Chapter Three
Dawn Lowry was not at all the woman I remembered.
The main image I carried of her from the wedding were the tears.
Lord knows there’d been enough of them—from what Samantha told me of her childhood, tears had always been her mother’s weapons of choice.
The sobbing she’d done as the Stillwell PD frog-marched her and her husband Warren into the back of a squad car had been formidable indeed.
There were no tears on Dawn Lowry’s cheeks as she made her way into the Call Your Daddy studio. She was all smiles.
I hadn’t spent a lot of time focusing on her during the wedding—honestly, I’d been kind of busy breaking Warren Lowry’s nose.
Up close and in the studio lights, it hit me anew how much of Samantha’s face I saw in her own.
She’d clearly had a little work done, which muted the effect somewhat, but I could imagine.
She had the same light in her eyes, the same slightly-bratty tilt to her lips.
This is what Samantha will look like in thirty years, came the thought.
And on the heels of it: I hope she looks nothing like this woman on the inside.
Dawn stepped into the room. “Hi, sweetheart,” she said, lifting a hand in greeting.
Fiona sat expectantly, watching for Samantha’s reaction.
There wasn’t one.
“Hey,” my babygirl said. The word came out clipped and flat.
And I watched Fiona’s excitement deflate in real time.
“Uh oh,” the host whispered. “I’m missing something. What am I missing?”
“I know it’s probably a big shock to see me right now,” Dawn said, her voice like honey with a little poison inside. “I know this is not what you expected when you came here today, sweetheart, but I just want you to know—”
As Dawn spoke, her gaze slid to me. She saw me sitting at the side of the studio for the first time.
She froze.
The smile slipped from her face. For a moment, she looked every bit the wailing woman who’d been led away from her daughter’s wedding in handcuffs.
“What is he doing here?” Dawn demanded.
Say this for Fiona Hall, she was no fool. I watched the wheels spin behind her eyes as she processed what she was seeing, recalculating the angle she wanted to take with this interview. Her mouth opened and words started to come out, then she closed it again.
“Okay,” Fiona managed. “Clearly this is not the surprise I was hoping it would be.”
“Your producer told us my mom was going to be here,” Samantha said. “About twenty minutes before showtime. It’s the only reason I’m sitting here calmly right now instead of screaming and throwing things.”
The color drained from Fiona’s face.
Then she did something that massively raised my respect for her.
She held up a hand, keeping Dawn from getting any closer. She turned to Samantha.
“Do you want to keep going?” Fiona asked my babygirl. “We can pull this interview right now. Say the word and she’s gone.”
Dawn swallowed hard. Something told me this was not the way Samantha’s mother had expected this to go. She’d lost the element of surprise—and with it, her chance to ambush her daughter and bully her into submission.
Samantha turned and regarded her mother coolly. “She can stay.”
Fiona didn’t waver. “You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” A small smile curled Samantha’s lip. “Where’s Dad? In the parking lot?”
Dawn stiffened. “Your father is not here,” she said, glancing at me uneasily. “He was concerned about… unpleasantness if he showed up today.”
Unpleasantness, I thought. More like he knew I’d beat his ass. Again.
“Smart move,” Samantha said. “Who put you up to this?”
Somehow Dawn managed to scoff. “Put me up to—?”
“You don’t have to say her name,” Samantha whispered. “Just tell me if it starts with a ‘V’.”
Samantha’s mother was too well-prepared to give the game away. But I saw the little tremor that passed through her body when she heard my babygirl say that. Samantha saw it, too.
“Thought so,” Samantha murmured.
“Okay, we’re still rolling,” Fiona said, glancing between her two guests. “Although I’m guessing we’ll probably cut this part out of the podcast…”
“Oh, please don’t,” Samantha said. She looked like she was almost starting to enjoy herself. “Your fans deserve the whole story.” She gestured at the other chair. “Go ahead, Mom. Take a seat. Introduce yourself.”
Dawn saw the trap. In what was maybe the only time in my entire life I’d ever manage to feel a touch of sympathy for her, I watched her glance at the seat and make a decision. And not the easy one.
She settled into the seat with a small, self-deprecating grimace, smoothing down her dress and checking her posture. She’d positioned herself midway between Samantha and Fiona: not what the producers had probably expected. I couldn’t blame my babygirl for not wanting her mother on the same couch.
A switch flipped in Fiona, and suddenly she was on again. “Our surprise second guest is Mrs. Dawn Lowry,” she said, somehow managing to look like this wasn’t the most awkward start to an interview in the podcast’s history. “Dawn—may I call you Dawn, by the way?”
Dawn managed a smile. “Please do.”
“Okay, cool.” Some of the confidence returned to Fiona’s voice. “We’re going to get into the fun stuff here in a second, but I just want to ask, right at the top—what have the last few months been like for you? What’s it been like, being the mother of one of the infamous Avery brides?”
Samantha stiffened. Dawn didn’t.
She laughed, bright and calm. Like a completely different woman from the one I’d met at the wedding.
“Honestly, parts of it have been difficult,” Dawn said, keeping her eyes on Fiona. “We’re very private people normally. Doing something like this is not in my nature.”
Samantha just barely managed to stifle her snort.
“Just the requests from the press have been… you know, never mind.” Dawn might not have been a good mother, but she was doing a very good impression of one.
“There’s something more important that I want to say, and I hope Samantha will let me.
” She half-turned to my babygirl, still either not brave enough or foolish enough to look into her eyes. “I both love and support my daughter.”
“Okay,” Fiona said, nodding eagerly. “Alright.”
“I’ve read the articles. I’ve—God help me, I’ve even listened to some of that awful cult podcast.” She let out a small, knowing laugh, and I could’ve sworn I heard one of the cameramen chuckle in response.
“They’re nonsense. It’s all nonsense. My daughter has never in her life done a single thing she didn’t want to do.
Anybody who’s talked to her for forty-five minutes knows that. ”
Samantha’s face was a mask.
“She’s not in a cult. My daughter hasn’t been brainwashed, or trafficked, or whatever the hot new term for these things is this week.
” She opened her hands. “She’s just an independent young woman who fell in love with someone I didn’t expect her to fall in love with.
And who’s building a life I don’t understand.
” She shook her head, her gaze traveling to Fiona.
“Which I guess is just what having a child means, isn’t it? ”
Fiona was nodding. “That’s really beautiful,” she said.
Christ, I thought, my stomach sinking. She’s good.
She really was. In fact, I could barely believe I was looking at the same Dawn Lowry who’d been led out of our wedding in handcuffs.
In about ninety seconds of screen time, she’d managed to make herself look supportive—and almost maddeningly reasonable.
Defending her daughter’s marriage right off the bat made her look good.
And it would make Samantha look bad if she came at her. Raising her voice, or crying, or turning red—they’d make my babygirl look like an unstable young woman screaming at the reasonable adult in the room. The one who’d just publicly told the world she wasn’t being taken advantage of.
Everything’s a Cult couldn’t have scripted it any better.
I saw the same realization dawning—pun intended—on Samantha’s face. This was a dangerous game her mother was playing. Dawn hadn’t come here to be yelled at or to have her dirty laundry aired. She’d come to win.
And all at once, I understood why Samantha insisted that I was in the room.
Because this was exactly how her parents had always operated.
“So we’ve got to talk about you,” Fiona said, a knowing grin spreading across her face. “Because, apparently, as crazy as your daughter’s life is, the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree.”
Samantha’s gaze slid to me for a moment. Here we go, I thought.
“You’ve had a pretty unconventional life yourself, haven’t you?” Fiona asked.
“I don’t know that I’m all that terribly interesting,” Dawn said.
“Oh please,” Fiona said, grinning. “I’ve heard some stories!”
Still, Dawn demurred. “When I was Samantha’s age, people didn’t talk about these things the way they do now.
Even if you and your husband were doing things other people would consider ‘wild’—especially if you were doing them—you kept it under your hat, so to speak.
” She turned to Samantha, looking her full in the face for the first time since the interview began, and tried to smile.
“We certainly didn’t throw a whole wedding the way you did, dear. We were… quieter.”
“Not quiet enough,” Samantha snapped.
Nice one, babygirl, I thought.
Dawn turned to Fiona with a grimace. “Sam was always my sensitive girl,” she said, her tone warm despite her expression.
“Even when she was tiny. The baby of the family, you know? She had big feelings. An enormous imagination—I mean, darling, how old were you when you finally stopped talking to your imaginary friend? Ten?”
Samantha crossed her arms beneath her breasts, her look saying it all.
“I had an imaginary friend, too,” Fiona admitted.
“She took losing her hard,” Dawn said, leaning in with a sympathetic smile. “Samantha still takes things hard, I think. I don’t say that as a criticism—”
“You’re criticizing me right now,” Samantha whispered.
Dawn’s lips formed a tight little line.
“You see what she does?” Dawn said to Fiona, hurt. “This is what she’s always done.”