Page 17 of The Impossible Princess
“Princess. Yes. I asked Princess Clara out. It seemed the gentlemanly thing to do after groping her on live television.”
Mom tsks at my language, but Dad lands a large hand on my shoulder.
“Nice.”
“When do we get to meet her?” Mom asks.
“Meet her? No. You’re not meeting her. Dad—” I say, looking for an ally.
He stuffs his hands into his extra-deep pockets. “Nope.”
“It’s nothing serious,” I insist. “Dinner. We’ll spend the whole time making uncomfortable conversation about how we have nothing in common. Don’t get any ideas.”
My mother lifts a glass dish from the fridge and raps it with her knuckle. “This is your grandmother’s sacred pork roast recipe, Max Josef. I served your father this meal on the night he proposed. I don’t need to get any ideas. You’ve got plenty for the both of us.”
“I’m supposed to feed a royal princess chicken fingers?”
She looks around like one of those old-lady detectives on TV that pedal through small towns and stumble over dead bodies. She sniffs. “Your house is particularly clean.”
“It’s always clean,” I say, hoping she doesn’t check the broom closet. If she sees the state of my grout lines, she’ll be shopping for her wedding purse before she gets home.
“Why can’t he just say he likes her?” Mom asks Dad.
Dad shrugs.
When she sees she can’t get anything more from me, I walk them out to their car and Dad gets behind the wheel. I open Mom’s door, and she reaches up to kiss me. Mom is so small, I was towering over her at fourteen, and I have to stoop. When I’m out on deployment, this is what I miss the most.
“Clara is my favorite,” she whispers against my cheek like a cold-blooded assassin, palm against my face with her sticky fingers. “If you hurt that girl, I will murder you in your sleep.”
By early evening, I’m contemplating pulling my white shower caulking out with some needle-nose pliers and reapplying it. The conversation with my mother plays on a repeating loop in my head.
It’s nothing serious. Dinner.
Over and over.
But I’m not acting like it’s just dinner. I’m acting like I’m being handed one shot at the thing I want most in the world.
At six, I hear the crunch of wheels on the drive. A more ubiquitous car, a compact blue Fiio, would be impossible to find, but it’s her. I lean against the entry and wait in the doorway, hoping that the jeans and button-up shirt with rolled-up sleeves strike the right note. The sun is still high in the sky and we’ve got a few more hours before it gets serious about setting.
She swings her legs from the small car. Sandals, a summer dress, her hair loose. I ought to be breathing a little more easily now that I know both of us dressed for the same event, but my chest tightens.
“You look nice,” I say, glad she’s not wearing a tiara this time. Those things remind me of the gold braid banding an admiral’s uniform; the eagle mounted on the hat. I assume the effect is meant to be intimidating. “Did you drive yourself all the way over? The road on that last stretch is winding.”
Her smile lifts on one side. “I spent four years driving a manual transmission around San Francisco. I’m the best driver in the family. By the way, my security detail was poring over aerial maps of your place and they set up a position at the end of your drive,” she says.
I approve.
She hands me a box. “You can pop that into the fridge,” she says, lifting her nose to sniff the aroma coming from the kitchen. I hope the scent of lemon cleaning supplies hasn’t lingered.
“You actually cooked?”
“You doubt me?”
She slides into the house and through the narrow entryway. I open my mouth to explain, apologize, something. It’s just a house. The land is good, but I’m not wealthy and the place isn’t meant to be a showpiece.
“I’m sorry it’s not—”
“Nice,” she says, standing behind my sofa, perilously near the table that wobbles if there aren’t thirty-three pages of aSondmark Sport Fishingmagazine tucked under one of the legs.
