by Holly Rayner
This is all I have now, I suppose. Pictures. Memories. Questions.
Wherever he and Maya went, I hope they’re okay. Their life here seemed pretty good. Kal overreacted, but I did play a part in his leaving, and that knowledge burns like a hot poker.
It’s hard to know what I should have done differently when it’s uncertain whether another course of action would have made a difference.
My eyes are sore and heavy, but it doesn’t seem like sleep will ever visit me again. Perhaps I should have left Ohio while I was ahead of myself.
Picking up my phone, I stare at Laura’s name. It’s late, but she’s a night owl, and she always says I can call her any time I need her.
Turns out, I need her badly right now.
She picks up on the third ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, is this… is this a good time?” I fold the arm not holding the phone across my chest and sink into the couch cushions. The night feels so big and scary and my body and desires so tiny and meaningless.
“Of course. Is everything okay?”
“It’s not an emergency or anything,” I hurry to say. “So if you—”
“Julia. I answered, didn’t I? It’s okay. Tell me what’s going on. Does this have to do with your neighbor?”
“Yeah.” My voice thickens. “It does. He’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
It hurts to take air into my lungs. “I went over there this evening, and Kal and Maya weren’t there. The side door was open, and some of their things were missing.”
“Wait. What was missing? Like, they’d been robbed? Oh my God.” Laura’s voice rises. “Julia, did you call the cops? Something might have happened to them.”
“No, nothing like that happened.”
“How are you sure? You said their things were gone.”
“Nothing valuable. Their family pictures and clothes were gone.”
“Their pictures?” she repeats in disbelief.
“Yeah.” My last bit of energy departs, and I fall against the cushions.
“Why would their pictures and clothes be gone and nothing else?” she asks slowly.
“They would be gone,” I say in a monotonous voice, “because Kal is really a missing Mediterranean prince in hiding, and I figured that truth out, and I guess now he feels like I’m going to tell the whole world about it or something, which I definitely won’t.” I cover my eyes with a hand. “Except for you. I’m telling you, because I know you won’t repeat this.”
“Is this a joke?”
“Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Oh… my… God. Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”
“I wasn’t trying to keep a secret from you,” I say. “I just… I didn’t know how much I should be talking about this, and…”
Words fail me. Everything fails me.
“I need to hear more,” Laura says.
“I know, and you will.”
A sudden light coming through the window makes me squint. Lightning?
The light floods my vision again. It’s headlights coming from a car turning into Shay’s driveway.
The phone falls to a cushion as I sit up straight. It’s past midnight. Who would be dropping by at this hour?
I know who I want it to be, but there’s no point in getting my hopes up.
“Julia?” Laura’s faraway voice asks. “Julia, are you there?”
The sound of a car door closing has me jumping to standing and fumbling for my phone.
“I gotta go,” I say. “Someone just pulled into the driveway.”
Laura gasps. “The missing prince?”
My heart double-flips. “Maybe.”
“Okay. Let me know what happens. Be careful.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know, just… be careful. You’ve been out of sorts lately. Understandably.”
“I know. Everything will be okay. Don’t worry about me.”
I’m hanging up and at the front door in no time at all, flicking on the porch light and stepping into the night to greet the dark figure headed my way.
It’s two people, for Kal carries a sleeping Maya, her head on his shoulder and her arms hanging limp.
He steps into the light. We look at each other. And look, and look, and look. The sky could be falling down right now, for all I know. All I see is the man in front of me.
Chapter 20
Julia
The air is heavy with emotions and the dampness of the rain. Everything I’ve wanted to say since I went to their house and found them gone rises to my tongue, but nothing comes out.
“Julia,” Kal says.
His voice turns me into melted butter.
“Come inside,” I answer, keeping my voice low so as not to wake Maya.
“Here,” I say, closing the door and gesturing down the hall. “There’s a guest room you can put her in.”
Using the kitchen light at the end of the hallway to lead the way, Kal puts Maya on the bed in the downstairs guest room and I draw a blanket over her. That done, we straighten up and stand around, just like we did on the porch.
Surely, this is a dream. Kal and Maya didn’t suddenly reappear in my life.
“You’re back,” I whisper.
His head hangs low.
“Come on,” I say. “Something to drink?”
There’s lemonade that I made a couple days ago out of the sheer need to keep my hands busy. Without waiting for a response from Kal, I head into the kitchen and pour us each a glass.
He joins me at the table and wraps his large palms around the glass.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
My jaw drops. “Oh.”
“That surprises you.”
“Kal…” My mouth’s too dry. Thank goodness for the lemonade, which I take a sip of. Trying again, I say, “When we last spoke, it seemed like you hated me.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Okay, but it seemed like it.”
His dark eyes turn sorrowful. “I was reactive, and I regret it immensely.”
“So reactive that you packed everything up and left in the middle of the night?”
The natural response would be for him to look away. That’s what he’s always done when conversations get intimate. Instead, he holds my gaze and blinks.
“Yes,” he says.
“You planned on leaving your entire life behind? Did you think I was going to expose you?”
My voice cracks at the end, and I have to look down. I’m dangerously close to crying. It’s not a state I want him to see me in.
His departure might have torn me apart, but I’m too proud to reveal such a truth that easily.
“I was afraid,” he says. “Please understand, Julia. No one knows who I am.”
I lift my eyes. Is he actually admitting to his past?
“Yes,” he says, as if reading my mind. “I am Nikos.”
“I know you are,” I whisper, part of me wanting to laugh at the absurdity of the matter.
“And I have known that you know. It is…” His shoulders tense. “Ridiculous, I know.”
“Where were you going, when you left?”
“I couldn’t tell you. I just knew that I wanted to be far away. Like I said, I was being reactive. Please know that this facade I have built in Sterling, it is for Maya’s sake.”
His eyes burn with intensity. “My greatest wish is for her to be happy and have a normal life. I left Kalista because that would not have been possible there. Nor would it have been possible if I lived openly as Prince Nikos in America or any other country.”
There’s so much more to this story, and I’m aching to hear the rest of it, but I keep quiet. It’s Kal’s tale, and he’ll reveal it to me as he feels ready to. Merely having him back is a blessing.
“I’m sorry I lied to you about my true identity,” he says. “It was not personal.”
“Oh, God, I know.” Without a thought, my arm is across the table. My hand settles on his.
> Kal turns his hand over, his fingers intertwined with mine. He’s smiling, but there’s something terribly sad about it.
“I’m sorry I read the letter,” I say. “That was my biggest mistake.”
“I cannot blame you for that. You were curious to know what was truly going on. I must say, it was a shock. No one has ever shown interest in getting to know me at such a deep level.”
“Perhaps because you keep them at arm’s length?” I suggest.
“I do,” he says without hesitation.
“And I understand it now, but it sounds incredibly lonely.”
“That,” he says, “is a facet of my life that I have not allowed myself to think much on. Life has been all about Maya. Since her mother…”
His throat rolls with a swallow, and his hold tightens on my hand.
My very soul bunches up tight. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up straight.
“Can I get you anything?” I ask. A break from this conversation might be just what’s needed.
“We could go sit outside,” I say. “Under the awning.”
“No.” He clears his throat. “I am fine. I only wish to come absolutely clean to you, to share my story in its entirety.”
My pulse thunders in my ears. “There’s nothing I want more,” I say.
“In Kalista,” he begins, “I was the country’s culture minister.”
I nod. “Yeah. I read that online.”
His brows rise in interest. “Along with what else?”
“Other than the facts about your family, everything else seemed to be rumors. Ones about why you disappeared all of a sudden. The internet makes it sound like you vanished from the face of the earth.”
“It was my intention to make it seem like I did.”
“Why?”
“Because of my father. He is a man with very high expectations. As I did not fulfill all of these expectations, he constantly hounded me to be something different than what I was. That was not the environment I wished to raise Maya in.”
“Understandably.”
“Yes.” His tongue darts out to wet his lips. “I wish to make this brief and not waste your time.”
“Kal.” I level my gaze with his. “I’m on a break from life, remember? The only thing I have right now is time. Trust me, there’s nothing I would rather do than hear your story.”
He brightens some. “It pleases me to hear that.”
“Tell me everything you want and more. Start at the beginning, if you want. Please. Like, tell me about your earliest memory.”
He chuckles. “I do not need to go that far back, but since you mentioned it, my earliest memory is of my mother. Of being in the palace gardens with her.”
“The ones in your painting.”
“Yes. Exactly.”
My throat burns.
“She died when I was very young.”
There’s no stopping the tears that run down my face.
“It was a long time ago,” he says.
I blink against the onslaught of emotion, but of course it does no good. There’s too much to cry over. Kal’s return. The loss of his mother. The loss of my mother.
“I don’t know which is worse,” I whisper.
Kal wipes away my tears. There’s no need to complete the thought. He knows what I’m saying. Is it more terrible to lose your mother when you are young and left with few memories of her, or when you are older and left with so many memories that the idea of living with that person seems unbearable?
“What happened next?” I ask, sniffling.
He shrugs. “I had a decent childhood, I suppose. Certainly, it was not normal by any regard.”
“I imagine not.”
“I went to a private school a few miles from the palace, always accompanied by bodyguards. After school, there were lessons. So many lessons. Etiquette. Language. Riding.”
“I think I did comment that you’re a man of many skills,” I say with a slight smile.
“And it is no accident.”
“What about friends?”
“I had those. Friends from school. Unfortunately, as I grew older, I came to realize that many of my schoolmates were interested in my company only because of my title. Relationships that once felt close began to crack. As a young adult, I took solace in traveling. Abroad, I could adopt new personalities. I could become anyone I wished to be. All it required was growing a beard and being somewhat evasive about my past.”
“So taking on a false identity was nothing new when you came to Ohio.”
He winces like I’ve said something painful. “When I was younger and taking breaks from my life in Kalista, I did not think of it as taking on false identities. It’s merely that I was careful about how much I revealed to others.”
“Was this when you were Kalista’s culture minister?”
“No. When I took on that position, things changed.”
“But why?” I ask. “That’s gotta be a high profile position, right? And if you add being a prince to it…”
“Because my life as a prince had begun to lack meaning. Interspersed with my travels, I performed charity work, but it was still not enough. I had been painting since I was a young child, and though I continued to do that, I longed for more. I desired to use my creative side to better the world somehow. As luck had it, around the time this longing awoke in me, Kalista’s culture minister announced he was retiring.”
“And you returned home to take on the job,” I say. There’s a strong sense this story is building, that each part Kal’s revealing is crucial to whatever is coming next.
“I did,” he nods, “and that is where I met Melissa.”
He blinks and looks down when he says the name.
Silence reigns in the kitchen. Kal’s collecting himself. I hold my breath, waiting. The mention of Melissa has changed everything. There’s a possibility he won’t continue with this story, that he’ll shut down and be done talking for the night.
“She was Maya’s mother,” he whispers.
A chill goes through me. Questions build on my tongue, but I stay quiet. Everything in good time.
Kal lifts his face. His dark eyes are pointed in my direction, but they’re lost to a memory, seeing something that only he’s privy to.
“She was American,” he says. “An artist, in Kalista exhibiting her work. I fell in love with her paintings before I met and fell in love with her.”
My insides writhe. This story is about to take a terrible turn.
“We began a love affair,” Kal says. “In secret. It was not as I wished for it to be, but we were in the public eye, and I told myself that should we become serious, I would reveal the nature of our relationship to the whole world. And then, right when we realized our love was a meaningful one, Melissa became pregnant.”
Kal clears his throat… clears it again. “My father was furious. He always wanted me to marry someone from Kalista. Keeping the royal bloodline within our own country was one of the most important things to him, if not the most important above all else.”
“What did he do?”
“Yelled. Threw a tantrum.” Kal’s face turns red, his jaw flexes. “He demanded that I sever all ties with Melissa and the child she carried.”
My jaw drops. “You’re kidding me. How could he expect that of you?”
Kal lifts a shoulder. “In his mind, it was simple. Country and bloodline first. He put his own desires aside, he argued, and married a woman from Kalista. Why was it hard for me to do the same?
“Of course, that was a terrible argument. My mother was an amazing woman, as kind as she was beautiful. Many stories of her life include hordes of men tripping over themselves to impress her. It is not as if my father went through a great sacrifice in taking her as his wife.”
“And what did you do?” The edge of the table presses into my stomach. It’s hard to say how long I’ve been leaning forward in anticipation.
“At first, I got angry. Yelled back. Which did no good, as I should have
predicted. My father never did respond well to anyone challenging his authority. When he threatened to have Melissa deported, I did the only thing that I could in order to protect my new family. Melissa and I left Kalista. She grew up in South Carolina, and had no living family left. We felt it would be best to go to the most random place we could think of.”
“Sterling, Ohio,” I breathe.
Kal nods. “It seemed a good place to disappear in.”
“And Melissa?”
“She died giving birth to Maya.”
The room around us cracks and shatters into a million pieces. Kal’s statement about Melissa’s death is said so coolly that I know his feelings on it are anything but relaxed. He is a man who has been ripped apart and only poorly stitched back together, and I feel the aftermath of that in my soul.
At some point, we all lose our mothers, assuming life takes its natural progression of the old dying before the young. But to lose your partner in your twenties, during a time in which you are looking forward to spending the rest of your lives together…
I can’t think of anything worse.
To top it off, Kal was alone in a strange land. Did he even have any friends in Sterling at that point?
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Kal nods. “Thank you.”
“Does Maya know?”
He flinches. “No. She knows her mother passed when she was a baby, and she has a locket with Melissa’s photo in it, but that is all. I have supplied no details.”
“Do you plan on doing that? What are you going to say when Maya gets older and demands to know exactly where you’re from and how you met her mother?”
His shoulders sag. “I never thought that far ahead. All I have known these last seven years is the need to keep Maya safe.”
“You mean hidden.”
“Considering our circumstances, that is one and the same. I did what I had to, you see. Maya was unwanted in Kalista. If we had stayed, my father would have resented her for merely existing.”
“Yeah.” I squeeze his hand. “I understand that.”
“I needed to get us both out from under my father’s thumb, and I have never once regretted that decision.”
“You shouldn’t.”
His inhale is sharp. “I know, and yet thinking about it brings me pain I cannot describe.”