Royal Wedding

“Stop worrying about the dog, she’s perfectly happy. Show me the ring.”

I put Grandmère’s sweet, innocent new dog down in the kitchen with a bowl of food and another of water, then closed the door to keep her safe from Rommel’s advances (should he choose ever to make any) and went back to show my grandmother the ring Michael had given me.

“As you can see,” I said, “your spies got it wrong. It’s not a sapphire.”

“Good Lord!” she cried. Of course, while I’d been out of the room she’d put on her jeweler’s loupe to examine the stone. “This must be seven carats at least. I didn’t know robot builders made so much money. I have renewed respect for the boy.”

I snatched my hand away from her. “Michael isn’t a boy, he’s a man. And I’ve told you repeatedly he doesn’t build robots, he designs robotic surgical arms and now prostheses. And it’s a lab-grown diamond.”

She immediately dropped my hand. “It’s fake? I take back everything I said about respecting him.”

“Lab-grown diamonds aren’t fake like cubic zirconia, Grandmère. They’re actual diamonds, they’re just grown in a laboratory instead of in a mine, so there’s no human-rights or environmental impact in harvesting them.”

Grandmère sighed like I’d just told her that Michael and I were moving to one of those adult gated communities where no one wears any clothes at the public tennis courts because they want to “express their true selves.”

“I don’t suppose this day could get any worse,” she said.

“For me,” I said. “I was hoping to spend this day personally sharing news of my engagement with all my loved ones, and now I’m having to explain to them why they’ve heard about it via text message or gossip news sites. So why don’t we talk about this matter of ‘national urgency’ that you keep saying made it necessary for you to put out a press release that I’m getting married this July, which, by the way, I’m not. And if this national matter is so urgent, why isn’t Dad here?”

She regarded me unblinkingly through her tattooed-on eyeliner. “Because the news I have to impart to you, Amelia, is about your father.”

For the second time in seventy-two hours, my heart stopped. The one person I hadn’t spoken to (or heard from) all day was Dad.

“Grandmère!” I grabbed her veiny, many-ringed hand. “What happened? Was it his heart? Was it a protester? Where have they taken him? Can I see him?”

“Pull yourself together!” I think Grandmère would have slapped me if I hadn’t already been holding her hand (and there hadn’t been a cocktail in her other one). “Your father is fine. This is no time for hysterics. Have a drink, like a normal person.”

In Grandmère’s day, people didn’t take antidepressants or go see therapists when they were distressed about something. They had some sense slapped into them, or they had a drink “like a normal person.”

I have to admit, this does save a lot of time, unless of course you happen to be an alcoholic, or what’s bothering you is that family members are always slapping you, which nowadays is called “abuse.”

Fortunately by that time “tea” had arrived, so finger sandwiches and “tea” had been spread out over the antique marble coffee table (7,500 euros). Grandmère was already armed with her traditional sidecar, so I made myself a vodka tonic because frankly I didn’t think I could take whatever was coming sober.

“If Dad’s not dead, what is it, then?” I asked, after taking a few fortifying gulps. “He didn’t get arrested again, did he?”

“No, but that’s how I discovered all of this in the first place.” Grandmère sat down and bit into an egg-salad sandwich on white bread with the crusts cut off. “While I was searching through your father’s desk, looking for his checking-account number to post his bail after he was incarcerated.”

“Wait. You paid Dad’s bail with money from his own account?”

“Of course. It was his foolishness that landed him in jail. Why would I use my own money to bail him out?”

This was cold, even for Grandmère. “Wow,” I said. “Remind me not to call you to pay the ransom if I ever get kidnapped.”

“Oh, please,” Grandmère said. “That’s why we pay ransom insurance.”

“Well,” I said. The egg-salad sandwich looked good, so I took one, too, even though my stomach was churning with anxiety. “Whatever you found can’t be that bad. He got arrested weeks ago, and you’re only calling it a matter of ‘national urgency’ now?”

“I assigned a member of the RGG to look into it and he just got back to me with a full report on the gravity of the matter this morning.”

“Oh, well, the RGG! And what could the Royal Genovian Guard possibly have found in Dad’s personal effects that was so shocking it justifies forcing me to have a wedding I haven’t agreed to?”

Grandmère cleared her throat very dramatically and said the last thing I ever expected:

“Amelia, you have a sister.”

Fortunately I’d swallowed before she made this pronouncement, or I’d have choked. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You heard me. You are not your father’s only enfant naturel”—which means “love child” in French. “He has another.”