Royal Wedding (36 page)

“Yes, Brian,” I said, noticing that he'd stepped it up a notch in recent days and had actually hired a cameraperson—well, a woman who was recording our conversation with a camcorder. “I would like everyone to know that my father, the Prince of Genovia, is the first to admit that he's made many mistakes in his life, but his daughter Olivia is not one of them. In fact, he considers her one of his proudest accomplishments—and I agree. The only reason you've never heard about her before now is that her mother, who sadly passed away a decade ago, very wisely asked that she be raised out of the glare of the media. As someone who's experienced what it's like to be a teen princess in the spotlight, I can definitely understand her concerns. But now that the information is out there—for which I take full responsibility—I only ask that Olivia be given the space and time she needs to adjust to her new situation, and get to know her new family.”

When I was through, Brian appeared dumbfounded with joy.

“Oh, Princess,” he breathed into his recorder. “That was . . . that was . . .”

“Was that enough?” I asked him as Michael tugged on my hand. Other paparazzi, having heard through their mysterious paparazzi underground that I was giving interviews, were rushing over to shout questions of their own, and the scene outside the diner was getting a little chaotic. Lars was beginning to lose it. He doesn't like uncontrolled venues.

“More than enough,” Brian gushed. “I'll post it right away. Thank you.
Thank you!
”

“No, thank
you,
” I said, and allowed myself to be rushed into the waiting car.

Brian was as good as his word. He did post the interview about a half hour later. And less than fifteen minutes after that, it was picked up by every major news outlet, where it's received overall positive feedback (though Dominique is upset that I didn't clear it, or my talking points, through her first).

That's the good news. The bad news is, when I finally located my grandmother, my worst fears were confirmed:

She was trying to give my little sister a makeover.

Maybe it's the hormones (I guess I'll be saying that a lot for the next few months), but suddenly I found myself running around Paolo's salon, screaming,
“There's nothing wrong with my sister's hair!”

Everyone stared at me in complete shock, especially Paolo.

“Principessa,” he said, holding a hair dryer over a smocked Olivia's soaking-wet head. “Calm down. I only give her the blowout. You want I let her catch the cold going around with the damp hair?”

Okay, maybe I overreacted. Olivia obviously loves her new blue nails and spiral curls (and Grandmère, and I don't think it's only because Grandmère has allowed her to name the new poodle Snowball, of all things).

But sometimes I think the entire world has gone mad.

That's when Michael realized he'd forgotten an important meeting at the office and left.

•   
Note to self:
Is it possible Michael left only because he couldn't handle all the estrogen in the room from three—possibly more, if either of the babies is a girl—female Renaldos?
Check with his assistant to see if he really had a meeting.
No, don't. Do not be this person.

After everyone had calmed down a bit, Grandmère and Olivia and “Snowball” and Rommel and I went to lunch at the Four Seasons (for “bonding” time), where I ordered every dessert on the menu because Olivia didn't seem particularly enthusiastic about anything else, and that's what I felt like eating anyway.

(Although Grandmère remarked about how I ought to be “slimming” before the wedding, not trying to increase my caloric intake as much as possible. HA! Wait until she finds out the truth.)

Now we're going back to the hotel because Grandmère says that's where Dad is and he's going to “hear about” my appalling behavior.

He's going to “hear about” a lot more than that.

Things to do:

1.   Make appointment with ob-gyn.

2.   Break the news to Mom that she's going to be a grandmother. Make sure she knows none of her friends can have the placenta for their weird art projects!

3.   Tell Lilly she's going to be an aunt. Ask her to be godmother? But no fairy jokes.

4.   Start interviewing nannies. No robots.

5.   
Ask Lana what labor feels like
No, better not ask Lana anything

6.   Ask the vet how to prepare Fat Louie for a new baby. Will he be jealous?

7.   What if Michael wants Boris to be godfather? NO.

CHAPTER 66

7:00 p.m., Thursday, May 7

Third-Floor Apartment

Consulate General of Genovia

Everything is a disaster.

When I got to Grandmère's this afternoon and went into the library to speak to my dad, I interrupted a meeting he was having. A meeting with Olivia's aunt and uncle and their lawyer, Bill Jenkins, Annabelle's dad.

Actually, I didn't know it was Olivia's uncle because I'd never seen him before (except in the surveillance photos José had taken), but he had red hair and was wearing a light gray suit with a shirt that was open at the collar to show a lot of gold necklaces. So naturally I assumed he was Grandmère's nemesis, the “bohunk ginger.”

Annabelle's dad looked exactly like her, only much larger, male, and wearing a suit and tie instead of a schoolgirl uniform.

It turned out neither of my guesses were wrong.

“What it boils down to, Your Highness,” Mr. Jenkins was saying as I walked in, “is that my client is not willing at this time to give up her—”

“Oh,” I said, startled. “I beg your pardon.”

“It's all right,” my father said, looking weary. “You might as well hear this.”

“Hear what?” I asked. I instantly had a very bad feeling about what I was about to hear.

Unfortunately, I wasn't aware that Olivia had followed me into the room (as little sisters, and poodle puppies, apparently have a tendency to do).

When her uncle saw her, he leaped from his chair and said, “Finally. There she is. Olivia, get your things, you're going home right now.”

I was appalled. I thought we'd had the visitation thing all worked out.

But evidently not.

True, in typical Genovian fashion, we
had
kind of left it up to a recent law school grad who hasn't yet passed the bar, a New York law firm employed by the royal family of Genovia, and a crisis management team belonging to my ex-boyfriend's uncle, who is now suing us. This probably hadn't been the best idea.

So that made it even worse when I heard Olivia say, in the sweetest voice possible, “Oh, I know I missed school today, Uncle Rick, but it was an excused absence. Grandma totally phoned in—”

“I don't care,” her uncle said, without the slightest hint of sympathy. “Go and get your things.”

I hadn't even officially met him, but already I strongly disliked him. And I could tell from the dangerous glint in my dad's eye that I wasn't the only one.

“Rick,” Catherine said. She looked as if she'd been crying. “Must you—?”

That's when I heard Olivia's uncle snap at his wife to shut up, and inform her that everything was all her fault in the first place for having been stupid enough to have allowed Olivia to leave Cranbrook with me in the first place.

When my dad rose so quickly from his desk that his chair fell over and barked, “Would you like to say that again, Mr. O'Toole, this time to someone your own size?” I whirled around to seize my sister's hand.

“Let's go into the other room,” I whispered to her. I realized the library was not a particularly safe atmosphere for either Olivia or myself to be in at that moment.

As I was dragging her out onto the balcony on which my father and mother had stood the night before and possibly rekindled their love, Michael came up, smiling, having returned from his fictional office meeting. He was completely oblivious to everything that was going on.

“Did you tell—?”

“Not yet,” I said quickly, cutting him off. “Bad timing.” I tilted my head toward the library. He looked inside the door, saw what was going on, and quickly lost the smile.

“Got it,” he said, and slipped inside the library to help my dad. I hoped this help would come in the form of reminding him to wait for his legal advisers to get here before making any rash moves, and not the kind of “help” he'd given J.P. last night.

“Soooo,” I said to Olivia in as cheerful a voice as possible (which I also tried to make as loud as possible so it would drown out what was going on in the library). “You can see a lot of stuff from up here, can't you? There's the park, and the place where my boyfriend, Michael, once took me on a carriage ride before everyone decided it was better to ban carriage horse rides, and if you look really, really hard, you can almost see the zoo, where they have those wildlife illustrations you were talking about—”

“No, you can't,” Olivia said. “It's too far away. Am I in trouble?”

“You?” I was surprised. “Oh, Olivia, of course not! Why would you be in trouble?”

“Then why is my uncle Rick so mad?” she asked. “And why is Mr. Jenkins here? I thought Aunt Catherine told you it was all right for me to come with you to New York.”

“She did,” I said, with a sigh. “But things have gotten a bit more . . . complicated since then.”

It was only when I saw the anxiety in her eyes that I realized nothing I'd said had been the least bit comforting. What was I doing, telling her things were complicated? She knew that already!

And my telling her not to worry was no use. Children's fears are perfectly legitimate, and deserve to be validated, not dismissed, especially when, like in this case, they were over something that very directly concerned her.

What kind of big sister was I being to her by not answering her questions? What kind of mother was I going to be to my own children if, in an effort to protect them, I tried to shield them from everything that might possibly hurt them? Shielding them from bullets, the way Prince Albert had shielded Queen Victoria, was one thing.

But kids whose parents shield them from the truth—censoring their reading material, lying to them about who their parents really are, cushioning them from every possible blow—are the ones who tend to get hurt the worst once they get out into the real world . . . not because the truth is so awful, but because they haven't been taught the skills they need to handle it.

And suddenly it hit me—with even more force than Dr. Delgado's announcement a few hours earlier—that
this
is what my grandmother's princess lessons, tedious as they'd seemed, had been about all along. Not standing up straight, or using the correct fork, but preparing me for the real world. The wonderful, amazing, but occasionally distasteful and sometimes even horrifying world where most people are incredibly decent and well meaning, but occasionally you do encounter someone who is going to try to use you, or even abuse you, and when that happens, there isn't always going to be a bodyguard—or a parent—around to rescue you.

Grandmère never cushioned a single blow, and this is why: I needed to know the truth, just like Olivia, because a princess needs those skills to survive.

Well, I wasn't going to be quite as brutal with Olivia as our grandmother had been with me, but I wasn't going to sugarcoat it either.

“There's some stuff about your uncle that we recently found out—it's why I came out to Cranbrook in the first place to get you, aside from the fact that I wanted to know you, because you're my sister,” I explained to her, pulling her down beside me on the wrought-iron bench as, below us, taxi horns honked. “Nothing's been proven yet, since the Royal Genovian Guard is still investigating. But we believe your aunt and uncle have been using money meant for you to fund their business—”

Olivia didn't look particularly surprised to hear any of this. In fact, it almost seemed as if she'd suspected it herself.

“Oh,” she said. “I get it. They don't want to give me up because they don't want to give up the money Dad sends for me every month.”

“No,” I said quickly. “We don't know that at all. I'm sure your aunt loves you very much.”

Seeing the skeptical look she shot me, I added, wanly, “In her own way.”

“Then why,” Olivia demanded, “did they bring Annabelle's dad with them?”

“Well,” I said, “your aunt has legal guardianship of you. So if she's changed her mind and doesn't want you to stay with us any longer, there's nothing we can do . . . at least for now.” Seeing the look of growing dismay on her face, I added, wrapping an arm around her shoulders, “But, Olivia, I promise that Dad will never rest until he gets permanent custody of you, if that's what you want. It just might take a little—”

“Noooooo!”

This is what Olivia cried as she leaped from the bench and ran back inside, Snowball bounding after her. It took me completely off guard, since it was so totally unlike her. She was a quirky kid, but normally pretty calm . . .

Until she wasn't.

I hurried after her to see where she'd gone, and was relieved when I saw that she'd only rushed back into the library . . . to throw her arms around her father.

He, of course, looked as surprised as me, but was running a hand through her new spiral curls, saying, “Shush, Olivia, it's going to be all right.”

“I won't!” she yelled, quite loudly for such a tiny thing. “I won't go back with them to New Jersey!”

My dad leaned down to whisper something in her ear. I have no idea what it was, but it caused her to loosen her hold on him a little and appear somewhat more composed, though she was still giving her aunt and uncle the stink eye.