So I hobbled over to her white couch (everything in her house is white. The marble floors. The Venetian plaster. The furniture. Everything. It’s hard to believe she has three kids—or at least, one niece and two stepkids—and manages to keep everything so clean. They must be very well trained, or she has an amazing cleaning service).
“I’m very sorry to have alarmed you, Mrs. O’Toole,” I said, after she’d brought us iced tea in tall highball glasses that were etched with the letters C and R . . . in white, of course. Lars had accompanied her to the kitchen on the pretense of “helping” (but really he’d gone to make sure she didn’t call the police, press, or her husband), and he’d brought out a little bowl of mixed nuts. The bowl was also white. “But all I want is to talk to you about your niece, Olivia. I think you’re aware that she’s my half sister.”
Mrs. O’Toole blinked at me through her crooked eyelash and said, “Oh. Yes. Yes, of course. Actually, I thought your father would be the one who’d show up. I never expected you.”
I had no idea how to respond to that despite my earlier claim to extraordinary powers of princess diplomacy.
So it was probably a good thing Lilly leaped in and introduced herself.
“Lilly Moscovitz, Mrs. O’Toole,” Lilly said, setting her iced tea down on the pricey—white—coffee table, and sticking out her hand. “Columbia Law School, Royal Attorney-at-Law to the Princess of Genovia—”
I elbowed Lilly in the gut, causing her to lower her hand with a cough, because Mrs. O’Toole had begun to blink very quickly at the word attorney.
“Never mind her, Mrs. O’Toole,” I said, hastily. “I’m here because, in spite of your sister’s wish that her daughter Olivia never know about her royal lineage, I’d very much like to meet her. Having been lucky enough to have had a sister yourself, you can probably understand that.”
Catherine blinked even more, rapidly, and I realized she was only trying to adjust her loose eyelash. “I suppose I can,” she said. “Though Elizabeth and I didn’t have all that much in common. I’ve never understood why she didn’t marry your dad when he asked. I’d have loved being a princess.”
Tina nearly dropped her iced tea. Her dark eyes had widened to approximately twice their normal size. “Prince Phillipe asked your sister to marry him?”
“Well, yes,” Catherine said. She’d got her eyelash back on, and was now blinking at Tina like she’d only just gotten a good look at her, and realized how gorgeous she is. Tina has her father’s dark coloring and soft roundness, but her mother’s British supermodel bone structure and fashion sense, which had caused Sebastiano to moon over her earlier in a manner that made me suspect he wished she were the royal bride.
“But Elizabeth always said she wasn’t the royal wedding type,” Catherine went on. “She liked flying those stupid jets. I don’t suppose they’d have let her keep doing that if she was a princess.”
“No,” I agreed. “That would be too dangerous a career for the wife of the Prince of Genovia.”
“I thought so,” Catherine said, knowingly.
Tina swung her bewildered gaze toward me. I could tell she was crushed. She wanted to believe my father had only ever loved my mother for his entire life.
But it’s possible for people to have more than one soul mate . . . even though if I ever lose Michael, I’ll probably don all black and sit around forever in mourning like Queen Victoria did after she lost her beloved Prince Albert.
“Your sister sounds like a wonderful woman,” I said to Catherine. “I wish I could have known her. But since I never had the opportunity, I’d like to get to know you, and of course my sister, before you and your family move to Qalif—”
Catherine O’Toole looked relieved. “Oh. So that’s really all you came here for?”
I exchanged glances with Tina and Lilly. “Uh, yes. Why?”
“No reason.”
Ha. She totally suspected another reason for my visit . . . that we’d found out the truth about her and her bohunk husband stealing all my sister’s money!
But of course I had no proof of this . . . yet. And as Tina kept insisting, maybe it wasn’t even true.
“Well, maybe one other thing,” I added, wickedly.
Was it my imagination, or did she appear flustered?
“Yes?”
“There’s actually a warning out from the State Department right now advising Americans not to travel to Qalif due to the civil unrest—”
Catherine O’Toole made a pooh-poohing gesture with one of her long-nailed hands. “Oh, that. I talked to a girl at the embassy, she said it’s all being overexaggerated. It’s perfectly safe so long as you stay in the American compounds.”
“Uh,” I said, watching as Tina’s eyes got rounder and rounder with astonishment. “Okay. Well, if it’s all right with you, my father and I were wondering if Olivia could stay with us for a while—” I was lying left and right now, so many lies I could hardly keep track of them. “Maybe for a few weeks this summer while you and your family get settled in to, uh, your new home in Qalif? How does that sound?”
Catherine O’Toole bit her lower lip. “Oh, well, I don’t know. I’d have to discuss it with Rick. . . .”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about the oranges,” Lilly leaped in, breezily. “The rumors about the rats aren’t true.”
I glared at her, then said to Olivia’s aunt, “I really would so value this opportunity, Mrs. O’Toole.”
“Oh, please call me Catherine.”
“Catherine.”
“Well,” she said, hesitating.
Tina leaned forward and laid a hand soothingly on her knee. “It would be such a kindness. Olivia’s the only memory you have left of your sister, but Princess Mia’s never had a sister at all, so think what a chance this would provide her.”
Lilly shot Tina a look that said, Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you? which Tina ignored.
“Oh, my,” Catherine said. “It’s not that I wouldn’t love to help you. It’s just that Rick already paid the deposit for Olivia’s new school in Qalif. It’s year round there, so they have it even in the summer. Extended learning, they call it—and it wasn’t cheap. And it was also nonrefundable.”
Tina looked confused. “Wait. Are you saying—?”
Lilly leaned forward to pluck Tina’s hand from the older woman’s knee.
“I think I know exactly what Mrs. O’Toole is saying,” Lilly said. “Don’t you, Mia?”
I was already reaching inside my bag for my checkbook. “Absolutely,” I said. The thing is, you can’t hang around the beaches of the Riviera without noticing all the grifters, and then learning to recognize a shakedown when you see one. “Why don’t you let me pay you back for Olivia’s summer term, since it looks like she might be staying with us?”
“But—” Tina sputtered. She still didn’t understand what was happening. “What?”
“Oh, that would be lovely,” Catherine said, smooth as silk. “You can make the check out to me personally. That’s Catherine with a C.” She mentioned an astonishingly large sum of money that, when Tina heard it, caused her to make a squeaking noise.
Lars calmly passed her the bowl from the coffee table. “Nuts?” he asked.
“No, I’m not hun—”
Lilly jammed a handful of nuts into her palm and signaled for Tina to eat them, which she did, still wide-eyed, but only after Lilly gave her a warning glare.
“That’s great,” Lilly said, watching as I made out the check. “And if you, Catherine, would just look over this contract I took the liberty of drawing up this morning”—she pulled a stapled sheaf of papers from her messenger bag—“then sign it, I think we can be on our way.”
Catherine took the pages from her and thumbed through them while I gave Lilly a surprised look. A contract?
And Lilly had made such a fuss about us coming here unprepared.
But Lilly Moscovitz was never unprepared for anything. Well, not since tenth grade or so, anyway.
r /> “Standard language, really,” Lilly went on, more to me than to Olivia’s aunt, “about how you don’t intend to share any information about this meeting or your niece’s parentage with the press, and an addendum on the back giving Mia permission to pick her up from school today so they can have sister-bonding time. Sound good?”
“That sounds fine,” Catherine said, and turned to the back page, where Lilly had placed a little pink sticky arrow. She signed with a pen Lars gallantly offered from the front pocket of his suit jacket.
Olivia’s aunt seemed to be in a much better mood when we left. She waved, the check I’d written her fluttering in her hand, from the front porch as we walked back to the limo.
“You guys,” I said under my breath as we crossed the lawn on our way back to the limo. “She is seriously hiding something. Also, I think she broke my foot.”
“I know, right?” Tina was practically hyperventilating. “I totally saw this once on a Lifetime movie starring Kirstie Alley. And she ended up in prison!”
“Nobody’s going to prison,” Lilly said. “That contract her aunt signed is binding.”
“You don’t even have a law degree!” I reminded her.
“It was witnessed by five people,” Lilly said. “It will hold up in court, once I get all of you to co-sign it. Now let’s go get Mia’s sister.”
“Did you check out her room?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?” Lilly looked annoyed with all of us as François popped out of the car to open the door for her, as she was first to reach it.
“When I asked to use their bathroom, I checked out all the bedrooms,” I said. I was trying not to show it, but I needed help walking, and was leaning on Lars for support. My foot was killing me. It had been hard to sneak around the house, but obviously it had needed to be done. “The two other kids—Rick’s from his first marriage—had giant flat screen TVs in their rooms, but not Olivia. Her room was the smallest, and didn’t have anything fun in it, not even a computer.”
“I saw that, too,” Tina said. “But I thought maybe she doesn’t like TV. Maybe she doesn’t like computers.”
“She’s related to Mia,” Lilly said flatly. “Do you really think that’s the case?”
“Maybe,” Tina said, still struggling to find an explanation other than the only glaringly obvious one, that Olivia was the Cinderella of the family, taken advantage of and forced to sleep in the modern equivalent of a garret, “it was the maid’s room.”
“There was a sign right on the door that had the name Olivia on it,” I said. “I think she made it herself. It was in Magic Marker and had little drawings of birds and cats on it. The dossier the RGG made says she likes to draw.”
There was silence as we sat in the cool air-conditioning of the limo, absorbing this.
“Well,” Lilly said finally. “At least it wasn’t a closet under the stairs.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, then said, “François, the Cranbrook Middle School, please.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” he said.
So now we’re sitting outside it, waiting for the bell to ring. When my sister comes out, I’ll open the door and tell her who I am and ask her to come for a ride.
Tina says this is the worst plan in the entire universe because kids aren’t supposed to accept rides with strangers, even strangers who are world-famous princesses sitting in limos parked outside their school claiming to be their long-lost sister, and that I should do something more subtle, because I’m probably going to scar her for life.
But my foot hurts, and I’m upset about the aunt (and the bedroom), and the fact that my father should be here with me doing this, but that wouldn’t be “following the map.”
Only I can’t think of anything more subtle right now.
Tina noticed my limping before we got in the car and made me take my shoe off and is examining my foot and making me press my toes against her hand. She says nothing seems broken but I’m probably going to have a very bad bruise and I should see my own physician.
He’d probably only tell me to journal about it, though, and I’m already doing that.
Oh, God—the bell just rang, and children have begun pouring out of the school.
There she is.
CHAPTER 52
3:50 p.m., Wednesday, May 6
Limo back to New York City
Rate the Royals Rating: 7
Well, I’ve just ruined my sister’s life, forever and completely.
Obviously that was not my goal in coming to Cranbrook, New Jersey. My goal in coming to Cranbrook was to improve my sister’s life.
But instead I’ve inexorably wrecked it.
I don’t know why after all this time I continue to listen to anything Lilly says. Obviously I should have consulted with our family lawyers or Dominique or someone other than my lunatic best friend before coming out here and causing catastrophic and irreparable damage to the life of a little girl, a life that (probably) wasn’t so bad and that now she’ll never get back, thanks to me, even though she doesn’t seem to be aware of it. She is sitting in the limo beside me, happily doing homework that she thinks she’s going to turn in tomorrow.
Ha! By tomorrow news of the fact that she’s Prince Phillipe of Genovia’s illegitimate love child will be on the front page of every newspaper in the world (I’m surprised it is not already the top trending topic on Twitter).
There is no possible way Olivia will be able to go back to Cranbrook Middle School tomorrow, or ever.
• Note to self: I am not qualified to have children. Cancel wedding and secede right to inherit throne? Or just have my tubes tied?
On the other hand . . . Olivia does appear to be enjoying herself. It turns out I needn’t have worried about learning everything I could about a popular starlet since Olivia is much more interested in me . . . and riding in a limo and drinking soda with actual sugar in it.
Maybe I haven’t completely ruined her life. Maybe I’ve only changed her life. For the better!
This is what I set out to do this morning—what I set out to do every morning, leave the world a better place than I found it, and that’s how I should choose to think of what just happened. Olivia’s life is going to be better now, much, much better. How could it not be? She has Coke and me in it now (and soon her father and grandmother, whenever they get around to returning my messages . . . )
OK, who do I think I’m fooling? I’ve ruined her life. Dominique just called me back because I texted her what happened (Hey, Dominique, it’s me! So, not sure if you heard, but my dad has another kid and I may have inadvertently exposed her existence to the media . . . call me!) and all I could hear on the other end of the phone was screaming.
Anyway, Tina is the one who spotted Olivia first.
“There she is!” she cried, jabbing her finger against the tinted glass window of the limo.
I saw Olivia standing in the center of a group of uniformed kids by the school’s flagpole.
She looked so . . . little.
I knew she was going to be because in the dossier, it listed her height and weight, and of course there were photos (the RGG is nothing if not precise).
But photos are very different from real life. In real life, Olivia Grace is all adorable knock-knees and bony elbows and shiny braces and bright blue glasses and curly hair done up in braids.
Was I ever that tiny? I must have been, but it never felt like it. I always felt enormous, too big for my body, and so awkward and ungainly (much too much so for anyone, particularly a member of the opposite sex, to admire).
From the first moment I saw her, I wanted to snatch her up and drive back to New York and throw her in front of my dad and say, “This! This is what you are so afraid of and have been running from for the past twelve years. This tiny little girl in pigtails. You, sir, are a royal jackass.”
But I refrained, obviously. At least at that particular moment.
“Aw,” Tina said. “She’s so sweet.”
This, at least, co
nfirmed that I wasn’t the only one who found her to be completely adorable.
“Look, she’s wearing high-tops with her school uniform, just like you used to wear combat boots!” Tina went on. “Oh, wait . . . is she in trouble?”
It was true. As we sat there watching, a little blond girl (who looked not unlike a mini–Lana Weinberger circa thirteen years ago) marched up to my sister, put her hands on her hips, and said something. We couldn’t hear what it was, because the bullet-proof windows were rolled up, and there was so much noise all around us, what with the shouting of excited children getting out of school for the day, and the whistle of the very angry volunteer parent who did not want us parked where we were parked (even though the engine was running) and all of the school bus engines and the cars of all the other parents.
But I could tell by the expression of the blond girl—and my sister’s face—that it was something rude. I recognized the way Olivia looked, hurt and crestfallen and a little afraid. It was the way I’d always looked (I imagine—I couldn’t have seen myself) when confronted by Lana Weinberger, back in the days before she’d mellowed with age.
Suddenly a group of kids gathered around the two girls, blocking them from our view.
“What in the wide world of [REDACTED]?” mused Lilly.
“I believe,” Lars said, “what we are observing is what is known in America as a throw down.”
It was true! Through a gap in the circle the children had formed around my sister and her frenemy, I could see that the blond girl looked like she was about to rip Olivia’s hair out.
However much they’re paying teachers these days, it is not enough. Middle-schoolers are animals. (I don’t mean my sister, of course. She is a sweet perfect angel. Well, almost.)
Lars reached instinctively for his ankle holster.
“Lars, no!” I cried. “They are children, not Genovian ex-pats protesting the use of GMOs in their orange juice. I will handle this.”
Because really, when your long-lost little sister is about to get beat up right in front of you on the playground, you have no choice but to come to her rescue. What else was I supposed to do? I don’t see how anyone can blame me.