16. 16
16
B o
T he next morning, I’m up early waiting for my father to return.
“Miss Crow and her daughter haven’t been down for breakfast yet,” Mrs. Theissen informs me as I head to the dining room. “Your brother is in the fitness centre.”
For a moment, I’m tempted to go find Odin, but it feels wrong to talk to him about this before I even tell Dad. And what would I ask Odin—help me make Hettie stay? Is that even the best thing for Tema? She has a life in Canada—school, friends. A life that I’m not part of.
“What time does Dad’s flight get in?” I ask Mrs. Theissen.
“He took the first flight out of St. John’s, so he’ll be in his office for his nine o’clock phone meeting,” she says, pouring me a cup of coffee.
“You don’t have to serve me,” I protest. Mrs. Theissen has been looking after the castle since before I was born, but that doesn’t mean she looks after us . Our parents taught us early that, just because we’re privileged, it doesn’t mean we’re entitled. Meals may be available for us, but we serve ourselves and we clear the table. And all of us make sure to thank the staff .
“You seem out of sorts,” Mrs. Theissen says with uncharacteristic sympathy.
I stare unseeing at the scrambled eggs in the warming dish. “I need to talk to Dad.”
“I’ll push back his nine o’clock. Will fifteen minutes be enough?”
It took me less time to tell my mother. “Does he have any meetings outside the castle today?”
“No, I don’t believe so.”
“Fifteen minutes should be fine. Thanks, Mrs. Theissen.”
“Of course, Your Highness.” She touches my shoulder. “It’s nice to see Miss Crow back in town.” I look at her strangely. “She was a good friend of yours, wasn’t she?”
I have no doubt Mrs. Theissen knows exactly how good a friend Hettie was. I wouldn’t be surprised if she even knew about the secret marriage.
Laandia doesn’t have a spy organization, but if we did, I have no doubt Mrs. Theissen would be running it, with Spencer as her second-in-command.
“Yeah,” I say, forcing myself to start filling my plate. “She was.”
I eat breakfast alone, and then pace around the castle until it’s time for me to talk to my father. But all too soon, I’m standing before the closed door of his office.
Nothing is going to happen to him , I repeat over and over again as I knock on the door.
It can’t. Nothing can happen to him.
“Enter,” Dad calls in his deep voice.
I take a final breath and push open the door. “Hey. ”
Dad’s office looks more like a living room than a place of business, with all the comfortable furniture set up around the fireplace. There are pictures everywhere—family and paintings—as well as Dad’s collection of gold records and Olympic medals.
One of his guitars hangs on the wall by the door, a new addition to the décor.
“Hey.” Dad’s face lights up with surprise when he sees me, and before I’m all the way in the room, he’s come around from behind his desk to give me a hug.
It’s been a while since I’ve been home, so I take the hug, and hold it a little longer than usual.
“I didn’t know you were back.” Dad grins and motions me to the chair in front of the desk. “Although I don’t need to know things like that,” he says, waving his hands around. “You are a grown adult with a life of your own and I don’t need you to keep me informed of your plans to come home. I am your father, though. You could tell me things like that.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I settle into the chair and Dad leans against the desk. “Nice try at the guilt.”
He shrugs. “I do my best. So, to what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Got a minute?” I ask.
“For you?” He checks the diary on his desk. “I have fifteen. How long are you in town for?”
“That depends.” It sounds more ominous than I intended.
Dad frowns and reaches for the red Tim Hortons cup on his desk. “What’s up?”
“Silas’ll never forgive you for the Tim’s addiction,” I remind him, watching him take a sip .
“I know, I know,” Dad groans. “And I like Silas, so I try. But it was right there in the airport.” He looks longingly at the red cup. “The pods just don’t cut it.”
“You could buy local.”
“Are you here to lecture me on my coffee preference?” He fixes me with his gaze, the one that always knows when something is wrong, whether it’s with one of us or in the country.
He looks more kingly than he usually does this morning, in a navy jacket straining at his wide shoulders and flaming red tie and jeans, rather than beat-up sweatshirts and flannel shirts that he wears around the castle. He’s broader than any of us, but other than Gunnar, we’re all taller than him.
I’m not sure who I’d rather be facing—the king, or my father.
I had the same concern when I told Mom all those years ago.
“What’s going on, Bo?” King Magnus of Laandia asks with a frown. “Because something clearly is.”
I stare at the painting behind his desk. “I need to tell you something.”
“I figured that out myself.” He rubs his hands together. “Is someone gonna get in trouble?”
“Maybe.”
His smile fades. “This sounds serious.”
“Yeah.” I swallow twice. Take a deep breath, but the words just won’t come.
“Bo. What’s going on?” Dad prompts. “Just say it.”
“ I-got-married .” The words come out extra fast and jumbled together incoherently and I try again. “I got married.”
To his credit, my father doesn’t show any reaction other than a quick widening of his blue eyes. “Married. ”
“Yeah.”
He presses his lips together. “When was this? And why wasn’t I invited?”
“It was eight years ago.” He frowns. “Hettie. I married Hettie.”
“Does that have anything to do with a little birdie telling me she’s back in Battle Harbour and staying right here under my roof?” I shrug. “What does that mean?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet,” I admit.
“Have you been married this whole time?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I would think so.” Dad has a perfect poker face, and I can’t read his expression because there is no expression to read.
“There’s more,” I say heavily.
I can’t tell if he’s upset, angry, or slightly amused. “I would think there should be. Let me have it.”
“Hettie has a daughter. I … have a daughter.” This gets a blink. “I didn’t know,” I add quickly. “Spencer wants a paternity test, but she says it’s mine and I believe her. She looks like Lyra.”
“You have a daughter.” He slowly walks around his desk and falls into his chair, still holding the coffee.
“I didn’t know. Tema. She’s seven. I just met her.”
“Because you’ve been married for eight years.”
“It happened… Hettie says… I didn’t know.” I don’t think I’m making sense, just saying the first thing that comes to my mind.
“I would hope you didn’t because, to quote my father, I’d tan your hide if you had a child and didn’t take responsibility for her.” Dad looks across his desk, looking more like an angry father than a king.
“I would never do that.”
“Glad to hear that.” He nods slowly. “I always thought I raised you boys right. But you did let your wife, who didn’t know she was pregnant, I assume, leave the country. And as far as I know, you haven’t seen her since then?”
“Yeah. She left… It was after Mom… A couple of weeks after.”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “Ah.”
“Yeah. So it wasn’t a good time to get her to stay.”
Dad makes a sound in the back of his throat. “No, it wasn’t really a good time for much, was it?” He takes a deep breath and pastes a smile on his face. “So. What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. Hettie says she wants a divorce. I… don’t know what I want.” Is this the time to tell him I think I’m probably still in love with her, or does that make me look pathetic? Because I don’t think I’m looking good in my father’s eyes, and even at twenty-nine, that still stings.
“I see. Do you still love her?”
“I haven’t seen much of her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
It doesn’t matter if loving Hettie makes me pathetic. It is what it is. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Probably.
“Well, my advice—did you want my advice?”
“Kind of, yeah.”
“Smart boy. My advice is to spend some time with her. Get to know present-day Hettie, and see how much she’s changed from past Hettie. Because you might be still in love with past Hettie, but you don’t know a thing about present-day Hettie.”
That makes sense. “Yeah.”
“Yeah. Because if you feel differently about this new Hettie, you’ve got to let her go.”
“What if she takes Tema back to British Columbia?”
“You’re a father now, and we’ll figure that out. We are pretty fortunate that you can spend the time and money travelling back and forth. It’s not the most convenient, but we’d make it work because that little girl is a princess of Laandia.”
“Can you make her stay?” I ask hopefully, because that would make it so much easier.
But Dad laughs. “I can’t even make my own children stay, so no, I won’t do that. But we’ll make it work somehow. Your priority is to figure yourself out. Why did she leave in the first place?”
“Mom… I was…” I can’t bring myself to say anymore.
I can’t tell him it’s my fault.
“Broken-hearted,” he offers. “Yeah. We all were. And young, and not mature enough to give Hettie what she needed. And I bet you didn’t let her give you what you needed.”
“Her family,” I begin, not sure how to broach the sensitive topic.
“I know her family. But you don’t marry a person’s family.”
“You kind of do. In our case you do.”
“That is true. Why don’t you decide what you want to do? Or let Hettie decide. This may be a moot point. Time has gone by and you might not feel the same about her.”
I’m pretty sure I do.