happy face, to show me how one soldiers on from a disappointment.
I grinned back at her, feeling the shape spread across my mouth, knowing it was more of a grimace.
“Okay, hon,” she said with a gentle laugh. “Let’s go.”
She marched ahead, shoulders squared, chin up, pushing through the doors to the sidewalk. And because I was looking at the ground, I didn’t notice when she pulled up abruptly. I walked into her back, causing her to stumble forward.
An explosion of cameras caught the awkward collision on film. I’d see the photos everywhere for weeks to come. A chorus of voices shouted my name—they knew my name. Nana turned, grabbing my hand and jerking me back into the hotel. It took me a long time—far longer than it took her—to figure out what was going on.
nine
LOST NO LONGER:
Tate Butler Steps Out in London
The famed daughter of Ian Butler and Emmeline Houriet surfaces, and tells her story of a life of hiding, secrecy, and fear.
Screen legend Ian Butler’s only daughter vanished completely from the public eye when she was only eight, spurring wild conspiracy theories that would plague him and enthrall fans for years. But this week in London, Tate Butler has resurfaced and spilled the details about her life in seclusion.
Once a doting husband and father who was often photographed on the red carpet with his wide-eyed and smiling daughter in his arms, Ian became tangled in scandal following an affair with co-star Lena Still. His wife and daughter fled Los Angeles, leaving the public without a clue to their whereabouts. Indeed, for nearly a decade the world has wondered what happened to the girl with her father’s million-dollar smile, and—moreover—what happened to her mother, rising starlet Emmeline Houriet.
The truth about what happened next comes from the daughter herself, Tate Butler, now eighteen. A close friend of Tate’s tells the Guardian that she has graduated from high school, is attending college in Sonoma, California, this fall, is obsessed with the idea of following in her father’s footsteps, and “is ready to move beyond her secretive past.”
As it turns out, Tate was taken by Emmeline to a small town north of San Francisco, where she assumed the name Tate Jones. Emmeline—who managed to stay under the radar as Emma Jones—has lived a quiet life in the small resort town of Guerneville, California. Although custody battles raged behind the scenes, eventually Emmeline won full custody of Tate, and worked to keep her away from Ian, and the spotlight.
Tate’s first trip out of the country was to London, and it was here that she told a trusted confidante everything.
“I don’t get the impression that he was a very good father,” the source says. “Despite his side of the story, Ian didn’t make many attempts to connect with Tate. She has been incredibly sheltered. No one—except maybe three or four people—knows who she is. It was a priority for her mother and [her grandmother] Jude to keep Tate out of the spotlight, and they’ve done that. But she’s an adult now. It’s time for her to start living her life freely.”
ten
I WAS HYSTERICAL ON the phone—a bubbling cauldron of panic. After Mom admitted that there were photographers outside the house back in Guerneville, she could barely get a word in edgewise.
“I’m sorry, Mom, I’m so sorry.”
“Baby girl, listen,” she said, “this was going to happen at some—”
“But I told him everything. I told him about you,” I choked, “and Dad. What is Dad going to say? Is he going to sue us?”
At this Mom laughed. “Don’t be silly.”
Don’t be silly.
She sounded so sure. So unworried.
Meanwhile, Nana paced the room behind me, on the phone with the airline, trying to rearrange our flights. Once that was sorted, she called Mom’s old agent, coordinating to have someone meet us at Heathrow, to get us home without incident.
I was just holding the phone to my ear, listening without hearing to the words Mom was sending across the line. Soft sounds of reassurance, telling me she loved me, it would all be okay.
But it wasn’t okay. I knew I’d made an enormous mess.
And a small voice in the very back of my head kept whispering, He’s going to remember he has a daughter now.
A man met us at the airport. He opened the door as our car pulled up to the curb. Before I could catch a glimpse at his face, the door closed and he shuttled Nana past a throng of photographers, into a tight circle