Finding Home

by B. E. Baker

  I laugh. “It’s probably not famous to normal people, but it is for music nerds. It’s like having a Rolls Royce in your music room.”

  Cole steps out of the dining room, his long legs eating up the parquet floor. He halts abruptly, his eyes traveling to my face and then back down to my shoes. He frowns and his eyes widen and then his mouth opens, but no words emerge.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make a fuss. Let’s go,” I say.

  “Elizabeth?” Cole says.

  “Beth, please,” I say. “I’m not fancy enough to merit such a long name.”

  “I heard you played piano,” he says. “And Rolls Royce or not, you’re welcome to play that one anytime you’d like.”

  “I have a lot of new music to learn,” I say. “But it might not be amazing to listen to—it’s just the supporting melody for the songs I’ll be accompanying on tour. It feels wrong, somehow, to practice them on this.” I glance over my shoulder. “Like doing donuts in the parking lot with a Rolls.”

  Paisley’s mom ducks her head around the corner. “What’s going on?”

  “Mom, my friend Beth wants to know whether she can practice some of her pieces—she’s about to be on tour with Henrietta Gauvón—while she’s with us. Cole and I told her it’s fine, but she’s worried because apparently Dad spent way too much money on our piano.”

  Her mom laughs. “These two certainly never appreciated it.”

  I look at Paisley. “I had no idea you played at all.”

  She swallows. “I don’t.”

  “None of us do,” Cole says. “Not anymore.”

  A weight seems to settle in the room at that comment, like a blanket has been tossed over us, a dampening, depressing blanket. There are way too many people for me to pry, but I make a note of it to ask Paisley later. I’d like to avoid all the land mines I can.

  “Are we eating?” Paisley’s father shuffles around his wife and stops beside her. “Ah, this must be your friend, Holly.”

  “Right,” Paisley says. “This is Elizabeth Graham, who is joining Henrietta’s tour. It was delayed, which gave her some time to spend with me. I can’t wait to show her around.”

  “What do you want to see?” her dad asks.

  I shrug. “Literally anything. Other than a few family vacations to the beach and to Disney World, I’ve never left Atlanta.”

  “Well, our daughter seems to like Atlanta well enough,” her mom says. “But we think our little spot in the world is also quite nice.” She clasps her hands together. “Oh, Holly, will she be here for the party?”

  Paisley’s mouth compresses and her eyes tighten. “Mom, I told you it’s too early for anything like that.”

  Her mom lifts one eyebrow. “But you won’t be back for months! It won’t be a big deal, I promise. Just a few very close friends.”

  “Warning,” a deep voice from inside the dining room says. “I can’t be left in here alone with the rolls for much longer if you expect there to be enough for the rest of you.” It must be James threatening us.

  “We haven’t blessed the food yet,” Paisley’s mom says, aghast.

  Paisley grins. “We better go inside.”

  I follow the others inside, and try my best not to blush when the open seat is at the end of the table, right next to Cole. I utterly fail when he pulls my chair out for me. “Uh, thanks.”

  “Uh, you’re welcome,” he says with a smirk.

  I am such an uncultured American. I’ve never minded before, but it’s glaringly obvious right now. I wish I could be sitting next to James instead. Even if he’s basically American royalty, at least he doesn’t have any official titles.

  “So tell us,” Paisley’s mom says after she offers a beautiful prayer. “How did one of Holly’s friends from Atlanta come to join Henrietta Gauvón’s European tour?”

  This does not make me look better. “Well, it’s a strange story, but I’ll just share the highlights. I haven’t even talked to Paisley, er, Holly about it yet. I always knew I was adopted, but I didn’t realize my birth mother was—”

  “Henrietta herself?” Paisley is practically bouncing in her seat. “Are you serious? That’s amazing. She must have been quite young when she had you. She barely looks thirty now.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know about that. I haven’t spent more than an hour talking to her, in my entire life. It’s kind of why I agreed when she offered me the job.”

  “She showed up out of nowhere,” James asks, “and offered you a job as her pianist?”

  “Well, she called me out of nowhere, and then she saw me play at my night job at a steakhouse, and she got the news then that she needed a new pianist as hers is pregnant and feeling quite sick.”

  “Must be going around.” James nudges Paisley’s elbow.

  My eyes widen. “Wait, are you?”

  “I’m barely eleven weeks pregnant.” Paisley sighs so hard that her hair shifts off her forehead. “You’re not supposed to be telling anyone. I haven’t told Mary, or Geo, or Trudy, or Rob yet. You and my mom are the worst.”

  “We’re not the worst,” her mom says. “We’re excited. No, delighted. No, ecstatic. There’s a difference.”

  “Mom, I do not want it splashed across the nightly news before I’ve told my friends.”

  Her mom gulps at that, and folds her hands in her lap.

  “I won’t tell a soul,” I say, “but I am really, really excited.” I want to tell her that Brekka’s expecting too, but I figure that’s Rob’s news, not mine. I keep my mouth shut.

  Dinner is as delicious as I imagined it would be. I ought to limit my consumption so I can more closely resemble my svelte, pencil-thin bio mother, but it’s too good. I can’t do it. When I reach for my third roll, James catches my eye and smiles. “Can you believe they rarely ate rolls before I joined the family?”

  I shake my head. “I’m not sure my life will ever be the same, now that I’ve had these,” I say. “Do you think your mom would share the recipe?”

  Cole’s laughter rings from the rafters.

  “What?” I ask.

  Paisley’s mom looks horrified.

  “Is it an old family recipe?” I ask. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  Cole’s still laughing, and now Paisley is too.

  “They employ a chef and three cooks,” James says. “I doubt Paisley’s mother does a lot of baking.”

  I’m such an idiot. I wish I could sink into the intricately woven carpet under my feet. Of course she doesn’t. “Well, maybe the chef wouldn’t mind sharing, then. When I go home, I’d love to try and make them.”

  Paisley wipes her eyes and shakes her head. “I can tell you the number one ingredient.” She meets my eyes. “Butter. Anything that tastes this good is at least forty percent butter.”

  “Mom can’t make toast,” Cole says. “She’d starve if the chef and the cooks all got sick.”

  “Of course that’s not true,” I say. “She could always order take out.”

  Cole and Paisley start laughing again, and this time her dad and James join them.

  “I’m glad my general incompetence in the kitchen is so amusing,” her mom says, although she doesn’t look very annoyed.

  “I’m sure you spend your time doing other things that are much more complex and important than baking bread.”

  This time, Paisley’s mom laughs too. “Not really,” she says. “And now I have an overwhelming urge to take a baking lesson.”

  All in all, by the time dinner is done, I’m more than ready to race up the stairs to my opulent blue room and go right to sleep. I’m about four stairs up when Cole stops me. “Do you have plans tomorrow?”

  I shake my head. “Not unless you count testing out a few ideas for new and more horrible ways to insult my hosts.”

  Cole chuckles. “Oh, please. Mom has never been talented in the kitchen. She burns popcorn, oversalts and overcooks eggs, and undercooks everything else. Trust me when I say we’re all better off if she steers clear
. And don’t worry—her self-esteem doesn’t suffer. She thought it was nearly as funny as we did, but the joke loses its potency if she laughs. It’s much funnier if she scowls and postures instead of laughing along with us.”

  I hate how quiet my voice is when I ask, “So you don’t think she hates me?”

  Cole takes steps up twice so we’re standing eye to eye. “Not at all. I think she likes you, nearly as much as I do.”

  My shoes suddenly feel too tight, and there’s an odd tingling between my shoulder blades. “Oh.”

  “I wanted to see whether you might be interested in accompanying me tomorrow.”

  “Normally I’d love to, but Paisley said—”

  His voice drops an octave, as he shifts to a whisper. “She makes a lot of plans, but she’s been here four days, and so far, she’s always in and out of the bathroom until one or two in the afternoon.”

  “Morning sickness?” I ask.

  Cole nods. “The baby does not like mornings. My sister rarely does what’s expected, but in this instance, it appears she’s quite traditional.”

  Oh no. Paisley probably asked him to babysit me. “It’s okay,” I say. “I don’t need to be entertained. Unless it bothers someone, I can simply practice my songs in the morning.”

  “What if I need to be entertained?” He cocks his right eyebrow.

  Uh. “What?”

  “I haven’t laughed as hard as I did today in a very long time. I find that I quite like an American perspective on things.”

  I frown.

  “I’m not making fun of you, to be clear. I simply love seeing what you think about some of the things that have been as they are for ages—sometimes for no better reason than we haven’t thought to change them. Americans rush toward change in every aspect.”

  “That’s not fair,” I say. “We like things to be done right, and if that’s different than the way they’re already done, well, then we change. But if something works, we aren’t afraid to keep doing it.”

  “Really?”

  I think about the new items on every fast food menu, the new cereals on the grocery store shelf weekly—frequently in horrifying combinations—and the ever-changing fashion trends. “We might like a little variety now and then, but I’m sure that’s human nature, not Americans specifically.”

  “Alright,” Cole says. “But back to tomorrow, I’m meeting with the National Assembly to review a treaty with France. I thought you might be fascinated, given that you had so many questions earlier today.”

  A treaty with France? How different his world is from mine. “I’d love to see that.”

  “I’m due there at ten in the morning, but if you’re up earlier than that, you’re certainly welcome to practice the piano. Any time after eight in the morning, everyone should be up and working.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “For everything.”

  “It was truly my pleasure,” he says.

  I hope he’s not just being polite—because somehow, with a flash of his bright, grassy green eyes, my day went from epically bad to Cinderella good.

  6

  Cole

  “Why aren’t you part of the EU?” Beth asks. “Because then you wouldn’t need to use the Swiss franc, right? And when travelers came to visit, it would be easy for them to eat and shop and whatnot.”

  I shake my head. “We don’t care much about tourism. It’s barely a line item in our gross domestic product.”

  “Really? With as adorable as Liechtenstein is? With such a rich history and such friendly people?”

  “We are quite friendly,” the prime minister says, “but not to outsiders.”

  Beth’s eyes widen, and I remember that she’s an outsider. How could I have forgotten that?

  “Of course, we’re always happy to welcome Holly’s friends,” I say.

  “Right, of course.” Adrian Hundinger, Liechtenstein’s Prime Minister for almost seven years now, swallows. It’s a good thing he’s so fluent in English, or bringing Beth along might have stressed him out. “I hope you didn’t think I was referring to you.”

  Beth shrugs. “Well, I am an outsider, so it would be silly to be offended by it. So far, everyone I’ve met has been cordial and welcoming.”

  “What Cole hasn’t told you,” Adrian says, “is that we are not well equipped for tourists, so the inconvenience of the Euro not being accepted works in our favor. We have more businesses here per capita than any country on earth. We like to work, we like to play, and we like to keep to ourselves.”

  “And the EU sets tax brackets, which would ruin our very attractive twelve and half percent corporate and eight percent value added tax,” I say.

  Beth shakes her head. “Well, it’s good that you know what you’re doing.” She switches to German. “I need to practice my German, so please don’t need to speak English.”

  I correct her as kindly as possible, and she repeats the phrase, properly. “German is a confusing language,” I say slowly. “But you will pick it up if you stick with it.”

  She nods. “Thanks. Talking slowly helps a lot.”

  “Many of the citizens here in Liechtenstein do speak English,” Adrian says. “And we love the United States, so don’t feel bad if you need to clarify anything.”

  Beth asks fantastic questions, and she waits naturally for a pause to ask so that she never slows down our progress. Since the Landtag is out of session, the members of the National Assembly fill in, which expedites everything.

  “I think this is done,” I say, finally. “Unless you have any questions. Hopefully they’ll approve our changes, and if they do, I’ll get my dad’s signature.”

  “Perfect,” Adrian says. “It’ll be nice to finish with this.”

  “I probably ought to tell you,” I say, “that I’ve accepted a job working for Argenta. I’ll be moving to Antwerp in the next two weeks. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to finish this up. Well, this and the details of the small business initiative.”

  I’ve worked with Adrian directly for three of the last seven years he’s held his position, and even before that, I came with Dad to every meeting. In all that time, he has never been flustered, or distraught, or upset. No matter how frustrating the opposition, no matter how childish the Landtag or the citizens or the trade delegates, he smiles and navigates through the worst until things are smoothed over. It’s what makes him such a wonderful Prime Minister.

  He splutters now, his eyes bulging. “You’re leaving? Just like that?”

  “You know that there’s nothing for me here,” I say softly.

  But it’s too late. Beth is watching us, her head tilted, her sharp brain trying to interpret what we’re saying.

  “How can you say there’s nothing for you here?” Adrian gestures out the window at the Alps behind us. “Liechtenstein is your home, and it may not strictly be in your blood, but it’s—” He stands up and begins pacing. “You belong here.” He whips his head around and pins me with his famous stare. “Your people need you.”

  “Franz will—”

  Adrian throws his hands in the air. “Pah, Franz. He hasn’t lived here in. . . How long? Since he was eighteen years old. And he married that American, and lived in New York and now in Munich. He doesn’t know us, and he doesn’t care about us. He cares about dollars and cents and buying and selling the world.”

  I stand up. “Now see here. It’s largely due to Franz’s expertise that Liechtenstein remains in such a strong position internationally. The banking group would never have acquired—”

  “Being Prince of Liechtenstein is about more than balancing the budget. It’s about more than making smart business moves.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I say, lowering my voice. “Because under my stewardship, Berg Telecomm nearly died off.”

  “But it didn’t,” Adrian says, “and it was in a nose dive long before you were tasked to resuscitate it.”

  “Holly saved it,” I say. “I can’t take a lick of credit for that. You’d be better off
appealing to her. The dynasts might actually vote to change that archaic law and allow a female to inherit. Holly would be an excellent ruler.”

  “You’re the one who stayed when things were hard, and you’re the one who brought her back when we were struggling,” Adrian says. “We had all given up on her years ago, but you inspired her to step up. And beyond that, if Berg had died, you’d have gladly donated whatever was required of your own personal wealth to create a new entity to fund the Distribution. Because you love the people, and you know them. You play football with them. You go for jogs and wave and chat with them.” Adrian grabs his briefcase. “You do what you want. Your father always has, as the good Lord surely can attest. But you think about this before you simply bow out and pass the governing of our people off to your uncle Franz. No one else, not even your father anymore, knows more about the forty thousand people who live here. And we love you. Not your dad, not your mom, or even your sister. We have watched as you have been there for every single thing as soon as we needed it. You are as royal as your father, your grandfather and your great grandfather, and we have noticed.”

  “So what?” I ask. “Even if that’s all true, there’s still no place for me here.”

  “There’s always a place for a son of Liechtenstein here,” he says. “I’m not a prince. Does my contribution not matter?”

  I sigh. “Of course it does.”

  “So run for a position on the Landtag—any party would support you. You’d be a lock to win, you know you would.”

  I laugh. “It’s a part-time position, and at the end of the day, my place isn’t here. It’s in Belgium, where my father was a lord. That’s the future for me.”

  “Your future is always wherever you take it.” He marches out the door with stiff shoulders and a severe frown frozen on his face.

  Beth’s eyes follow him out before circling back to me. I wonder how much she understood of our interchange.

  “He doesn’t want you to move to Antwerp?” she asks.

  Too much, clearly.

  “He’ll get to know and respect my uncle Franz soon enough. Dad said he’d be reaching out to him, to let him know he’s preparing to transition the rule into his hands. Uncle Franz went to Harvard Business School. He worked for the top banks in the world, and he’s commanding, impressive, regal even. He’s eminently more capable than me at all the governing, and the economics, and probably everything, really.” I shrug. “Honestly.”