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“No! Not at all.” Dear God, please help me.
She eyed me carefully and relaxed back down. “You’ve been sad and distant, Gale. I understand why. I’ve been trying to support you, but I’m not sure how. So you have to tell me. What do you need? How do I fix it?”
Putting the glass on the bedside table, I reached over and took her hand, kissing it. “Like always, I need you. Just be here…crazy or not—”
She shoved me, and I smiled. “I’m serious.”
“As am I,” I repeated. “There is nothing for you to fix. There is no fixing it. I am sad. I’m trying to get through it. Today, when I saw the film crew,” I said slowly and carefully to avoid any landmines, “the female in question showed me a section from my father’s journal. I didn’t realize he had kept any. I guess they were just stored in the library. There was a poem in one. I found it funny because she thought they were my dad’s—”
“She had a phone; couldn’t she look it up?” she muttered, and when I looked at her, she pretended something was wrong with her earring and looked away sheepishly. She was kinda cute like this.
“Anyway, it got me thinking about Father. The things I knew about him and the things I didn’t. She was telling me things about him she found while doing research and some of it made me laugh. The things that make it into public record and history are funny. A lot of it is just hearsay from others close to the palace. The more she spoke, the more I realized no one will really know him the way I did. I wanted them to capture the man I knew…but they can’t. Because the man I knew was a king to them. And he should stay that way.”
“So you aren’t going to do a documentary anymore?”
“The one of my father? No. I was already thinking of canceling it when I came in, and I saw you like this.” I grinned when the realization came over her face that Winnie was not a problem at all.
“Ugh!” she let out, pushing me to get out of bed. “You drive me crazy!”
“What did I do now?” I called out, taking her place on the bed.
“You—oh…” She froze, grabbing on to the side of her stomach.
“Odette!” I jumped up, rushing to her side. “Are you all right? I’ll call the doctor—”
“Wait!” She grabbed my hand. “Feel.” She moved my hand to the side of her stomach…I felt…a soft thud. It went over and over again in the same space.
“Is that a…”
“Kick.” She laughed, looking up at me.
I grinned, holding on. “Woah…future soccer player for sure.”
She giggled. “I forgot to tell you…well, I was waiting to tell you. We scheduled an ultrasound for tomorrow. They say we should be able to find out the sex by then.”
“What? Really?”
She nodded. “What are you hoping for?”
“I haven’t thought about it, honestly. I think I’m going to be grateful forever, whichever.”
“Then do you mind us waiting to find out?”
My eyebrow rose. “You, the woman who hates surprises, wants to be surprised with something as big as this?”
She nodded. “For some reason, I don’t want to know anything until the baby gets here. It’s not like we have to prepare anything. I found out all babies are born in the palace…which freaked me out until I saw the birthing room. It’s like a mini-hospital.”
“Wait…there is a birthing room?” I said, shocked. “An actual room for births? I just assumed you would be giving birth in a regular room with all your doctors and machines brought in.”
“Gale, you’ve lived here your whole life!”
“That doesn’t mean I’ve gone to every room. The palace is huge! Why on earth would I need to go to the palace birthing room?”
She giggled, shaking her head at me. “Okay, we will go on that tour later. I was saying that all royal heirs apparently wear white the first few months they are born, so it’s not like we need to worry about getting boy or girl stuff yet. If you want to find out, the doctor can tell you alone.”
“If you are going to wait, I’ll wait. I like surprises,” I replied, leading her back to bed, putting my hand on her stomach again. Then I glanced over at her little food spread. “Well, not all of them.”
“If you are not going to eat it, can you call someone to take it away?” Her face bunched as she was trying to block her nose. “The seafood is starting to make me sick.”
