Page 17 of The Forgotten Queen
One.
Two.
All clear.
“Where have you been?” his father asked from inside his office.
Marx closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath before backing up. He leaned his head through the opening, placing his hands on the doorframe. “Some of us went hiking.”
His father raised an eyebrow. “Did Dannyn go?”
Marx shifted his weight. “Yes, she was with us.”
“I don't like it.” His voice was stern. “I've told you before. I don't want Dannyn hanging around you and your friends.”
“She’s twenty-two. I think she’s old enough to decide whom she wants to hang around with. And it’s good that she’s with me. I can protect her.”
He lifted his chin. “Like you protected Palmer?”
Marx’s jaw turned to stone. He’d walked himself right into that one. “That was different.”
“Nothing’s ever different with you,” his father said, tightening his eyes. “You’ve been reckless since the day you were born, without a care for how it affects others.”
“I don’t see how going hiking is reckless.”
“It is reckless when you have a kingdom to run.”
“I don’t have a kingdom to run. You’re doing it for me.” He tried to hide the bitterness in his voice.
“I’m only doing it for you because you’re too irresponsible to do it yourself.”
“You’ve never given me the chance to do it myself,” Marx replied.
His father rolled his eyes in response.
Marx shook his head. “Whatever you say,Your Majesty.” He pushed off the door frame and turned to leave.
“Wait.” His father’s deep voice stopped him in his tracks. “There’s something else we need to talk about.”
“Listen, if you’re going to chastise me for all of the mistakes from my past or suggest that I’m incapable, then I think I’ll just pass for the night.”
“Blast it, Marx! This is important. Not everything is about you and your sordid past.”
“Then what’s it about?”
“Come in and shut the door,” his father said, gesturing with his head for him to enter the room.
Marx looked up at the ceiling. Conversations with his father had been strained as far back as he could remember, but things had gotten worse during the last year since Palmer’s death. In some ways, Marx couldn’t blame his father for his indifference toward him. In other ways, it was his deepest wish that his father would love him the way he’d loved Palmer. Ever since he was a little boy, he’d been trying to win his father’s favor.
“Look what I made,” Palmer said, pointing to his sandcastle on the beach. The structure had several levels to it, and a row of seashells circled around the entire thing.
His father glanced up from the papers in his lap, and he grinned at Palmer. “Well, that’s impressive.” He hopped up from his spot on the blanket, leaving the papers on the colorful fabric. “I need to see it up close.”
Marx stopped digging in the sand, watching his father admire every last detail of Palmer’s castle. “I made something too,” he said, trying to pull his father’s attention to him. Marx hadn’t built a sandcastle. Instead, he’d made a racetrack through the sand.
His father didn’t even look in his direction, still focused on Palmer’s castle.
Marx stood and looked around. His eyes jumped to the rocks hanging over the water. He bet his dad would be impressed if he climbed them. He ran over to the cliff and started pulling his eight-year-old body up the side. He wedged the tip of his foot into a small hole, supporting his weight so his fingers could find another place to hold. He climbed higher and higher until his dad and Palmer were fifteen feet below him.
