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“For what, sir?” the prime minister asked him.
“Oh, what would happen if it takes longer than five minutes for this new identification?” he pressed, taking off his glasses. “The last thing either of us would want, Mr. Prime Minister, is for the queen to be humiliated in front of the one, two…seventeen different media outlets you have demanded be in attendance.”
“Mr. Elling, I did not demand anyone be anywhere; there will be so much media because this is a historic moment in this government and country…and also because the royal family garners so much—”
“The contingency plan, Prime Minister,” I finally spoke. If we let him, he’d go off on a tangent and find a way to weasel out of answering.
His blue eyes shifted to me. “There is none because none will be needed, sir. I assure you, I personally and actively have seen to it that there will be no hiccups for Her Majesty. In three days’ time, she will turn in the documents, which have been prepared by your lawyers and double-checked by the government, to the teller. The teller will input the data. She will be immediately approved. Get her identification, and we will all turn and smile to the public. Every moment has been calculated and re-calculated to the letter.”
He wanted this more than anyone else in the room. He plotted, pushed, and basically blackmailed his way to get to this moment. I honestly wanted to ask him what motivated him this deeply for this issue. It wasn’t as if there weren’t other more pressing issues facing this country, yet he was ready to die on this hill. And I could do nothing about it.
“Now, if we are to discuss what the queen will say—”
As I rose from my chair, they all rose quickly alongside me. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Prime Minister. As you may be aware, my father is ill. So I cannot stay any longer.”
“Yes, sir.” He nodded at me.
I looked at Mr. Elling. “Send me a detailed brief on everything discussed.”
Without waiting for a reply, I stepped out of the conference room, waiting for the door to close behind me before I inhaled through my nose. Truthfully, I didn’t know which would be more comfortable for me—staying in there or going to see my father. He’d been getting worse and worse to the point that doctors told me, if he was lucky, he had a few more weeks. So now, every day as I walked to his room, I found myself wondering…would this be the last day? I was glad I brought him back. If he was going to pass anywhere, at least it would be here around his family. At least it would be in the palace of the king.
I walked only to catch a flash of pink in the corner of my eye. Turning, there outside of the windows were the cherry blossoms, a whole sea of pink that went on and on.
“Sir?” Balduin asked beside me.
“They’ve bloomed.” I hadn’t even noticed.
“Yes, sir.”
I grinned. “He’s going to want to see it. He has to see it.”
“Your father, sir.”
I nodded, heading down the hall and up the stairs to his room. When I got there, he was awake, but it was worse because he just sat up, breathing heavily, his eyes unfocused. My mom was reading to him, but he didn’t even seem aware of where he was.
“How is he feeling today?” I asked his nurse, who was standing in the corner.
“As well as he can be, sir,” he said.
I nodded. “Do you think he’s up to going outside?”
“Outside?” My mother turned back to me. “Where to? Gale, I don’t know if he’s up to moving right now—”
“The cherry blossoms have bloomed,” I told her, and she smiled, too, knowing what it meant to him.
“Okay. Sure.”
“I’ll get the wheelchair, sir,” his nurse said before moving past me.
“Thank you.” I really wanted him to see it…at least one more time.
“Normally, we expect anywhere from ten to twenty-five thousand, ma’am, but that is just a guess based on previous years. Based on the excitement around the royal family this year, and it being the first year of the king’s reign, it will be much bigger,” Caroline Allemand, the head coordinator of palace events and festivities, said to me as she scrolled through her tablet.
“How much bigger do you all think?” I asked the thirteen people all around me.
My team, per se, consisted of the head of decorations, the head of palace security, the head chef, the head gardener, along with three other people who worked in the gardens, and Mr. Parsworth, plus two more footmen, then, of course, Gelula and Thelma, who stood just to the side of me. The only person missing was Wolfgang, and then it would be the whole gang.
“The king approved nearly fifty-thousand tickets, ma’am,” Caroline answered, looking back up to me. “But there might just be more outside the gates.”
