Inconceivable! (17 page)

holed up in my corner of the
Les Valenciennes
newsroom Wednesday, transcribing interviews I’d done pre-prince with some of the neighbors who lived close to the smelter. Leisel de Vries’ voice surged through my ear buds:

“My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for months. I finally went to the doctor to find out what was wrong. She did an ultrasound and found polyps in the area outside my uterus. She told me many of her patients from Kortrijk have similar reproductive problems.”

Her voice sounded broken and tired.

I listened to my next question: “Could your doctor remove the polyps?”

“Yes, but she couldn’t do small incisions. She had to cut me from here to here to remove all the polyps.”

I cringed. Leisel had raised her shirt to show me the shiny, red line where the knife had traversed her abdomen.

“How long ago was that?”

“About a year.”

“Have you been able to conceive?”

“Not yet. But we’re hopeful.”

I paused my recorder and stopped transcribing, letting the seriousness of her situation wash over me. Her desperation rang through every word. Even though pregnancy was the furthest thing from my mind, my heart was heavy for her. She had cried intermittently during our interview. Each time she dabbed at them with a wadded up tissue, I suppressed the urge to say, “We can just stop. You don’t have to keep going.” Painful as it was for her, Leisel wanted to share her story. Before I left, she hugged me, thanking me over and over again for listening.

Opening my reporter’s notebook, I made a note to schedule an interview with Leisel’s doctor, and then walked over to Sandra’s desk. She was a hard-nosed reporter who had exposed a scheme by two assembly members to defraud a federal program out of millions of euros. I admired her tremendously.

“Sandra, how easy is it to interview doctors in this country?”

“It depends, I guess. What do you want to ask?”

“I want to talk to a particular doctor about trends she’s observing in her patients.”

“Is this for your smelting investigation?”

“Yeah.”

“Then she probably won’t talk on the record.”

“Why not?”

“Since all the physicians in this country are government employees, and the crown owns the smelting facility, I doubt she’ll comment.” Sandra sounded as if she were explaining something to a child.

“What do you mean the crown owns the facility?”
Not good.

“I thought you knew. Isn’t that why you left your blog to come work here? So you could leverage your relationship with the royal family to do a worthwhile story instead of gardening updates?” She smirked. The reporters at
Les Valenciennes
thought my blog was a royal joke.

“I seriously have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“The royal family either owns the building for the smelter or they lease it and use it for smelting. We’re not sure, but we’ve been trying to find out for years. They hide and alter public records, you know. Those scientists from your university are going to uncover the truth about the smelter damaging the environment. The Meinrads need to be held accountable for the problems that place has created for the people who live nearby.” She turned back to her laptop.

My stomach grumbled, issuing a threat. I dashed straight to the bathroom where I lost my lunch.

I left the newsroom and got in my car, my hand resting over my stomach. Why hadn’t John told me his family was one of the biggest players in my story? This was an unexpected level of douchebaggery from my new boyfriend.

On my way home, I stopped at Boots Pharmacy. As I stood in line to pay for the antacids, John’s face on the cover of a magazine caught my eye. He had his arm wrapped around the waist of a beautiful woman with black hair. They both smiled conspiratorially, their heads nearly touching as they leaned toward one another. The headline screamed, “The Prince Goes for the Gold!” A little bubble farther down the cover said, “Prince John dumps journalism student for gymnast!” That stinking exclamation point stuck in my craw.

I grabbed the magazine, paid, and ran out to my car, sensing another wave of nausea settling over me.

Steadying my breaths, I opened the magazine in the safety of the driver’s seat and started reading:

Did Toulene’s Prince John really just take journalism student Hatty Brunelle for a ride? It appears so. Only two weeks after he whisked away the wide-eyed, aspiring reporter to Belvoir, Toulene’s Prince Charming was spotted out on the town with Olympic Gold Medalist Adela Zuzen of Spain. The pair canoodled in a booth at the ultra-ace downtown eatery, Go. It was clear these two were planning to stay!

“I think they wanted to sit in the back so they could snog without anyone seeing them,” said Bie Peeters, Go waitress.

I closed the cover, grabbed my stomach, and suppressed a dry heave. After a few more deep breaths, I started the car, went home, and crawled into bed. Three letters buzzed in my head like a giant neon sign illuminating my brain: WTF.

fter a night of dreaming about a self-righteous confrontation with John, I woke up exhausted. I showered and got ready to go to the newsroom.

On my way through the lobby of my apartment building, the doorman handed me a sealed envelope.

As I walked outside, I tore it open. John was sending a car to get me at 4:00 p.m. Fine. I was ready for a fight.
Bring it.

I seethed, still unsure which made me angrier―his concealing the fact his family owned the smelting operation or his apparent fling with the Spanish gymnast. It was a close contest and the gymnast wouldn’t get the gold this time.

When I arrived at the palace late in the afternoon, John greeted me with open arms, ready to plant a serious kiss on my lips. Just a day and a half ago, I would’ve felt an undeniable hunger, but now there was only bitterness brewing.

I let him envelop me in his arms, but turned my head when he tried to kiss me.

“Hatty, what’s wrong?”

“We need to talk.”

“Of course. We can go to my room.” His brows pulled together. A sign of worry, perhaps?
He knows his girlfriend is a badass from the Ozarks and it’s come-to-Jesus time.

Behind his closed bedroom door, I got right to it. “When were you going to tell me about your family’s role in making people sick in Kortrijk?”

“What do you mean?”

“You never told me your family owns the smelting operation that’s apparently causing people to get lung cancer and have miscarriages, if they can get pregnant at all. You make me sick.”

“Oh, God.” His hand ploughed through his hair. “Hatty, until this week, I didn’t know we still owned the buildings. We lease the facility to a private company that runs the smelter. I thought we sold off that property several years ago. I swear I was going to tell you about it because this creates a conflict of interest for you now that we’re dating.”

“Conflict of interest? Don’t pretend like you care about my profession. And why is it I’m the only journalist in town who can’t seem to keep tabs on where you go and the women you see?” I tossed the magazine at his feet, giving myself a slow clap in my head and a heaping helping of
You go, girl!

“You’re upset by this?”

“I need to know right now if you’re dating any other women.”

“Are you serious?”

I waited with my arms folded across my chest.

“No. You’re the only one I’m dating.”

“Then how do you explain this story?”

“I met Adela a couple of years ago. She was in town Monday, and asked to see me because she wants to date Henri. And do you know why she was in Toulene?”

“I have no idea. But wait a minute. She can just call you up and ask to see you, and I can’t?”

“It’s different because I’m not dating her.”

“Apparently someone thinks you are. Since you don’t make
her
follow the rules
I
have to follow, you get ‘caught’ with her, and now everyone thinks you guys are dating? This is so messed up.”

“I’m not seeing her. She came to Toulene to host a gymnastics camp for immigrant youth. But of course, that’s not sexy enough for a magazine cover so someone saw us out and took a photo.”

“They just made up the story to go along with the picture?”

“I suggest you start acting like a journalist and get the facts right before you burst into my home and accuse me of being a horrible person.” He turned away from me.