by Alyssa Cole
“Why didn’t you tell me this before we left?” She was digging in her handbag for her lip gloss.
The joking lie was on the tip of his tongue, but the truth somehow slipped ahead of it. “I was nervous. I’ve never taken a woman to meet my grandmother.”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye as she dabbed the gloss onto her mouth. “Oh.”
Don’t get any ideas, he wanted to add. It’s not because I really like you.
He more than really liked her, which was as far as his brain would let him follow that line of thought.
“I find that speaking with her helps me see more clearly when things get too monarchied up,” he added.
“She’s an anchor for you,” she said. “Something away from all the Phokojoe performing and royalty business. I get that.”
Johan wondered if she got that she was becoming the same for him. An anchor.
“She’s not racist, is she?” Nya asked suddenly.
“Hmm. I would say no, though I guess I’ve never asked her. She’s not some sweet grandma type, but she’s never said anything weird and she loves Thabiso.”
“So she likes at least one fellow Thesoloian. Good to know.”
“She hates most royalty, so it’s something.”
“Even Lukas?” Nya asked.
“Well, she’s my papp’s mamm, so she’s not related to him, but she doesn’t hate him.” He glanced at her. “It’s complicated. And my papp is . . . somewhere. Neither of us know. The best thing I can say for him is that he didn’t come crawling back trying to get fame or money.”
The car bounced as they traveled up the long, rutted road toward his grandmother’s small house. Johan had always seen it as a witch’s house, tucked away in the woods, at first because his grandmother was a bit mean, and then because he understood that witches were smart to live alone away from the rest of humanity.
“And before you ask, I’ve tried to get her a new house or at the very least new furniture and appliances, but she refuses. She’s stubborn.”
The wooden door in the small stone house opened and his grandmother stepped out, dusting her hands on the apron that covered her jeans and skimmed the top of her insulated boots. She had always looked like this, except now her flame-red hair had ceded entirely to silver, she was shorter and more wrinkled, and her motions were stiffer.
She didn’t smile or wave, but she didn’t slam the door shut.
Johan got out and walked over to Nya’s side, helping her out just in time for an inquisitive pig to trot over and sniff her boot.
“Grand-mère, have you been giving the pigs free range again?” he asked.
“The pigs live here,” she replied in a clipped tone. “You two are guests. Be respectful.”
“Hallo,” Nya said. “Je bin Nya.”
His grandmother stared and then shifted into her slow, heavily accented English. “Are you my new granddaughter? I am too old to learn new names. I told Johan not to bring any woman here unless he was keeping her forever, so I assume you are wed?”
“Um, not yet?” Nya glanced at Johan, eyes wide.
“Well, you will be soon. I see the way my Jo-Jo is standing there like he just gave me a gift and is scared I won’t like it.” She looked at Johan and gave him something like a smile. “I like her. Relax, okay? Come eat. And Nya, you can call me Grand-mère.”
She turned and went back into the house and Nya looked at him, a question in her eyes that he didn’t know how to answer.
“Let’s go,” he said, ushering her into the warmth. When they were settled inside at the table in the small cozy dining room, his grandmother began bringing out dish after dish, pickles and cabbage and meats piled onto matching plates ringed with tiny painted flowers. Johan nodded toward a framed photo on a wooden side table.
“I was a very cute baby, thank you very much.”
“That’s why you brought me here, isn’t it?” Nya asked, turning to look at the photo of him in a long white gown and surrounded by pillows, his big head crowned in flaming red wisps of hair.
“You besmirched my cuteness in front of everyone.”
“You know I think you’re cute.” She booped his nose as if he were a kitten, and he scowled, pretending he didn’t like it.
“Are you why people were asking me if I was expecting a great-grandchild?” his grandmother asked as she finally took her seat at the table, placing a tray with country bread, ham, and cheese on the table next to a plate of delicate cookies. She seemed to squint in the direction of Nya’s stomach.
“Johan can explain,” Nya said, reaching for a cookie, and then taking a bite. “This is delicious . . . Grand-mère.”
The woman nodded but didn’t smile. She was busy looking expectantly at Johan.
Johan heaved a sigh. “It appears that someone is trying to make people think badly of me, and by extension the royal family. To influence the referendum.”
Grand-mère rolled her eyes. “Referendum. I am too old for this. I’m not fond of the von Brausteins, but what will they replace the monarchy with? It’s all shit, whatever you call it, because I doubt we’re heading for socialism with all these capitalist kotzbrockens funding the referendum.”
Johan sipped his tea and glanced at Nya. “Grand-mère is a bit of an anarchist.”
“Jah. We didn’t have referendums in my day. If you didn’t like a government, you toppled it. But kids these days, what can you expect?” She shook her head. “As long as they leave me and my schweinne in peace, I don’t care.”
“Are you saying you’ve toppled governments?” Nya asked.
“I said no such thing. I am but a humble farm girl.” Her eyes twinkled. “But I have to say, Jo-Jo, I was talking to Herr Wagner before you arrived, and he was impressed with you.”
“With me?” Johan looked at Nya and explained, “Herr Wagner is the neighbor who keeps Grand-mère updated on my exploits and how much he disapproves of them. My bad behavior is judged on the Wagner scale around here.”
“Well, he was all set to vote no in the referendum, but he said he appreciates a royal who wasn’t afraid to roll up his sleeves and get his fists bruised. He’s reconsidering now.”
“Really?” Johan ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not as if I’m even part of the monarchy. I’m just—”
Grand-mère waved her hand through the air over the cookies, as if waving away an annoying insect.
“Enough of this, Johan. When people think of Liechtienbourg they think of two people first—your mother and then you. Stop doing her memory a disservice by saying you are not a part of the family she created, and acting like you don’t carry on her legacy.” She shook her head. “Just like your father, you know that? Always acting like he was some outsider who didn’t fit in, when if he paid attention he would have seen—”
She slammed her mouth shut, shaking her head in annoyance as she rocked back and forth in her seat.
“Let me get a snowpack for your hand,” she said suddenly, which seemed to mean she wasn’t mad anymore but also regretted having shown emotion in front of guests and was searching for an excuse to leave.
“I’m fine, Grand-mère. Thank you.” He bit into one of the gingerbread cookies she’d baked. “Well, I’m not exactly proud of my outburst but I guess it hasn’t completely ruined everything.”
Grand-mère scowled at his knuckles as he reached for a slice of ham. “Why did you do it?”
“I thought Nya and Lukas were in danger,” he said.
“Nya and Lukas?” She looked at Nya and her features softened. “When is the wedding?”
“SHE SEEMED TO like me,” Nya said on the ride back. It was afternoon, but beginning to darken in this more wooded mountainous area.
“Better than your grandmother liked me,” he said, expecting Nya to smile. But she looked deep in thought, as she had been since they’d left.
“Our grandparents think we’re really engaged,” she said quietly. “I hate knowing how upset they’ll be if they find out
we lied.”
Johan had been thinking the same. He didn’t lie to people he cared about, but he’d let Grand-mère believe Nya was really his. It had felt too good, too real. He could have taken Nya anywhere, but he’d wanted his grandmother to meet her, had wanted Nya to see this one part of his life that had nothing to do with being a tabloid prince. He’d wanted them to get along, and they’d spent a lunch laughing and talking, not even needing Johan to keep the conversation going.
It had felt like . . . a happy ending. And it had been a lie.
“Then don’t let them find out,” he said. His voice was all prickly wit, no gentleness—he could feel her need for comfort, for something more, but there was no way for him to safely respond without revealing too much.
Because underneath their happy meeting with Grand-mère was the unpleasant fact that he couldn’t stop thinking of the heart-stopping fear that had lanced him when he saw Arschlocher looming over Nya. A million awful scenarios had flashed in his mind, each ending with loss.
Johan didn’t think his heart could take that loss. He knew it couldn’t. It was why he’d run from Nya from the start, and why he needed to run again.
“Okay,” she said.
He focused on the road in front of him, on the clutch and the stick, anything but the unignorable fact that he didn’t want to lose her, and yet he would.
“What will you do if the people vote you out?” she asked, somehow undeterred by his behavior.
“Well, I’ve had several offers to join those celebrity bachelor shows, and they pay well,” he said flippantly. This was the moment where she learned he wasn’t nice after all, despite her insistence. Where he picked up the kryptonite that was his affection for her and finally hurled it toward the sun. “It seems like a perfect match for my skill set.”
“Yes. Very popular, those shows.” This wasn’t her normal cheeriness. It was forced. “You would bring in many ratings. And you are quite good at pretending to care for people.”
“That I am.” Johan wished that the opposition leader he’d fought earlier had gotten a punch in because he deserved one.
They’d gone from laughing comfortably in his grandmother’s small dining room to this stifling tension in the car. This was why he didn’t do love. This was why he shouldn’t have followed her to that gazebo.
“I suppose I’ll find a teaching job somewhere,” she said. “Maybe in America, or one of those other countries where the educational system is being torn down.”
“Do you really want to teach?” he asked. “You won’t shock very many people with that.”
“Not as much as you want to be surrounded by women vying for your . . . eggplant emoji!” Nya turned so that she was facing out of the window, away from him. “What is your problem?”
Her anger was sudden and knocked his legs from under him like one of his grand-mère’s rampaging pigs.
“I’m an ass,” he said, then sighed. “I don’t know what I’ll do. My main priority is Lukas, and that’s hard for me to talk about right now so I just—”
“You just used me as a target for anger that has nothing to do with me. Don’t be mean to me because you are upset,” she said, her voice harsh. “It’s not fair to make other people pay for your emotions.”
Johan was glad that his driving skills were impeccable; otherwise he might have skidded off the road.
He prided himself on being honest with those he didn’t lie to, but he hadn’t been honest with himself either. He wasn’t being fair to Nya; he hadn’t tricked her into coming with him, but he’d certainly used their predicament to his advantage. He hadn’t forced her to like him, but every time he sensed his own affection growing too much he tried to push her away. He’d told her that they would be friends with each other. He wasn’t being a good friend, at the very least.
“I think you’d make a great teacher,” he said. “I also have lots of connections at nonprofits all over the world. Lots of them deal with education. I can ask around if you want.”
She didn’t respond and because he knew her, he knew why.
“I apologize. I promise never to take my anger or fear out on you again,” he said, then reconsidered. “I guess that’s extreme, since I’m human. I promise to try my hardest not to use the defense mechanisms I’ve usually relied on in relationships.”
“Defense mechanisms? So relationships are a battle?” She was mimicking his question from the first night in Liechtienbourg.
“The most dangerous battle,” he said, shifting gears as they approached a winding road. “Losing land or power or riches is nothing compared to some losses.”
Her hand came to rest on top of his on the gearshift. “You’re a lot more like your brother than I’d realized. Both of you can be real jerks when you’re scared.”
He smiled faintly. “You know, you might be on to something.”
“I told you. Official Johan Expert, at your service.”
They drove on in silence, and though tension still lingered in the car, mostly it was because they both seemed absorbed in their own thoughts. As the castle rose up in the distance, Johan wondered about the man who had approached Nya and Lukas. Why was Arschlocher even there? What had he wanted, if he wasn’t trying to hurt them, which would have been a terrible political move?
Now, with only the sound of the tires on the road, Johan again felt that nudge that something wasn’t quite right about this. He wondered if he would figure it out before everything fell apart.
Chapter 19
Nya knew what the envelope, delivered express Royal Thesolo Mail to her door in Liechtienbourg, would contain.
She was already irritable after a night spent tossing and turning alone in her bed, trying not to think about the lie she was living with Johan and his words in the car the previous day.
She should have ripped up the letter without reading and mailed back the pieces. Instead, she opened it, some part of her curious to see what new low her father had sunk to and another simply too silly to stop loving the man, no matter how much he’d hurt her.
My Dear Daughter,
I am still hurt beyond measure over the betrayal you have perpetrated. You know that when a child’s soul is in the clutches of evil, it disturbs the rest of those on the ancestral plain. If you do not care about hurting me, that is fine. But would you disturb the eternal rest of your own mother? Would you not grant her peace?
Your mother was a good traditional woman. She knew to listen to her husband, to put the wishes of her family first, and I do not understand how such an unfeeling, unnatural child could truly be hers. One who would do as she wishes with no care for her parents, living or dead. One who publicly debases herself with a man who would use her and discard her, while everyone laughs at her foolishness.
Come home, my daughter. Make things right. I would see you before I die, and I would know that you have stopped shaming your mother and me.
Nya stared at the letter. She calmly put it down and took a photo of it, then sent it to her group chat. She saw Ledi’s response, This motherfucker, before she ran to the bathroom. She wasn’t sick, though she thought she would be. Her skin felt clammy and she wanted to cry but sat on the floor fighting nausea instead. She was supposed to be getting ready for a solo excursion in Liechtienbourg, to an artisan’s village, but she considered canceling. It didn’t matter anyway—this was all just pretend, wasn’t it?
Unnatural child. Everyone laughs at her.
She didn’t know why she was so upset. She’d wanted a reaction from her father and she’d gotten one—the truth that she was a silly, useless girl who brought shame to her family.
She gripped her head in her hands and tried to remember that her father was a liar and he’d spent years passing his lies on to her. These weren’t her thoughts battering her so hard that she couldn’t get up. They were the hooks her father had embedded in her heart over the course of her life, waiting until he had opportunity to tug at them to reel her back in.
Her phone rang and she
jumped, certain it was her father, then remembered he was in prison and she had any numbers originating from that facility blocked.
When she reached the phone, she saw it was Naledi.
“Hey.”
She waited for Naledi to ask if she was okay, but she didn’t.
“Look, I think you know not to believe your father, but I did want to point something out because, to be blunt, he’s fucked with your head for your whole life and there are some things you might not be up to speed on.”
Nya took a deep breath and fought back tears—not at Naledi’s words, but at the fact that someone had finally said them out loud. Her father had fucked with her head her entire life. It was okay if she sometimes got reeled back in.
“Like what?” Nya asked, voice shaking.
“Like, this bullshit about your mom being some demure, respectable woman,” Ledi said, clearly incensed. “Look, do you know how our moms and Ramatla met?”
“No, actually,” Nya said, sitting on the edge of her bed. Outside the window, snow was starting to fall over the slanted roofs and spires of the old town. “I thought they met in school.”
“Yeah. They met in high school. Apparently your mom noticed Alehk being a jerk to my mom after school one day and threw an apricot at him.”
“What?” Nya sat down on the office chair.
“Yeah. Hit him right upside the head, and hard, because she was the captain of the cricket team.”
“She was?” Nya grabbed a pillow and held it to herself.
“Apparently, she told him he was a bully and basically to go kick rocks, and your dad fell in love,” Ledi said. “From what Ramatla told me, your mother was always outgoing and he’d been totally head over heels because of it.”
Ledi paused. “I’m not excusing him, but even the queen seemed to agree that her death changed him for the worse. So all of this ‘your mom was a meek and traditional woman and would be ashamed’ stuff is bullshit.”
“But . . . he always told me that she was good and respectful and listened when he spoke.” He’d always used her mother’s goodness to contrast whatever she’d done that he’d considered bad. “He told me all the time. All the time.”