Royal Wedding (25 page)

Suddenly the gown took on a whole new look. Not that I've ever been a huge fan of Cinderella—although of all the Disney princesses, she's one of the most relatable. She had to do domestic work for a living, after all, and didn't simply lie around in a coma waiting for someone to kiss her awake.

I could completely see this dress being The One. I got shivery, I could see it so much. I even wanted to cry a little.

“Wow,” I said. “I want to throw up less, too.”

“This wonderful,” Sebastiano said, clapping his hands in delight. “I'm so glad I make you not want to throw up! And I know exact the thing to make it most perfect of all. Stay here, Princessa, I come back quick.”

“You do that,” Lilly said, eyeing him as he rushed out like a madman (which he is, but really, all creative people are, sobbing over how great their own accomplishments are, like that's perfectly acceptable behavior). “Here.”

I took the stack of papers Lilly shoved at me. They were mostly long rows of numbers.

“Uh,” I said to Lilly. “Mr. Gianini was a great algebra teacher and all, but you know the minute I graduated high school I never looked at a single math problem again, right? I send everything with numbers on it to my accountant, or I make Michael deal with it.”

“Great. Spoken like a true feminist,” Lilly said. “I'm sure your mother must be so proud. Well, those pages hold bad news about that bohunk your sister's aunt married. He's been using large amounts of the child support your dad's been sending her to finance the business he owns with her aunt, O'Toole Construction and Home Design.”

I sank down on the little bench in the dressing room, my tulle skirt ballooning around me like a huge fluffy white cloud. “I can't take any more bad news today, Lilly. I really can't.”

“Well, I'm sorry, but it gets worse.”

“What could possibly be worse than this?”

“Uncle Richard's planning on moving the whole family to the Middle East.”

“The Middle East? Where in the Middle East?” There are many lovely places in the Middle East. I've had state visits to Bahrain and Jordan and Abu Dhabi. I've been to Egypt and Israel and Saudi Arabia. All of them are lovely countries (not without their challenges, but then, every country has its challenges).

I certainly did not expect Lilly to reply: “Qalif.”

“Qalif?”
I felt as if my heart had sunk to the bottom of my tightly corseted bodice.
“Why?”

“O'Toole Construction's been contracted to build a new mall there. It's going to have the world's largest indoor wave machine in it. Or maybe it's the world's largest indoor ski slope. Oh, well, it doesn't matter since only men can use it because the crown prince there just banned women from swimming and skiing in public.”

My eye began to twitch like mad. “You found all this out through a
public records search
?”

Lilly looked slightly guilty. “It's possible I may have searched a few records that weren't so public. But it isn't my fault. People really shouldn't use the word
password
as their password.”

“Oh, God,” I breathed. “This isn't happening.”

“I wish it weren't, but it is.”

“So, essentially,” I said, feeling like I was going to throw up the single sip of screwdriver I'd had, “my dad is paying for an indoor ski park—or pool—to be built in Qalif, a country with some of the worst human-rights violations in the world right now.”

“Don't be stupid, he doesn't pay
that
much child support. She's just one little kid. But he's paid for some of the front loaders that are being shipped there to build it. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

I sat there in a big puddle of diamonds and tulle. “How come the Royal Genovian Guard didn't figure this out?”

Lilly shrugged. “They're not as smart as I am.”

I could not deny this. No one is as smart as Lilly, with the possible exception of her brother, but he isn't as ruthless as Lilly, which makes Lilly slightly smarter, but only because she always sees the worst in everyone.

“The kid's physically okay,” she assured me. “At least so far as I can tell. I mean, they're feeding her and stuff. I Google-searched her home and school, and she lives in a nice place—well, obviously, her aunt's listed as one of the top interior decorators in the area—and goes to a nice school—”

“But how do we know?” I asked. Lilly's deep suspicion of everyone is catching, especially to someone who watches a lot of
NCIS
. “They could be making her sleep in a closet under the stairs!”

“That seems unlikely. The house is a four bedroom on a cul-de-sac. It's currently on the market, listed for sale at one point four million dollars. I would imagine, with a home like that, if there's a closet under the stairs, it's probably where they keep extra paper towels and soda and stuff they bought at the local big box store.”

“I am not okay with this,” I said. “And if my dad were in his right mind, he wouldn't be okay with it, either!”

“You don't have to shout,” Lilly grumbled. “But I wouldn't be okay with it either if it were my kid sister.”

“The problem is, my dad's been in no condition lately to make decisions.”

“Yeah,” Lilly said. “I saw the mustache. Or should I say, lack thereof. Your dad needs to be kept away from sharp objects and probably everything else right now except YouTube videos about cute puppies.”

That's when I made a decision. I stood up and started taking off my princess ball gown.

“What are you doing?” Lilly asked.

“We're going to Cranbrook, New Jersey,” I said. “Help me get out of this thing.”

“Um, okay.” Lilly started helping me out of my wedding dress. “What are we going to do in Cranbrook, New Jersey?”

“We're going to do what you said—go get my sister.”

“Okay,” Lilly said. “When I said that last night, I might have had a few too many energy drinks, like you'd suggested. Transporting minors over state lines without permission of their legal guardian is a felony.”

“I don't care,” I said. “I'm a princess.”

“True. But do you maybe want to discuss other, less criminal ways we could deal with the matter first?”

“No.”

“All right. Great. I kind of anticipated you'd have this reaction, to be honest, which is why I took the liberty of—”

“Lilly, just shut up for once in your life, and unlace me.”

“Yes, Your High Holiness.”

So now we're on our way to Cranbrook, New Jersey. (Lilly keeps yelling at François, the driver, that we should have taken the bridge, but that makes no sense, we'd have had to go way out of our way.)

Of course Grandmère was furious when I came out of the dressing room with no gown on and announced we were going to have to reschedule our lunch with Lazarres-Reynolds.

“What could possibly be more important?”

I didn't tell her, or anyone. I simply said that something very important had come up and I was going to have to meet them another time.

(Dominique took me aside and pointed out one of the reasons Grandmère is so angry is that Lazarres-Reynolds is still going to bill us, and that they cost $500 an hour, or as she put it, “Five 'undred dollairs an hour.” So I said she could tell Grandmère to send the bill to me.)

That's when Grandmère caused a scene and said she was taking my hybrid electric livery vehicle—she only did this to hurt me—leaving me her obnoxious black stretch limo with the Genovian flags on it that she takes everywhere because she doesn't believe in traveling inconspicuously like I do (in this way Grandmère has a lot in common with some popular rappers).

But the joke's on her, because the limo has Wi-Fi and also a bar (though unlike Lilly, I am staying away from it).

I gave my mom a lift home in it. She was only going a block away, back to the loft on Thompson Street. Still, it was fun to ride with my mom in a limo—we don't get to do it very often.

I thought about using the opportunity to tell Mom about Olivia, but it didn't seem like the right time. Also, breaking the news that he has a child by another woman is obviously my father's responsibility.

But when Mom asked where Lilly and Tina and I were going (Tina was going back to the NYU library to study, so I offered her a lift too, then secretly texted her what was up, which might have been a mistake because now she's sitting on the jump seat looking very pale, mouthing
I can't believe this is happening
over and over), I couldn't exactly lie, not only because I've been getting worse and worse at it—not even counting my twitching eye, I've still never learned to keep my nostrils from flaring when I tell a fib—but because she's my
mother
. I knew she was going to be able to tell something was up (besides Genovia's security threat level).

So I said we were going to Cranbrook, New Jersey.

“Oh, really?” Mom asked. “What's in Cranbrook, New Jersey?”

Lilly smiled at me expectantly from over her laptop and the whiskey sour she'd mixed for herself from the mini-bar, clearly enjoying the situation.

I had to think of something my mom totally wouldn't want to come with us to do, because as an artist her schedule is pretty flexible (except for having to pick up Rocky from after-school karate practice, but she could easily get one of her equally artistic, flexibly-scheduled friends to do that).

“Um, we're going to look at bridesmaid dresses to get inspiration for Sebastiano,” I said. “There's a shop out there someone told us about. I hear they have amazing mother-of-the-bride dresses. Do you want to come?”

Fortunately the lighting in the limo is pretty dim, so Mom didn't notice my nostrils or eyelid. Also I knew she'd be so turned off by the words “shop” and “mother-of-the-bride dresses” there was no way on God's green earth she'd ever want to join us.

“Oh, no, sweetheart, but thank you so much for the invitation,” she said, smiling warmly. “I really can't afford to take any more time away from the new painting I'm doing. I'm calling it
Woman with a Weed Wacker
. I'm hoping it will break new ground in the battle against the Men's Rights Activists.”

“Oh, no problem, Mom,” I said. “The new painting sounds amazing. Good luck with it.”

“Thanks, Mia. But send me some photos! I'd love to see what kind of dresses you girls find.”

Great. So now when we get to New Jersey, we're going to have to find some store that sells bridesmaid dresses and look at them, in order to take photos to send to my mom.

Although Lilly said there's another way to accomplish this. She started looking up bridesmaid dresses online so we can send those to my mom instead.

“Oh, look, Mia. One shoulder empire waist in electric green. Mia,
please
can you get Sebastiano to go with one shoulder empire waist in electric green as our bridesmaid dresses? I'm
begging
you.”

Naturally, this got Tina upset. “Stop it, Lilly. Your best friend—who is marrying your brother—has made a
life-altering
discovery. She has a sister she never knew existed, a little girl who's grown up without a father or a mother, and you're sitting there joking about electric green bridesmaid dresses? Really?”

Lilly looked a little ashamed of herself . . . ​at least until Tina went on to add, “Besides, you
know
I look terrible in green. That cream color that Sebastiano picked out for us this morning is going to be really flattering on
all
of our skin tones, even if it's derivative of what Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, chose for the bridesmaids in her wedding to Prince William, and I think we need to stick to it. Even Trisha liked it, and you know she hates everything that isn't made out of black lace stretch lycra—”

I'm seriously going to check myself into a rehab center for stress and anxiety after this, I swear to God.

“Can we please stick to the subject?” I demanded. “Once we get to Cranbrook, here's what I'd like to do: go to Olivia's uncle's business to talk to him—and the aunt—like normal, rational adults about my meeting my sister. Nothing accusatory, nothing confrontational. Just ‘Hi, hello, I'm Mia Thermopolis. Would it be okay with you if I meet your niece?' Then we can go from there.”

“Oh,” Lilly said. “Okay. That seems like a great idea, especially without any sort of advanced planning or consulting your lawyers or your dad or anything first.”

“It will be fine,” I assured her. “It's not like I haven't been trained in the art of diplomacy.”

“Right!” Lilly laughed over her whiskey sour. “By your grandmother, the queen of tact!”

“We're two separate generations,” I said. “We might do things differently, but we still get things done.”

“And the aunt might not even be aware her husband is using her niece's money to buy bulldozers to send to Qalif,” Tina pointed out. “She could be perfectly innocent in the whole thing.”

“Exactly, Tina.”

Lilly laughed some more. “Oh, my God. You two are so naïve. It's like watching Bambi and Thumper go after Tony Soprano.”

Lilly is such a pessimist.

Oh, great, the car is finally moving.

CHAPTER 48

12:37 p.m., Wednesday, May 6

Somewhere on Interstate 295

Rate the Royals Rating:
7

Tina is reading aloud from J.P.'s dystopian YA novel,
Love in the Time of Shadows
, which she downloaded to her phone.

Lilly is laughing so hard she says she's going to wet her pants.

I'm not finding it very amusing, particularly as the heroine, “Amalia,” has light gray eyes and long sandy blond hair, which gets whipped around a lot in the unforgiving desert wind.