interviewer: Did Beck ever try to hurt you?

Dinah: (laughs) Beck doesn’t hurt women in that way. How could he when he doesn’t even see us?”

Beck narrows his eyes. “Which part?”

“Did my mother ask you for child support and you refused?” I know Beck’s finances well; they intersect with mine. He could have thrown her a couple thousand bucks a month and not even noticed it was gone. I’m not surprised exactly. It’s like he’s been blurry all these years, and he’s finally coming into focus.

Beck rolls his eyes. “She was a stranger, Amy. How was I to know if you were an accident or not? She probably planned the whole thing. I wasn’t about to let her siphon money off me for decades.” I don’t mention that it isn’t siphoning money when the money is paying for your child’s welfare. No point.

I tilt my head. “Have you ever had a girlfriend? A real one?” It’s clear my mother gets no credit for giving birth to me because she was a one-night stand. A stranger.

He makes a dismissive noise. “Of course, I dated Brooke Dyer in the 90s and Nellie Belle in the early 2000s and—”

“No,” I cut him off. “Not dated. Have you ever had a real partner? Someone you share your life with?”

He looks at me like I’m crazy. There’s a pause where he racks his brain. Where he thinks of his parents, who he never really got along with, and Suzy, who left him earlier this year and he doesn’t know why, and Rafe, who’s just one of a dozen kids who have worshipped him long enough to be his assistant. I know that’s what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it, too. “Just you,” he finally says. “I guess.”

A lump rises in my throat. “Why me?” I ask, voice small. “No one else was good enough?”

His expression becomes distant. It almost looks like he’s staring at the front of the Wimbledon gates. “I didn’t really choose you. I ignored you for weeks when you first came to live with me. I hired a nanny to take care of you.” I don’t clearly remember those early years with Beck, though I’m not surprised to hear that we hardly saw each other. Even when I was six, eight, 10 years old, the only time I saw him was on the tennis court. I spent most of my time locked in some ornate office with tutors or roaming wildly around our Malibu compound. Beck glances my way. “But you wanted to be with me, I guess.” He sounds a little unsure, like he can’t imagine why a daughter would want to be with her father. “So, Suzy brought you out to watch me practice. You toddled around the court, not even four years old.” Beck smiles a little at the memory. My gaze feels locked onto him, trying to see what he’s seeing in the past. “And without prompting, without help, you walked over and tried to pick up one of my rackets. Suzy laughed and helped you pick it up. It was too big for you.” He chuckles. “You turned to me, desperately holding onto the racket, and you said, “Me, too.’”

I want to reach out to Beck, to keep this version of him with me, but I don’t know how. “I always wanted to be like you.”

Beck shrugs. “So, then I became your dad for real.”

I take a deep breath, but it’s shaky. I don’t tell him the truth. I don’t tell him that in that moment, he wasn’t picking me, Amy Bowman, his daughter. He was picking Amy Bowman, the tennis player. He was picking tennis.

And that’s never been a hard choice for him to make.