Page 53 of The Impossible Princess
But Rita is unswerving. “This makes me very happy and very sad. Do you know who I always wanted to see you with? Don’t laugh.” Rita jabs a finger at me. “Don’t. Laugh. Princess Clara. You would be so good and, Max, your chemistry…” She trails off, eyes widening. “Vede—”
Hals slaps a hand over her mouth and nods towards Ava playing on the floor. She peels his hand away and drops her voice. “That’s it. Oh my gosh, Max.” She smacks her hand on the table. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Not a girlfriend,” I repeat.
Hals grins. “Right. Okay. Not a girlfriend. Lay the facts before us, little brother, and let us judge.”
“She comes over sometimes. That’s all.” My grudging admission makes it sound like a book club.
“What do you do?” Susi’s eyes are gleaming. I can see she’s happy that for once, it’s not her love life anyone is dissecting. Glad she’s not the one twisting in the wind.
“Dinner, breakfast—”
“Hey. Hey. Hey,” Susi laughs, even as Mom frowns.
“Nothing untoward. She comes over for breakfast.”
“Untoward,” Rita howls, twisting to look at her husband. “Remind me to get untoward with you later on.”
He leans forward and kisses her soundly.
“Some fishing,” I persevere. “Some work in the garden. We painted the cottage this week. We’re only friends.”
Rita gives a deflated sigh. “This is disappointingly thin beer, Max. You had a shot of giving Ava royal cousins—”
“Of letting me be the bridesmaid Crown Prince Noah disappears with at the wedding reception—” Susi continues.
“Don’t be inappropriate,” Mom says. Susi’s brows lift, and Mom explains. “It’s inappropriate to fantasize about your future king.”
Susi snorts, but Hals is an unexpected ally. “The royals aren’t normal people. They’re trussed up in suits and crowns half the time. All those perfect pleats. Can you imagine wading through all that pomp and actually kissing one?”
Susi’s eyes glint wolfishly, but I feel my neck redden. Mom squeals. The Resistance fighter is being marched off to his doom.
Of the number of shouted questions that follow, I answer only two.
“No, we arenotdating and no, you can’t tell anyone. What happens inHuisAndersen stays inHuisAndersen.”
I rise, gathering dishes, pointedly clearing the table as the Andersen womenfolk erupt in a chorus of groans.
After a few minutes, Hals joins me, getting a dishcloth while I fill the sink with soapy water. I make short work of the plates and he speaks in a low voice.
“I would love to give you a hard time about this, Max—I’m dying to—but I won’t if it’s really something.”
“It shouldn’t be,” I say.
“So it is.”
It’s more than something. I’m not sure when I realized how serious I was. Halfway through that stupid penguin movie? While I found myself looking up the public broadcast station program guide so I could catch a speech on solar panels, maybe?
“It hasn’t even been two months. We agreed to be friends.”
“And she buys this friendshipprobishyou’re peddling?”
I grin, pulling the plug from the drain and scrubbing the sink. “So far.”
“How long can you keep that up?” Hals has dried the last dish and leans on the counter, watching his wife in the next room help Ava build a tower out of bright, interconnected blocks. They’ve been married six years, together far longer than that. I can hardly remember a time when Rita wasn’t in the family.
My parents are tucked on the sofa doing a Sudoku square together and listening to old Eurovision tracks. They’ll sing when ABBA comes on. They always do.My my, at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender…
