American Royals (30 page)

“Your favorite was that pale pink Easter dress. The one with the matching shoes,” Beatrice recalled, oddly wistful.

“I wanted so badly to be like you, back then.” Sam’s voice was rough. “I wanted to
be
you. When I realized that was impossible—that only you were the future queen, and I could never be you, no matter how hard I tried—I set out to be everything you’re not.”

“You … what?”

“Why do you think I acted the way I did?” Sam shrugged. “You followed the rules, so I misbehaved; you were disciplined and organized, so I ran wild. I felt left out,” she added softly. “You were constantly off doing important future-queen things.”

Beatrice sat up a little straighter in surprise. “
I
felt left out, too, Sam. You and Jeff always had that unbreakable twin bond. It made me feel like an outsider.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam whispered. “I didn’t know.”

Beatrice could only nod. She wished they’d had this conversation years ago, instead of waiting until these circumstances forced it upon them.

Sam cleared her throat. “Look, I know you didn’t ask for this life, but I also can’t imagine anyone handling it with as much grace and dignity as you do. You are next in line for the throne, and you’re going to be queen—that’s just the way things are. But that doesn’t mean it has to define you. You are still a person, and this is still
your
life. We can figure this out. There has to be a way to do the job you were born to do without sacrificing yourself along the way.”

Beatrice was stunned by her sister’s maturity and wisdom. She gave Sam’s hand a grateful squeeze. “Thank you.”

“I’m here for you, Bee,” Sam told her, using the nickname for what must have been the first time in a decade. “After all of this … I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Beatrice looked again at Samantha’s glassy eyes, remembered the nervous way she’d walked into the kitchen earlier. “What about you?” she demanded. “Are
you
okay?”

“Not really.” Sam looked down, her lashes casting shadows on her face. “Nina and I had an awful fight. I didn’t feel like I could really unload it on Jeff—it’s kind of weird, talking about Nina with him. Mom and Dad never listen to me anyway, and I couldn’t talk to you ….”

“You can talk to me now,” Beatrice assured her. “No more secrets, no more misunderstandings. From here on out, we have each other’s backs.”

Sam managed an uneven smile. “I would like that.”

As Beatrice pulled Samantha in for another hug, the icy lump in her throat seemed to lessen, just a little. Whatever happened, at least now she had her sister on her side.

The next morning, Samantha knocked at the heavy wooden doors to her father’s office. “Hey, Dad, are you busy?”

“Sam! Come on in,” he called out in reply.

She didn’t normally show up here uninvited, but after last night’s conversation with Beatrice, Sam needed to talk to their dad herself: to look him in the eye and ask him about his cancer. Maybe there was still some way out, for all of them. Maybe the prognosis wasn’t as bad as Beatrice feared.

Her father was seated behind his desk, sorting through a small leather-bound trunk filled with papers. At Sam’s arrival, he glanced up with a weary smile. “I’m glad you stopped by. There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about.”

Sam opened her mouth, brimming with questions—
How bad is it? Why didn’t you tell us?
—but the words faltered and died on her lips. She realized with a sinking feeling that she didn’t need to ask, because she already knew.

Her dad didn’t look good. She wasn’t sure how she’d missed the changes; they must have been gradual and subtle enough that she didn’t notice them on a day-to-day basis. But now that she was looking closely, she saw how thin his skin had become, the purple shadows beneath his eyes. His movements were underscored with an alarming new fatigue.

Sam sank into the chair opposite him, trying desperately to settle her breaths, to arrange her features into some semblance of a normal expression.

Her father didn’t seem to notice her distress. “Have you seen the Box before?” he asked, still organizing papers into various stacks. Something about the way he said the word made Samantha imagine it capitalized.

“I’m not sure.” The Box was the size of a briefcase, lined in embossed leather, with oiled hinges. Sam realized that her dad had unlocked it with a small golden key.

“It contains my business for the day. A lot of this is electronic now, of course.” He gestured to the tablet at his elbow. “But some of it is still printed: Cabinet minutes, reports from various federal agencies, documents that require my signature. My favorite part are the letters,” he added, reaching into the Box to extract an ordinary white envelope.

“Letters?”

“I receive hundreds of letters every day,” her dad informed her. “Every last one of them is answered, mostly by my junior secretaries. But I’ve asked them to pull two letters at random each day, and those letters I answer myself. It’s something your grandfather used to do, too.”

“Really?”

The king nodded. “I find it useful. Like a daily snapshot of what’s on Americans’ minds at any given moment.”

“People DM me. It’s kind of similar,” Sam offered.

“DM?”

“Direct message. You know, on social media.”

“Ah,” the king replied, evidently confused. “Well. It’s important for people to feel like they have a direct line to their monarch. That we are reachable, and sympathetic, and responsive. Especially since they usually write such highly personal things.”

“What kind of things do they write to you?” Samantha asked, curious.

“Everything. They want a pardon for someone imprisoned; they want to change my mind about some new policy proposal. Their local library is failing; their parent is ill; their fourth-grade classroom needs school supplies. And then, of course, there are the letters full of criticism for something I’ve done.”

“They criticize you?” Sam burst out, leaping to her dad’s defense. “Why aren’t your secretaries filtering out those letters so you don’t see them?” Reading that kind of letter seemed unnecessarily masochistic, like scrolling through the negative comments on social media. Sam had long ago learned to avoid those.

“Because I asked them not to,” her dad replied. “Samantha, criticism is a good thing. It means you’ve fought for something. The only people free from censure are people who’ve never taken a stand.”

She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Sure, but that doesn’t mean you need to
read
strangers’ attacks on you.”

“On the contrary, I do,” he argued. “Some of our nation’s greatest moments of change were born of our family’s most vocal critics. It was Red Fox James, for instance, whose efforts led to the establishment of the Native American dukedoms. Opposition is
crucial
to government, like oxygen to fire. And now those voices, those movements, are coming from your generation.” The king’s eyes rested warmly on Sam. “Although, historically, the people who spark change have usually done so from outside the monarchy, not from within.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, confused.

“I’m talking about
you,
Sam.” A corner of her dad’s mouth lifted. “You’ve never had a problem letting your family know when we’re in the wrong.”

She let out an amused breath. “Are you actually
thanking
me for being a troublemaker?”

“Let’s say
renegade
instead,” her dad teased. “It sounds a little better.”

Sam’s smile faded as she glanced at the letter in his hands, still unopened. “How do you answer all the people who write to you?”

“With honesty and respect. If I can help with their request, I usually do—even if it means going around the official policy rules and making a private, personal donation. It’s nice to feel like I made a difference, in some small way. Especially on the days when I feel like I’ve failed to resolve the bigger issues.”

Her father tore open the envelope and smoothed its contents on the desk before him. His next words were softer, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I often wonder how it must feel, to blindly ask for help like that—to just write a letter to the king and await his answer. I wish I had someone
I
could turn to for guidance. But all I can do is pray.”

Hadn’t Sam been hoping to do exactly what he described—to lay all her troubles on her dad’s shoulders? She wanted him to tell her everything would be all right, the way he used to when she was little. But she knew now that those days were over.

She glanced out the window, her vision blurring. There was a divot in the window’s iron casing that her dad swore was a bullet hole from an assassination attempt on King Andrew. She tried desperately to focus on that, to keep from crying in front of him.

“Sam,” her dad started to say—but before he could finish, he dissolved into a sudden fit of coughing, and reached into his pocket for a handkerchief to place over his mouth. “Sorry,” he said, wheezing through a rueful smile, “got a bit of a dry throat.”

Sam nodded mutely.

He leaned back at last, tucking the handkerchief into his pocket, then pressed his hands over the letter from the citizen, absently smoothing its creases. “I’ve been meaning to thank you. I noticed all the effort you’ve made with Teddy, helping him feel a part of the family. And your mother tells me that you helped pick out his engagement ring for Beatrice.”

“I didn’t do very much.” Guilt gnawed at the inside of Sam’s stomach.

“I know you’ve never been certain what your role should be, moving forward—that you sometimes feel out of place.” Her dad’s eyes lit knowingly on hers. “But Beatrice is going to rely on you when she’s queen, someday.”

Sam noticed that the
someday
was a little tacked on.

“Rely on me for what?” She shook her head, confused. “I’m not as smart as Beatrice.”

“There are many ways to be smart, Sam. It isn’t just books and memorization. It’s wisdom, and patience, and understanding people, which is something you’ve always been able to do. Not to mention that Beatrice will be surrounded by courtiers telling her what she wants to hear—which, as we just established, isn’t a problem you suffer from.” He said it lightly, but Sam heard a thread of urgency beneath the words. “Beatrice will count on you for the unvarnished truth. I expect you to give her your support when she’s earned it and your criticism when she deserves it. That’s what siblings are for, after all.”

“You’re right,” Sam said hoarsely. As Beatrice’s sister, Sam should have been her most thoughtful critic, but also her fiercest champion. Instead she’d spent years treating Beatrice as if they were at opposite ends of a battlefield.

Well, that had ended last night.

Her dad managed a smile. “I’ve always felt that you and Beatrice make a great team—that the two of you embody different aspects of the monarchy. You’re sort of like Edward the Black Prince and John of Gaunt.”

“You’re making me
John of Gaunt
in this analogy?” Sam protested. “He married for money and manipulated his nephew, and didn’t he try to steal the throne of Castile, too?”

The king threw his hands up in surrender. “The early years!” he exclaimed. “When they were teenagers, King Edward III used the Black Prince and John of Gaunt for different political purposes. They were close siblings who clearly trusted each other and were able to divide up the work in a way that made sense. There were a lot of things the Black Prince couldn’t do himself, as heir to the throne, that John of Gaunt was able to take on.”

“Like what, collecting taxes?” Sam teased.

Her father chuckled appreciatively. “That’s not entirely off base. You will sometimes have to serve as a lightning rod: to handle all the negativity and jealousy that people don’t dare show Beatrice. But you already know that.”

Sam blinked. She hadn’t thought of it that way—that some of the criticism she bore might actually be criticism of
Beatrice,
or of the monarchy more broadly, which funneled to her simply because there was nowhere else it could go.

Maybe that was just part of being the spare.

“As head of state,” the king went on, “Beatrice won’t be able to take on any charitable causes. She can’t demonstrate personal preference like that. But you can. That’s one of the inherent strengths of monarchy: you aren’t angling for reelection like members of Congress; you aren’t politically motivated, yet you have continuity. You can act on your good judgment, your empathy, in a way that would be impossible to them.”

Her dad had never talked to her like this before—as if she might actually make a difference. Sam edged forward on her chair. “What do you want me to do?”

“I was hoping you might take on a more active role in the Washington Trust. I’d like to give you a board seat,” her dad announced.

The trust was a charitable fund that donated millions of dollars every year, usually by finding new and underappreciated initiatives, putting a large amount of seed money into them, and helping to boost awareness. Her great-grandfather had created the trust, many years ago, when he realized that there was only so much he could accomplish through the government. The trust gave him a direct way to help Americans without having to lobby Congress for a new law.

“Thank you, Dad.” Sam felt strangely humbled.

“No need to thank me,” her dad said gruffly. “You’ve earned this. I saw you at the shelter yesterday: you were such a natural, especially with the young children. The way you made a fool of yourself, laughing and jumping around with the kids as if no one was watching. You even remembered that boy from our last visit.”

When they’d visited the shelter, Sam had recognized one of the kids from last year, a boy named Pete who’d told her all about his music. She asked him if he was still playing guitar, and he’d scrambled to go get it, elated that she had remembered him. The whole thing had devolved into a fun impromptu concert.

Sam shrugged. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”

“It was unquestionably a big deal to that young man,” her dad insisted. “That’s one of your most amazing qualities, Sam—your lack of pretension, the way you can make someone feel heard. You are
relatable,
which is something the monarchy could use a little more of.”

Sam thought of what she’d said to Beatrice last night, that Beatrice had to find a way to make her life feel like her own. Maybe she could, too. She might be the second-string princess, but she was still
her.
She could use her position to do something meaningful, make a real difference.

“I’m sorry if I’ve pushed you too hard,” the king went on, staring down at his desk. “I thought I needed to give you the benefit of my experience, when all along I needed you to give me the benefit of your
in
experience.” The king smiled. “You’re a force of nature, Sam. When you’re being yourself, you’re our family’s secret weapon.”

“Dad …” She had to swallow to keep her voice from cracking. “Thank you. It really means a lot, that you believe in me.”

“I’ve always believed in you. Sorry if I haven’t done the best job of showing it,” he admitted. “Now, what did you want to ask me? Wasn’t there something you came in here to talk about?”

Sam looked up at her father’s calm smile, his steady brown eyes, so full of wisdom. Suddenly she couldn’t bring herself to hurl accusations at him. He would tell her of his sickness whenever he was ready, and in the meantime, every moment that she got with him was precious.

“No reason, really. Just wanted to spend time with you.” Her eyes drifted to the Box. “Can I help with any of that?”

“Want to answer this for me?” he offered, and slid the envelope toward Sam.

“Am I signing it as you?”

“You could,” her dad said. “Or you could answer as yourself. I think the author of that letter would really love to hear from you.”

She nodded, the sun glinting on her hair as she bent over the paper. “I love you, Dad.”