Chapter 2 – Bellamy
BELLAMY
My heart beats faster when I feel my phone ringing against my hip.
Pausing on the stairs that lead to the ground floor of the place I’m renting, I quickly dig through my purse, find my phone, and grimace.
My father. I knew it could only be him. No one else calls me aside from the home he’s living in, but I never know how these calls will go.
Sucking in a breath and holding it in my lungs, I swipe my finger across the screen and answer. “Dad?”
“Ah, there you are,” he says in that booming, grandiose voice of his. “How’s my best girl? I haven’t heard from you in a few days.”
Exhaling the breath I was holding, I continue down the stairs. He sounds good today, even though I spent all last evening with him. He already doesn’t remember. “I’m fine. Just getting up and out.”
“Where are you headed today? Work?”
“No. It’s Saturday, remember? Today, I’m going down to the river to read.
” I meander through the cheese shop that sits below the room I’m renting, wave to the shop owner who is also my landlord, and head out the door into the bright, late summer sunshine.
It’s oppressively warm this week, and I wouldn’t mind a break from it.
Summers in Messalina are hot, and my apartment has no air conditioning.
“River?” he barks into the phone. “What river? You mean the Charles River?”
I frown. “The river in Tourin, Dad. Messalina. Remember? We haven’t lived in Boston in eight years, and we moved to Messalina four years ago.”
A silent beat. “Oh, yes, now I remember. Before the royal family died.”
“The queen. Before the queen died. The rest of the royal family is still alive.”
“Great. Good. Wonderful. So did I tell you my news?”
For the second time I pause, nearly causing a collision with the couple behind me, who skirt around me at the last second.
I apologize to them in French, though I’m not sure if they speak French or Italian.
It varies in this country depending on which part you’re in, and since the town of Tourin is in the middle, it can go either way.
“Amy did you hear me?”
Amy. Only my father calls me Amy. My mother hated it when he did that. I don’t reply. I’m too afraid, but this is my father, and he keeps going regardless of whether or not I want to hear his news.
“I think I finally did it. I think I finally figured out how to make this thing work. I’ll make a fortune on it. I know I will. I’m taking it to MIT. They’ll love it.”
I slink over to the side, pressing myself up against a wall and staring out over the baroque buildings and old cafés that line the streets of this town.
“Dad…that’s…great. I’m so happy for you.” I close my eyes, and my heart breaks a little more. “Where are you? Are you in your room or somewhere else?”
Because the last time he thought he had it all figured out, he nearly set the facility on fire by reworking a toaster oven and then plugging it in.
“Oh, you know. Your mother will be home soon. Maybe we’ll go to MIT together. You should come with us. You know your mother hates it when you go too far from home.”
Emotion swells up within me and I do my best to keep my voice light and even when I say, “I think that’s a lovely idea, but maybe I’ll join you another time. Tell Mom I say hi.”
“Will do. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Okay. Bye, Dad. Love you.”
He hangs up before returning the sentiment, but that’s not new. I shoot out a quick text to my father’s nurse and another to his case manager, asking them to check on him. My mother died eight years ago in a car accident.
My father was the driver.
It was foggy and he didn’t appreciate the curve in the road and went straight into a tree at full speed.
He’d suffered from bouts of depression all his life, but after that accident, he had a complete breakdown.
He pulled me out of school in America, left his practice as a psychiatrist, and moved the two of us to Europe.
For four years, we bounced around until I told him I wanted to study at a university in Messalina.
That’s when everything else started.
Or maybe got worse. I had noticed small things prior to that.
I’d come home from class to find him staring at a wall, or he’d ask me when my mother was returning home.
He’d forget small details like how to work the microwave, or he’d put ice cream in the oven instead of the freezer.
It quickly progressed to where he would wander from the apartment and get lost for hours until the police or I were able to find him.
My breaking point was when he started a fire in our kitchen and overflowed the bathtub to try to put it out.
Our neighbor, who had been checking on him, got there just in time before the whole place went up in flames or flooded.
I had no choice but to put him in a facility, and, truly, he’s happier and better cared for there. With that, I had to drop out of my last year at university and get a job teaching English so he has the best and is safe.
But that’s what my life is now. Working long hours, visiting him, and barely making ends meet. I rent a single room with a shared bathroom. My kitchen consists of an electric kettle, a mini fridge, a sink, and a hot plate.
Struggling isn’t new for me. That’s all my life has been, ever since my mother died when I was just thirteen.
Now at twenty-one, my life isn’t that different.
Very few friends. Even less financial freedom.
No life. Now my father, a once very prominent psychiatrist, thinks he’s an inventor and that my mother is still alive and always on her way home to him.
Shoving away from the wall, I decide to put all that behind me for now.
One day at a time, one foot in front of the other.
My big plans for today are to travel over to the river on the outskirts of town and park my ass in the sun and read. Heaven.
I dash into one of the cafés, order myself a coffee, grab a pastry, and then I’m running to catch the shuttle that will take me to the river when I get yet another phone call. My heart stutters to a stop as I answer.
“Maurice?” That’s my father’s case manager.
“He’s eloped, Bellamy.”
Eloped. A fancy medical term for left without permission.
“Shit. When? How long ago?”
“I’m checking the video surveillance now.”
Searching wildly around, I cup the back of my head as panic swims through me. “I just spoke to him. He said he was going to MIT with some sort of invention. Where could he have gone?”
“He was there for morning check-in and had breakfast with the group,” he tells me, his voice much calmer than I feel. “Then he was back in his room…there. He was holding something in his arms and got on the elevator. He walked out of the building forty minutes ago.”
“Forty minutes?! How did that happen?!” How did I not realize he was out when I spoke to him?
“It’s Saturday and we’re short-staffed today. The front desk person looks like she was helping visitors check in and missed him walking out. Calm down, Bellamy. We’ll find him. He likely didn’t go far.”
Calm down? Impossible. My father has been missing for forty minutes. “He has his phone. I just spoke to him. Hold on, I’m going to track him on the app.” Shifting over to an alcove, I pull up the geolocator app I have and… “Oh my god!” I cover my mouth with my hand. “He’s at the palace.”
“The palace? What palace?”
“The palace. As in where the king and his family live. The palace a half an hour from here. He must have taken a cab or the bus or something.”
“That’s bad, Bellamy. No one is allowed in the palace. No outsiders at all. He’s American and has all but forgotten French. They’ll arrest him.”
“Maybe he’s just walking the grounds and isn’t actually inside it. I’m going to borrow a car and go get him.”
“I need to report this,” Maurice tells me.
“Just give me some time, okay? You said they’d arrest him, let me see if I can get to him first.”
“Okay. I’ll buy you some time, but hurry. The palace guards won’t tolerate a man carrying a strange device in his hands. Good luck and keep me updated.”
Racing back to my building, I borrow my landlord’s car and fly down the road as fast as I can.
Despite my dread, the ride is gorgeous, the countryside loaded with sunflowers, cypress trees, and olive and lemon groves.
The air is peppered with their fragrance, and it’s easy to see why Empress Messalina was so in love with this place.
I have no idea what I’ll face when I reach the palace. It’s closed to the public, as you’d expect since the royal family is living there and they stay shut away from everything. Rumor says that the king and his family haven’t left the palace since the queen died.
That happened six months after we moved to Messalina, and since then, the country hasn’t been the same.
I mean, it’s not difficult to understand why.
I know about the history and tragedies of the royal family.
The murmurs of a curse. People smile and are cheery and go about their days and do their business.
You’d never know anything was amiss unless you peeled back the surface and looked beneath.
Then it’s not so difficult to find.
The darkness that lurks. Waiting. The tense edginess people feel.
There’s an undercurrent in Messalina. A storm cloud hovering in the otherwise pristine sky, perpetually threatening a devastating storm.
You never know when or how it will come, but it’s there, always a reminder that it’s just a matter of time.
Such sadness lingers beneath the surface of all the beauty here.