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“Well, I think I should start wearing a corset. Maybe that will keep my waist in."
When he was in his bedroom later and thought about it, he didn’t see what the problem was. He was bigger now than he was a few years ago, and girls had to grow too. How could she be too many inches? Maybe Mum had just been in a bad mood while measuring her daughter. After all, she had seemed kind of odd lately and more cranky.
He forgot about it for a bit until Mum caught them one day in Addy’s room while they ate honey swirls that Father had bought for them.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She snatched the waxed parchment packet from the table. “Especially you, Adaline Luce! It’s almost empty!”
Rainier tried to shrink on the couch because whenever Mum used their last name, that meant they were really in trouble, and she might use his next.
“Do you want to end up just like your Father?” Mum asked her daughter. “What about when prospective husbands come by later on? Shall I present my chunky daughter to them? You’re already heading that way, and I bet you’ve been sneaking a lot of sweets. If only your Father…”
Addy’s eyes filled with tears, and Rainier quickly spoke up. “She just had one. I ate the rest.”
Mum narrowed her eyes at him like she didn’t believe that. “Even if you both only ate one, it's too much. You’re not to have snacks between meals, and I’ve told you overeating is a lack of self-control. What are you? Five?”
It seemed like everyone else ate when they were hungry, and nobody was called a five-year-old if they ate something when it wasn’t mealtime. Rainier kept his mouth shut because such a comment probably wouldn’t be appreciated.
Addy wiped at her cheek. “Father said I’m not chubby, and that I’m not done growing yet because I’m only thirt-”
“You’re going to take advice from an overweight man? I better not catch you sneaking food again. Learn to have some restraint. I already told you that you’re getting plump. Also, you should be practicing your math because the tutor says you're not doing very well. Honey swirls certainly won't improve anything about you.”
After that, Addy started running the halls at night on her floor. Rainier joined her because she didn't want to be alone. Besides, she said he ate as much as her, maybe more, and what if Mum started scolding him all of the time?
Rainier hadn’t caught up yet in height, and Addy ran like her life depended on it. Every night, long after their parents went to bed, he spent a good hour trying to keep up. Back and forth they went through the long halls. She said if people worked and moved a lot, they’d be thinner. Surely, they wouldn’t get chubby if they ran a lot, right? Peasants got skinny if a famine happened, and they grew thinner when they had to keep working to get the next crop in.
He said Father practiced with his sword and moved a lot, and he was still a big man. Addy said that wasn’t enough because he ate more than any of them.
When he asked why they didn’t do this outside during the day, she said they had to hide it. Mum might grow suspicious if they were suddenly doing a bunch of running. She’d probably get mad at her daughter for darting about like a peasant girl. Also, it was too hard in a corset, and Addy didn’t want to go outside without it in case others thought she looked plump.
After a couple of months of that, Father collapsed outside from a heart attack one day. The physician said he’d likely been dead by the time he hit the ground. His weight had likely contributed to his weak heart, and that’s why he’d been having pains. The physician seemed quite anxious when he mentioned that he’d already told the King that he needed to lose some weight to ease the strain on his heart. Perhaps he thought the Queen would blame him.
Mum didn’t. She wailed that she’d tried to get her husband to eat less as if she thought the physician would place all of the blame for her husband’s death on her shoulders.
Rainier hadn’t had a clue that Father had been having pains in his chest or any issues. A few times, he had seemed out of breath when he’d been helping his son train with his sword outside, but Rainier had assumed he was simply tired or perhaps he needed to sit in the shade.
Maybe that's why Mum had been cranky lately. She'd known about his heart, worried, and kept it a secret to avoid scaring her children.
Addy started spending more time in her room after the funeral. Mum did too if she wasn’t in the office and doing all of the work Father did as King. Rainier sometimes sat on the swing in the garden and cried by himself.
Nothing would be the same. He didn’t care about the lack of sneaky snacks from Father. He wanted to feel his big arms around him, train with him, hear his booming laugh, and go horseback riding with him through the local glass forests. He wanted the time when he thought Father was invincible and nothing could happen to him. The time before he knew a heart attack could sneak up and lay Father out on the ground in a second.
Mealtimes were the worst. They all picked at their food while Father’s chair remained empty.
He went to the kitchen one day, and the cook must have had a stash of cookies for the servants. She gave him a pitiful look and a bunch of cookies. His sister let him into her sitting room, and they sat on the floor while they ate in silence and tried to fill the void in them.
Mum saw cookie crumbs on the floor later that day.
She yelled at them and said they would end up overweight and in poor health like Father. His lack of self-control had cost him his life. He'd known his heart wasn’t well, and he hadn’t done a thing. Did they want to die so young and leave behind a grieving spouse and children?
Addy refused to eat snacks with Rainier for a bit, and sweets had rather lost their appeal for him. He spent more time on the swing outside while he stared at the glass roses, the crystal plants, and listened to the white, red, and green glass trees tinkle their branches overhead.
When Addy was fourteen, and Rainier was thirteen, Mum openly scolded her daughter at the table and said she ate too fast. She ate too much. She was probably still sneaking snacks because she was gaining weight. Mum started on Rainier too and said he looked a bit plump.
It was so humiliating, he sometimes swore to himself that he’d never eat again, but then he’d be hungry at meals and eat the whole plate. He didn’t think he appeared chubby in the looking glass, but Mum insisted he was, and that he had no self-control just like his sister and Father. Maybe he was going to get fat, but how was he supposed to not be hungry?
Addy made him get his teeth cleaning brush and brought him into her privy room one night after dinner.
“I figured something out,” she said. “If you throw up a lot, you lose weight. If we throw up our meals, we’ll get skinnier.”
