“I want to be alone,” and his voice is breaking now. “Just . . . please just leave me alone.”
I stare down at the floor, because I’ll fall apart if I look at him any longer.
Look after your brother. He needs you.
I leave my little brother standing there and walk back out into the hall, closing the door behind me.
“It’s done,” I tell Grandfather. “He knows.”
“I’ll check on him soon. Let’s you and I go for a walk now.”
“We’re not supposed to go outside.”
“I’m overruling that edict.”
I shake my head. “I don’t need a walk.”
The weight of his warm, large hand rests on my back.
“I do.”
Despite my insistence that I didn’t need a walk, once we’re outside and heading away from the palace, my pace picks up. Like I’m running away from home . . . running from something.
Granddad keeps up, his steps matching mine. Until we come to a stop in a small clearing toward the rear of the estate, enshrouded with brush and shaded by oak trees. From this vantage point, we could be anywhere, a thousand miles away—we can’t see the palace, and no one from the palace can see us.
“It’s all right to be sad,” Granddad says gently. “You know that, don’t you?”
I keep my gaze ahead and I don’t answer.
“It’s all right to cry, Nicholas. I won’t think any less of you, I swear.”
I look up into his face—it’s his eyes that undo me. Not the anguish swirling in their depths, but the overwhelming care and concern . . . and love.
“This shouldn’t have happened,” I tell him.
“No.”
“They’re supposed to still be here.”
“Yes.”
I turn away, bending at the waist, gagging and retching even though my stomach is empty. And I remember a story from the Bible, a story of Jesus sweating blood in the garden of Gethsemane.
Let this cup pass from me . . .
“It’s not fair,” I gasp out, ridiculously.
Childishly.
Because I can’t think of any other words to describe this pain.
The incomprehensible loss of them.
My grandfather kneels beside me and pulls me into his arms, holding me tight. I cling to him, crying against his shoulder in great heaving sobs, like I never have in my life.
And never will again.
“It’s not fair. It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair.”
I feel his hand stroking my hair. I hear the raw scrape of his voice and I know he’s weeping too.
“No. No, my boy . . . it’s not fair at all.”
(13 years before Royally Screwed)
“And that, love, is why we’re all so royally fucked up.”
~Prince Henry, Royally Matched
Lenora
THE WORLD STOPPED TURNING WHEN they told me my son was dead. My heart went cold the moment they uttered the words. It was a blessing, really. To be mostly dead inside, to hardly feel, not really mourn. It allowed me to go through the motions and focus my mind on trivial, meaningless matters. So many details.
It was an accident, they said. An airplane is a machine and even the best machines fail at the most inopportune times. No one’s fault. Bad luck. Bitter happenstance.
After we lay Thomas and Calista in the ground, and the sky is starless and as black as our clothes, and Nicholas and Henry are safe in their beds, and Edward and I are ensconced behind the closed door of our bedroom—the world goes back to turning.
My heart begins to beat again.
The memories invade.
And it is unbearable.
I think about Thomas as a baby, his round eyes and chubby fists. I remember him as a boy, the smell of his hair, the sound of his voice, his smile, his laugh—and there’s nothing to be done but allow the abyss to suck me down. Everything hurts—my body, my soul—it is all just pain.
Pain so acute, I can only form three words over and over and over again.
“Let me die, let me die, let me die, let me die . . .”
Edward’s arms come around me from behind as my knees give way and we sink down to the floor together.
“Lenora—”
I twist around, clawing his shirt, desperate for him to understand.
“I would’ve died when we lost Evangeline, but Thomas was there. He needed me. Now it’s only you. You’re the only one keeping me here.”
“Lenora . . .”
“If you let me go, I’ll fade away. I’ll fade away and die and I won’t have to feel this anymore. I can’t, Edward.” The sobs tear out of me. “Please let me go, let me die.”
He rocks me slowly, but even his strong arms can’t hold me together.
Not this time.
Edward’s words are raw with the same agony I feel.
“I can’t let you go. I won’t. I need you. Nicholas and Henry need you.”
“No.” I wrench away from him, shaking my head. “They have you. You can teach them to be men.”
He wipes at my tears and presses me to his chest, caressing my hair again and again.