Page 40 of A Valiant Prince

“What’s so funny?” I call out as I walk over to where she’s standing. Then I see it, my comic book action heroes are lined up on my shelf. My awards, medals, and trophies are laid out on a shelf below them. I have posters of rock bands and supermodels. It’s an homage to my childhood.

“Didn’t take much with you, then?” she asks, fighting like hell to stop a smile from curving her lips up on each end.

“Well, this is where the magic happens,” I say, whirling around with my arms out. And she can no longer hide the smile or the laughter.

“You’re hilarious,” she says as she walks toward my shelf. She picks up various items, studying each one. “You were quite the collector,” she notes as she holds up one of my action figures.

I shrug. “You didn’t collect anything?” I ask her.

“Sure, I just don’t have them out in my room anymore,” she says with a smirk.

“To be honest, I don’t come up here as often as I should,” I admit.

“I guess not,” she says. “Come on, let’s go see what we can clean out over there,” she adds as she walks toward me.

“You know…I haven’t had a girl in here for quite a while,” I say to her.

She raises an eyebrow. “Quite a while, huh?” she asks.

I grin and shrug. “What can I say? I may have brought home a girl or two when I was in college,” I admit. She rolls her eyes.

“Well, then that fantasy has been fulfilled,” she says, and I can practically hear the jealously roll off her voice.

“Are you jealous?” I ask, following her into my mother’s room.

“No,” she grumbles.

I walk up behind her and wrap my arms around her. “I think you might be jealous,” I say.

She squirms out of my hold and opens the closet door. “I’m not jealous, OK?” she scoffs as she pulls the string that turns on the single light in the closet.

“OK,” I say, but I grin like a fool from behind her.

“Where do we start?” she asks, looking at the rows of neatly stacked plastic boxes.

I pull down one and place it on the floor of the bedroom. “Let’s see what we’ve got,” I say as I open it. I know most of the boxes contain my mother’s research. She was meticulous and something about that kept me from getting rid of these things. There were only two small shoebox-size boxes of her personal belongings that I took with me, and those items are in my apartment in the Bahamas. They were mostly photos of us, a few necklaces I made her for Mother’s Day, and a few of the nicer carvings she collected on her travels. She had kept them sitting out on a shelf in here, but now they sit on a shelf in my home. There is also a collection of Roald Dahl books that Nana and Pops gave her, and in turn, she would read to me. They inscribed things on them for her, and she inscribed things on them for me. But these remaining boxes are her work.

“What types of stories did she work on again?” Anna asks.

“Mostly business, some politics,” I say. I leaf through the papers. “I think this is from a story she did on campaign financing here.” Anna grabs a handful of papers and notebooks and looks through them.

“Do you want to keep them?” she asks. I shake my head. “I think her colleague has copies of these and even if they don’t this story is very old. I think it’s largely irrelevant now.” As much as it pains me to clean out the boxes, I feel as though it’s time, and something about having Anna here with me makes it easier.

“OK,” she says as we place the papers back in the box and push it to one side of the room. We spend the next forty-five minutes going through one box after another. Stories out of Morocco, Israel, Germany, Colombia, Mexico, Venezuela, Montelandia, and then I pause, Norddale.

Anna grabs a stack of newspaper clippings and notebooks from me. “Your mom did a story about Norddale?” she asks.

“I guess so,” I say, a bit confused. “I…don’t remember her talking about this.”

Anna reads through the notes. “It sounds like she was investigating the anti-monarchists who were also a problem for Norddale like they were for Montelandia at the time she was there,” she says as her finger trails the words across the pages of the notebook.

“What does that say?” I ask.

“Hold on,” Anna says as she continues reading. I pull out more clippings. One makes me stop. It’s a photo of Anna’s family, her mother, father, Chris, Auggie, and baby Anna. It’s talking about the political relations between Montelandia and Norddale. There appears to have been some sort of trade agreement signed between the two countries, which both royal families supported. I read on and see that Marcus is quoted as saying this will merge the two countries’ economies and strengthen them.

“Our countries have strong economic ties?” I ask Anna. She nods, half listening to me.

“Anna?” I ask. She looks up at me. “How strong?”

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