She cut me off faster than Ian Ziering cuts sharks with chain saws midair.

“No one is interested in your feelings, Amelia. Lazarres-Reynolds is sending a representative over right now—one here, and one to the bohunk uncle’s house—to start planning the offensive.”

“What offensive?”

“On the media! What on earth did you expect, Amelia? This revelation about your father was bound to bring him worldwide attention, and not the pleasant kind either!”

She was shouting so loudly I had to hold the phone away from my ear. I could tell everyone else in the car could hear her, because they all looked over at me inquiringly. Fortunately, she was shouting in her native French, so Olivia, at least, couldn’t understand. I gave her an embarrassed shrug.

“Grandmothers,” I mouthed, and Olivia smiled, but it was clear from her slightly troubled expression that she knew something, at least, was up.

“Now do you understand why Genovia so desperately needs a large wedding right now, full of pageantry and elegance and cannon fire?” Grandmère continued to shout. “Between this and the refugee crisis, I don’t know how else we’re going to get out of it, Amelia. This is our annus horribilis. Being a bride, particularly a princess bride, you can turn it all around by becoming a symbol of hope and beauty and joy.”

“Yes,” I said, wincing a little at the shrillness of her tone. “I understand. But in the meantime I can’t allow my little sister to be paraded around like a prizewinning show dog. I thought the whole point of the wedding was to distract the public from her existence—”

“It was, until you thrust her into the spotlight,” Grandmère said.

“I didn’t mean to do that, but at least someone did the right thing and stepped up and—”

“Excuse me.”

I paused as a voice I recognized chimed in. Only it was my sister Olivia’s voice, and it was speaking perfect French, and it shouldn’t have been. I slowly turned my head to find her looking at me expectantly.

“Pardon me,” she said, again in perfect French. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but may I make a suggestion?”

My normally shaped jaw dropped.

“Who is that?” Grandmère demanded. “Who is that speaking, Amelia?”

“Your other granddaughter,” I said. “You better get your eyebrows on. You’re going to need them.” I hung up on her, then stared some more at my sister. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“The refugees,” Olivia said, this time in English. “I’m sorry to have interrupted, but I couldn’t help overhearing Grandma talking about them? And the cruise ships? Well, I have an idea that might help.”

I shook my head in astonishment. “How could you have understood any of that?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Mia,” Lilly said. She held up the notebook Olivia had been doodling in. “Maybe because of the language class Olivia is taking. French.” Then she mouthed the words you moron over the top of my sister’s head.

I felt sick to my stomach. “Oh, wow. So you understood everything I was saying to Grand, er, ma, Olivia?”

“Not all of it,” Olivia admitted. “You guys talk pretty fast. But I understood a lot of it. Definitely the part about the guy and the cruise ships. And that’s when I started thinking, why don’t you let the refugees live on the cruise ships until you can find them some better place to stay? That’s what they did for refugees of Hurricane Julio. We saw a documentary about it in school.”

I stared at her some more. I’ve heard the expression out of the mouths of babes hundreds of times, but I’d never really understood it until that moment.

“Oh, Olivia,” I cried, joyously throwing my arms around her to hug her. “Where have you been all my life?”

“Um,” she said, a bit startled, but hugging me back. “New Jersey?”

I don’t think I’ve laughed quite that hard in a long time. It felt good. Almost good enough to make me forget the throbbing pain in my foot, where her aunt had smashed it with a door.

After I released her, Olivia reached up to push her glasses back into place.

“What was that for?” she wanted to know, meaning the hug.

“You just solved a big royal headache,” I told her.

“I did?” she asked. A pleased smile crept across her face. “That’s great. How?”

“Thinking outside the box,” Lilly told her, since I’d gotten back on the phone, this time to text Madame Dupris. “Finish your homework.”

“I wasn’t thinking outside any box,” Olivia said. “Sometimes I color outside the lines, though.”

“Keep doing it, kid,” Lilly advised. “You’ll go places.”

HRH Mia Thermopolis “FtLouie” to Deputy Prime Minister Madame Cécile Dupris “Le Grand Fromage”

Madame, you’re going to hear some news from Monsieur le Directeur José de la Rive (about which I cannot go into detail at this time) that will be quite startling, but welcome. When you hear it, the proposal I’m about to write will make perfect sense:

When the time is right (you will know when), ask Ivan Renaldo to donate three cruise ships for the use of the Genovian government so that they may house the Qalifi refugees for a time period of no less than six months.

If he refuses, tell him that everything the Renaldo family knows about him will be made public.