Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 22425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
“Just taking in the air,” Grandfather says. “It’s not good for the boy to be cooped up inside all day.”
I keep my head down and slide back onto the chair.
Grandmother’s gaze darts between us suspiciously.
“What are you two grinning about?”
I glance up, shrugging.
“Nothing, Your Majesty.”
“Nothing at all,” Grandfather agrees.
She cocks her head.
“I don’t believe you.”
My grandfather shifts closer to her, speaking in a low voice.
“You’re looking very pretty today, Lenora. Do you believe that?”
Her tone goes a bit airy.
“Well . . . thank you.”
“I’ve always loved this color on you,” he tells her. “And the way the neckline falls—absolutely ravishing.”
“Edward,” she says softly. “What in the world has gotten into you?”
“I’m not sure. Let’s go to our rooms and see if we can figure it out together.”
Dear God, my grandparents are flirting with each other. This is what hell must be like.
Suddenly the three hundred thank-you cards don’t seem so bad.
“You’ll be all right on your own, won’t you, Nicholas?” Granddad asks.
“Yes, I’m fine. By all means, go. Please . . . go.”
They scurry from the room, whispering words I’m thankfully unable to hear.
And I sit at the desk . . . and laugh to myself.
“The Queen whines.”
Somehow knowing that makes me feel lighter, better. . . and it’s all just a bit easier to bear.
(Ten years before Royally Screwed)
Lenora
I SIT IN A CHAIR beside the table where my husband lies. His chest is bare, save for the white sheet that ends below the ridge of his collarbone. And the sheet does not move.
I’m just not able to wrap my mind around it. I sit here, waiting. Expecting him to sit up and smile, to pull me into his warm, wonderful arms and tell me it was all wrong.
Some terrible misunderstanding.
He’s right here . . . and yet he’s not. This unmoving man on a steel slab looks like Edward, but he’s cold. So very still.
My Edward is never cold—he’s sunlight and summertime.
I should understand these things by now. Life and loss. I have been taught those lessons well. But tragedy always comes as a shock—a devastation that rents the soul.
“I saw him, the boy you saved. He wanted to come to me, to tell me how sorry he was for his foolishness. He knelt before me. And the moment I laid my eyes on him I knew . . . I knew what you were thinking.”
I stare at him hard, willing him to get up. Please, please, please get up. Because a life without him is unfathomable—to be without his love, his presence, the safety of his arms, the knowledge that even when he is away from me, he is still with me.
“You stood on the bow and saw that dark head and skinny limbs, and you thought of your brother . . . and our son. You saw him going down under the water, and you thought—I can save him. This time . . . I can save him.”
Edward always blamed himself for the loss of our children, and for his brother’s death. No words or logic could ever truly take that guilt from him. It’s the price men pay, I guess—men like him. Men who are protectors and champions. When tragedy knocks, even if there was nothing that could have been done, they carry the weight of it around their necks for the rest of their lives.
“And you did. You dove into that icy water, you crazy man, and pulled him up, pushed him onto the deck . . . and you saved him. You just didn’t realize you couldn’t save yourself. That your heart . . . couldn’t keep up.”
The pain of this truth rises around me, wraps around me—tightening and squeezing my throat until I can barely breathe.
And I want it. I want it to take me, strangle me, do me in.
She died of a broken heart, they’d say. And they would be right.
And it would be so much easier. To let go, to be free of this anguish, to fade away into the nothingness.
Why do I have to stay? Why do I have to endure and grieve when everyone else gets to go? Death is easier . . . it’s the living that’s so very hard.
My eyes burn, blur, distorting my vision as I stare at him.
“I want to be angry with you. I want to shout at you and beat on your chest for being so careless with yourself when you . . .” my voice breaks, “. . . when you are everything to me.”
I shake my head, breathing deep, a scraping, wheezing sound coming from my strangled throat.
“But I can’t. I can’t be angry because this is who you are. It’s who you’ve always been. And I love . . . I love every bit of who you are.”
A sob tears out of me. And then I’m strewn across him. Grasping at him, pressing my cheek to his cold chest as scalding grief pours from my eyes. And my heart pleads for him to hold me, the way he always has. Because I need him. I need him now more than ever.