“The streets certainly are quaint,” my mother said.
“I think what I saw was Berrydale,” Emma added. “Oh, it looked so wonderful. In Beloria, I don’t often get to see anything like it.”
My heart pounded in my chest.
“I would love to take you to visit Berrydale,” I said before my mother could interject. “I’ll have Xavier drive us down this afternoon.”
My mother’s lips were a thin, pressed line. “Of course,” she finally said. “Sebastian will take you down today. He spent some time in the village as a child. Sebastian, you’ll show her the fountain, and the rink, and maybe the dinky little Ferris wheel you loved so much as a child?”
I nodded, swallowing another bite of scone. “I’d love to show the Princess around the village.”
My insides already felt electric at the idea.
Because going down to Berrydale meant that I could indulge in my favorite secret—and secrets were all I had, these days.
I’d never been good at keeping secrets as a kid. Which was funny, in the kind of sad, not actually funny at all type of way, because keeping secrets was just about the only thing I did as an adult.
There were the small secrets, like the brief window of time between age eighteen to nineteen that I’d sustained a smoking habit, swearing my assistant Genoveve into secrecy about the imported European cigarettes I’d have her order. I’d take them up to the balcony attached to my piano room, huddled alone, smoking late at night or all day during the weeks my mother was traveling. Always looking up at the sky, rain or shine or day or night. Never looking down at the villages below.
I eventually quit that small act of late teenage rebellion, but the secrets only got stranger from there.
I would go outside alone and sit in one of the castle gardens in the summers, feeling the soft plumes of grass under my fingers and toes, imagining I was nobody at all. The groundskeepers of the castle had been told strictly to always scare away the birds that flocked nearby, because my mother didn’t like the sound of them. I’d go out with the best birdseed I could order, and I’d scatter food for them all around.
I loved the way the birds sounded. And I also loved that my mother would hate it if she knew what I was doing. It was a small rebellion, but it was mine, nonetheless.
In fall I would sneak into the kitchen quarters at night, taking apples out of the small boxes the cooking staff had on hand for tarte tatins, and I’d slice them thin and spread them with Skippy peanut butter that Genoveve had slipped me.
Sometimes, lately, Genoveve even got me Oreos. The peanut butter was even better on those.
The queen would cringe if she found me eating a peanut butter-smeared Oreo, probably even more than she would have finding me with a cigarette hanging from my lips at age eighteen.
That’s just how it was. Everything had to be princely. From the air I breathed high up here on the castle hill, to the food I ate, to the activities I partook in, every minute of every day.
Today’s secret was similarly small, but even more delicious than a cookie that reminded me of my childhood.
Today, I could find a way to escape.
Escaping from the castle was something that wasn’t usually possible. Even when my driver, Xavier, took me down to the village, or further out to the city where I usually went shopping, I was supervised at every moment.
Twenty-six years old, and the only times I wasn’t supervised were when I went to the bathroom, showered, or courted some woman my mother wanted me to marry. It had felt pathetic at first, but now, it was just my life.
Today, two things allowed me a small window where I could escape.
First, I was going to be with the princess. And being with the princess meant that my mom trusted me, unlike usual.
Xavier would drive us down to the village. Genoveve would be at my side as always, but would get shy when I put my arm around the princess, wanting to give us privacy. Genoveve was a hopeless romantic. She’d been my assistant for years, but still was as professional as on day one. She would walk off down a side street, giving me space.
Then it would just be me and the princess, alone. I could walk her to the Christmas tree lot in the park, showing her how cute and quaint it was that the townsfolk strapped pine trees to their minivans to take them home.
And then, maybe for five quick minutes, I could go to the edge of the park.
And I could have my most precious secret of all—staring over at Henry’s old house. The house I knew he’d never come back to. The house I knew was just the place his mom puttered around, and that shouldn’t have meant anything to me anymore.
But letting myself remember Henry, as pathetic as it was, was still the thing that kept me going on more days than I could admit.
“It is simply adorable,” Princess Emma said as we made our way through the Christmas tree lot later that afternoon. The clouds had covered the whole sky, but to me, the grey only made it feel more like the holiday season.
“I always loved it here when I was a child,” I told her, taking her arm in mine, linking elbows as we wound our way through the thick maze of trees.
“You came here frequently?” she said, her accent beautiful.
“Yes,” I said. “My aunt and uncle lived nearby, until Mom gave them a big paycheck and they moved off to the city.”
“How lovely,” Emma said. “You miss this, yes?”
I couldn’t tell if she was asking me if I missed it, or if she was declaring that it was painfully obvious I did.
“I do miss this,” I agreed, my voice soft.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed as she saw the small stand in the middle of the lot where a woman was selling small paintings. “Such beautiful pieces of art.”
“Feel free to browse,” I said. “I’ll buy you whichever piece you like. Give me just a minute to run back to my car?”
“Of course,” she said, already making a beeline for the painting stand.
Adrenaline surged through my chest.
This was my chance. My five minutes of freedom. I quickly made my way to the far edge of the park. I’d seen Genoveve heading in the opposite direction a couple of minutes ago, and I knew I was alone for now.
When I looked at Henry’s old house, my heart soared. I hadn’t made it down here in months at this point.
The fact that it always looked the same was comforting in a deep, abiding way. Everything had changed over the last eleven years. Every aspect of my life felt like it had done a 180. But when I looked at that house, I remembered a simpler time.
My eyes wandered the roof, the windows, the beat-up Buick. But there was also an old pickup truck outside. That seemed weird.
And then something impossible happened.
Henry appeared.
Out of nowhere.
A hallucination, to be sure.
I bit the inside of my cheek as I watched the hallucination of adult Henry make his way around the property, coming out from the side gate of the house with a toolbox in one hand. He walked to the crooked shutter at the other end of the house, crouching down and grabbing whatever he needed to fix it.
It was as if my heart had gently floated out into the air in front of me, and was already making its way across that narrow street, pulled like a gentle magnet all the way toward Henry. Toward the idea of Henry, at least. I had never wanted something so much. And even though I’d never for a second forgotten Henry, seeing him like this—hallucination or not—was almost too much to bear.