6. 6
6
Bo
W hen I was seventeen, I spent a summer working on a fishing boat. We all did, even Lyra. I remember this one time when we were out collecting the catch, somewhere between Laandia and the west coast of Scotland, and trying to make it back to the harbour before a storm hit.
I had been on deck, watching the dark storm clouds chasing us into land. The waves had already been so big that I couldn’t keep my balance. Stumbling side to side, I kept trying to grab something to steady myself because the deck just wouldn’t stop moving and the storm wouldn’t stop knocking me down.
This moment feels like that. A lot like that.
I can only stare at Hettie, willing myself to understand what she just told me. “What did you just say?”
Hettie draws in a shaky breath and then another. She’s on the verge of tears again.
For once, I don’t care.
“I had a baby,” she whispers.
Do I hear her correctly? Did she really say baby? As in…
I glance at the screen in my hand. She’s—
She’s Lyra when she was little.
Whoever that child is, she’s a mixture of Lyra and Mabel and Hettie, and I think that’s my nose. She’s…
Mine?
Things start to spin. If I hadn’t set down the cup after I burnt myself—there’s a red patch on my wrist from the hot water—I’d have to now because I don’t trust myself to hold anything at this moment. “Why?”
“Why did I have our child?” Hettie asks with confusion.
Our child. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Hettie stiffens, and Kody raises his head. I didn’t mean to shout—or maybe I did because this deserves a shout. This deserves a roar.
Hettie jumps to her feet. We rarely argued, but I can still tell when someone is on the defensive.
There better be a good reason for her to try and defend herself.
“You sent me away.”
That’s not a good reason. “You left,” I correct.
“Only because I had no choice. You might have married me, Bo, but you never wanted me to be a part of your life. You made me a part of your family that you hated being a part of.”
“I don’t hate my family.”
“You hate being a prince. You told me that so many times. And yet you made me a part of your life, then pushed me away because you were afraid.”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“But you hurt me. You destroyed me, Bo. You cracked open my heart—you made me love you even though I had no intention of letting myself fall for you—and then you stomped on it. You let me leave. ”
I flinch at the pain in her voice before I manage to steel myself. “She’s a princess,” I remind her with another glance at the picture.
“No, she’s not.”
“Yes, she is. Any child of mine is born royal. A princess. She’s—my god, she’s third in line to the throne.”
Hettie looks at me with a steady gaze. She knows this and still kept it from me. Kept it from my family.
I stand up. I need to move. I have to be away from Hettie even as everything in my heart wants, needs her close to me. I want to celebrate her stepping back into my life at the same time I’m shaking with anger and confusion.
Our child.
It’s been eight years.
I stare at the screen, not hearing what Hettie is trying to say to me. There’s no point listening to her excuses, because regardless of her reasons, it doesn’t change the fact that this little girl is mine. Ours.
“I need to meet her,” I insist, cutting off Hettie mid-excuse. “And we need to tell my father.”
She smells good.
Hettie smells good, and she looks great. She’s wearing a pair of those leggings that hug everywhere, and a white sweater that hits at the waist. Her hair is longer and her eyes seem bigger with dark circles of sleeplessness .
I wish I could focus on that instead of the other… stuff.
Divorce and other men and… a child. My daughter.
Our daughter.
It’s a lot.
I fell in love with Hettie Crow when I was fifteen. She sat in front of me in math class, which I almost failed because I kept staring at the back of her head, willing her to turn around and smile at me.
It took so long to get her to smile at me, and it finally happened in English class when I had the balls to stand in the front of the class and read a stupid poem aloud. Six months later, after I finally got to kiss her, I told her I wrote the poem about her.
I married her because after almost four years together, she still wouldn’t stop talking about how she didn’t deserve me. Her family… her family isn’t the best but I never cared. I only wanted Hettie. Marrying her was the only way I could think of showing her that her family didn’t matter to me. She mattered, and I loved her and I wanted to make her mine . I wanted us to be together forever.
I convinced her to marry me, forgetting for a few blissful days that I was also Prince Bowden of Laandia, with duties and responsibilities and a family who ruled a country.
It was good until it wasn’t.
An hour after telling me that I have a child, Hettie is back at the airport. But this time I’m with her.
I leave Kody with Jean and Buck and we take my plane back to Battle Harbour .
I don’t say much for the first half of the flight. Maybe she does, but I can’t comprehend what she’s saying. Something about reading and loving math and looking at the stars.
To be honest, I haven’t understood much after I heard “our daughter.” I saw the picture of her—Tema—saw her smile that is pure Lyra, and her eyes that are greener than Hettie’s hazel but still look exactly like Hettie’s sister Mabel’s in shape and size.
The realization that I have a daughter—and she’s in Battle Harbour, staying with Abigail and her family—is making me slightly nauseous. I keep taking deep breaths, which makes Hettie keep looking over, but I don’t meet her eyes because then she’ll start talking and then…
She didn’t tell me. Hettie found out she was pregnant after she left and never told me. She had a baby and didn’t think I deserved to know. That much I understand. She’s raised our child while I was here, completely ignorant of the fact that I had a daughter.
These things running through my mind are why I tune out Hettie. Because I want to know everything , but not yet.
Hettie must know I’m having trouble with this because she eventually falls quiet during the three-and-a-half-hour flight back to Battle Harbour.
I’ve made the trip so many times I practically do it on auto-pilot, but I still keep my focus on the controls and the sky around us so I don’t go completely ballistic on Hettie.
We have a daughter and she never told me.
It’s not until the familiar rocky hills come into view that my stomach calms and I realize that Hettie is shivering beside me. The cockpit of the Cessna is cold enough that I left my bulky jacket and toque on, but Hettie only has her thin coat to wear .
I pull off the hat and thrust it at her. “Here. You’re cold.”
“Because it’s frigid in here.” Her lips are a faint tinge of blue and she doesn’t protest as she tugs my hat over her ears.
“Do you want my coat? I can—”
“No, we’re almost back. Just fly the plane.” She sounds irritated. Why does she get to be irritated?
And then I forget it all as Hettie pulls her hair out of her coat, hanging long and reddish-brown over her chest, and begins to braid it.
She would always fidget with it when she was nervous. When she was writing exams in class, her fingers would tangle in the long strands without realizing it. The first time I took her for fish and chips, she put her hair up and took it down seven times.
I counted.
It’s funny, the things you remember about a person. With Hettie, I have perfect recall about the way her eyes light up when she laughs. The scent of her perfume. The feel of her hair between my fingers—thick and silky, but a little coarser than mine.
I used to play with her hair whenever I got a chance. She taught me how to braid it a few times, but my fingers were too thick and clumsy and only resulted in a nest of tangles.
I remember all of those things and more, but I won’t remember the touch of her lips against mine.
I’m pretty sure I tuned that out so it wouldn’t play on repeat in my head.
“Your hair. It’s… longer,” I manage. Conversation might be better than me raking through my memories to dredge up one of me kissing her .
“I don’t have much time to get it cut.” She finishes with the first braid and a hair tie appears from somewhere before she starts on the second.
“No. I like it.” Deep breath because my stomach is starting to roil again. “What do you do… there?” Hettie was the focus of my life for years and now I don’t know how she spends her days. How she provides for our daughter.
I could have found this out years ago, with a few phone calls, but I never bothered. I could have had one of the castle security team, or even Spencer track Hettie, or Abigail, and I would know all of this and wouldn’t have to ask like I’m making small talk with a stranger.
But I didn’t bother because Hettie left me, right when I needed her most.
I made her leave , the voice inside me corrects.
“I work in a real estate office,” Hettie says. “It’s a good job. I’m happy there.”
“You wanted to work in a library,” I remind her.
“They didn’t pay as well.”
The fact that Hettie spent the past eight years alone raising our daughter eats at me, like squirrels destroying a pumpkin. Why did I never track her down? “They treat you okay?”
I hear her sharp inhale. “Yes.”
“And Tema? What does… She’s in school?” I silently thank her for not laughing at the inane question. Of course, she would be in school. She’s seven-years-old, so that means she’d be in… “What grade is she in?”
“Grade Two. She loves reading and math. She takes after you with the books. I swear, she could bankrupt me for all the books she wants. Thankfully, we have a library close by.”
“Do you want money? Does she need things?” Hettie has been providing everything for our daughter when I was sitting back in Laandia buying a plane and renovating the cabin. I could have been helping.
“We’ve managed. Me and Abigail.”
“I could have helped.” Now it’s my turn to sound irritated.
“Bo—”
“What else does she like?”
This time Hettie’s inhale is shaky, her fingers rebraiding her hair. “We tried dancing, but she’d rather fool around. She plays soccer. Baseball. She really likes that. I thought—”
“Kalle played baseball.”
“So did you,” she reminds me softly.
“Do people know you’re married?” I demand.
She turns to the window, watching the snow-covered hills and tall pine trees reaching for the sky. “I don’t broadcast it, no.” Before I can think of how to respond—because what do you say to that?—Hettie reaches into her coat and, fumbling at her collar, pulls out a chain.
She shows me the ring on the end of the chain.
The ring in a simple gold twist, much like the braids in her hair. I have a plain gold band back at the castle.
It hurts too much to wear it. If I had it around my neck, I think it might burn me.
There was no time for me to find the perfect engagement ring for her. There was the proposal and then there was the wedding. Besides, Hettie told me she didn’t want an engagement ring.
I think that was probably a lie.
We’re silent as I fly over the familiar landscape because I really don’t know what to say.
“Why?” I finally break down and demand as the top turret of the castle comes into view.
“Why what, exactly?” Hettie counters.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Hettie sighs, a long, drawn-out breath that says so much more than she ever could. “Bo, you told me it was a mistake for us to get married. You didn’t want to tell your family. You were afraid of their reaction and what the press would say about me and my family. You finally realized what I’d been telling you for years—I didn’t deserve you. Hettie Crow should not be married to one of the royal family. It was insane to think we should be together.”
“It wasn’t insane.”
“It was. The press would have eaten me alive. My family—You would have been ridiculed.”
“You don’t know what would have happened,” I accuse. “You don’t understand.”
“I know I wanted to be with you,” Hettie says quietly. “But you didn’t want that.”
“You don’t understand,” I repeat, fighting the controls as a gust of wind comes out of nowhere.
Much like this whole conversation .
“I don’t,” she admits, turning to the window.
I’ve wanted to tell her the truth for years . I’ve wanted to tell her everything, try to make her understand, but I couldn’t.
I still don’t know if I’ll be able to say the words.
“I was willing to stick it out for you,” she says, the steeliness back in her tone. “If you had wanted me. If you had been willing to tell your family about me. But you wouldn’t, so how was I to know what you would have done if I’d told you about Tema?”
“I told my mother.”
There they are. I hear myself say the words but I don’t recognize my voice. I have never told anyone about my conversation with my mother.
Hettie gasps. “You did? But—when?”
I check the instruments as I prepare for the descent. I leave my truck at the airport so no one will need to know I’m back until I’m ready to tell them.
I do everything I can to postpone telling Hettie the truth.
I wait until the plane touches down; after I taxi to the private hangar at the end of the tarmac. I turn the engines off, and still, Hettie is sitting beside me, waiting for me to continue.
“When did you tell her?” she demands.
“I told her—and she died,” I confess, my voice raw and rough.
I see the timeline flash across her mind, remembering the date of the wedding, the day when we came back to Battle Harbour full of nervous excitement. I had headed straight to the castle and promised to call for her as soon as I’d told them.
I had wanted her with me, but she refused, said it was something I needed to do alone.
Maybe if she had been with me …
I see the moment she puts the timeline together with my mother’s accident. “Bo.” Hettie shakes her head, hazel eyes wide with sympathy. “No.”
I turn away. “I went to the castle and told her that I married you. And then she left to pick up Lyra and got in the accident. I told her, and then she died. She died because of me.”
There’s a ticking in the cockpit as Hettie processes my words. I see her eyes as she realizes I basically killed the queen of Laandia. My mother. What everyone would believe if I told them.
“You can’t know that—” Even her protest is weak because she knows it’s the truth.
“But I do,” I cut in. “I do know that. I’m the reason my mother died.”