Cut scene to Tessa giving a speech. “Animals are universal therapy. They build bridges. No matter who you are, what you believe and where you are in life, a soft dog or cuddly kitten can help make things better.”

  Oh, Tessa really was pretty with her navy blue suit, serious face and deep eyes, and Margaret thought about her own body. She had a good body, but it wasn’t like her sisters’. Katharine swam, Emma ran and they did other exercises. They strength trained. Margaret couldn’t do much, and the pills sometimes made her bloat and gain weight. So she had a few more pounds than her sisters carried and a noticeably less toned body. Tessa, she was like Katharine and Emma. Tessa had true biceps and triceps.

  A rap on the door. Margaret collected a breath and answered.

  “Hello,” Tessa said. She wore some kind of shimmery silvery dress thing that showed generous amounts of cleavage. “Madam sent me up.” She carried a briefcase and looked Margaret over. The desire in her eyes turned Margaret on. Was a serious conversation about murder necessary tonight? No, maybe not. “You look dashing,” Tessa enthused. “What a nice suit.”

  “Come inside.” Margaret ushered Tessa in and wanted to congratulate her on the award win. That would have to wait. They were in character.

  “So!” Tessa said, setting the briefcase down. She waggled her butt. “I aim to please.”

  “Good.” Margaret tried to make her reply gruff, but the situation felt surreal. She was incredibly turned on. She tingled like crazy between her legs, but she needed to clear the air between herself and Tessa. She needed to nail down the details of what they’d done before they could have sex.

  A flash of Tessa giving Henry a bath entered her brain. Margaret substituted the baby with herself, and the scene became decidedly more erotic.

  “I want,” Margaret said.

  “Yes?”

  She momentarily forgot the word for bath. A long white rectangular thing…

  “Tub!” she said, remembering. “Bath. Bubbles.”

  “Oh,” Tessa said. “Yes, yes, well, unfortunately, your wish slipped Madam’s mind, and I’m afraid she booked a flat that just has a shower. Tsk.” She tugged at Margaret’s tie. “Did I introduce myself?”

  “No.”

  “How rude. My name is Caramel. I’m sticky.” Tessa giggled and flicked her hair back.

  Margaret hated caramel. It messed with her mouth, was chewy and made her gums hurt. Stop. This is a game. Play along.

  “I’m, ah…my name is…Anthony Jakes.” The only name that came to her mind. That ratlike guy in the picture from years and years ago. No, she didn’t want to be Anthony Jakes. “Wait,” she told Tessa. “I’m a woman. My name is, ah, Porter. Lucinda Porter. People call me Porter.”

  “Delighted to meet you, Porter. Now, about the bath issue. I’m sure Madam would be terribly sorry to learn that she neglected to pass your wishes on. Let me give her a call, and see if she can upgrade us. Hmm?”

  “Yes.”

  Tessa retrieved a cellphone from her briefcase. “Madam, how naughty of you.” She batted her eyelashes. “You booked a flat that just has a shower, and Porter here wanted a bath.” She paused. “Oh, good. Excellent.” Tessa replaced the phone and said triumphantly, “We’ve been given the suite across the hall. It has a nice large tub.”

  Margaret followed her wife across the hall. Her wife! This mystifying, incredible, playful woman who kept surprising her.

  Tessa took Margaret’s hand and led her to the bathroom where a generous round tub with jets awaited.

  “Ready?” Tessa asked.

  No. She wasn’t. She couldn’t even play along well. Her imagination was shit. Anthony Jakes! Come on. Tessa, she was great with all that Madam stuff and switching rooms. How did Margaret expect to be able to please Tessa in bed? In bath?

  They needed to have the conversation.

  “Get on the bed,” Margaret ordered. “Oh, undress first.”

  Tessa obliged, slipping out of her dress. No bra. No underwear. The hair between her legs was nearly as red as the hair on her head. No sign yet of it going white. Tessa crawled onto the bed and lay on her back. Margaret sat next to her and reached her fingers out for a nipple. She replayed the marks on her breasts two weeks ago and how painfully sore her nipples had been for a few days.

  Margaret took hold of the nipple and twisted it lightly between her thumb and pointer finger.

  “Oh,” Tessa cried. Slight bucking of her hips. Fluttering eyelashes.

  Margaret wet her fingers and resumed gently twisting the nipple.

  “Tessa,” she said, continuing her ministrations. “Why does the three-ring binder say we met at Katharine’s wedding reception?”

  Tessa writhed, and Margaret withdrew her touch. She repeated the question.

  “Because we did,” Tessa said.

  “We met before that.”

  Tessa bit her lip, giving the matter careful thought. Or pretending to. “Emma and I met on video chat when I was at Purcell,” she said. “But you and I never did.”

  “You flew over with Katharine a few times. The first time she came to see me after I recovered and again for Thanksgiving. These two times for sure. There must have been other times.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “I doubt Katharine ever brought anyone from Purcell over, not even Treadie. Your mother would never have let me accompany her, anyway. She hated me. She forced me to quit.”

  Margaret searched for a memory that would put the lie to Tessa’s words. She replayed her sister Katharine drawing back, taking in every detail of Margaret’s face, and Margaret took in Katharine’s dimples and earrings and…who was that behind Katharine, to her left?

  Could it have been Tessa? Had to have been.

  “I remember,” Margaret said quietly. “So stop with the pretending.”

  Tessa swallowed. “If we met, I’ve truly forgotten. I’m sorry.”

  “How did we get onto the topic?” Margaret asked.

  “What topic?”

  “I’d rather not spell it out.”

  “You might have to, Margaret.”

  The words waiting for release in the back of her throat had horrible scratchy claws. She wanted them out but knew they could do more damage outside of her mouth than safely tucked away in her throat.

  Margaret lay down and rested her head on Tessa’s chest. She didn’t know if they were okay or if they could become okay again. The days that came would determine that. Margaret might never remember much of their history, but they were married, and they had plenty of time to create a new history for Margaret to remember.

  Did they really have to discuss this one thing?

  Yes, they did, else it would haunt Margaret until her last days. Besides, it wasn’t fair for Tessa to withhold information, to lie to Margaret about the first time they met.

  “My father’s death,” Margaret whispered. “His killing.”

  Under her, Tessa tensed. She’d begun to stroke Margaret’s hair and she stopped.

  “How did we get on the topic?” Margaret repeated.

  “Well,” Tessa said. “You called me. I didn’t want to get involved, and I hung up. A few months later, you came to see me in New York. You demanded that I go to your hotel room, else you’d show up at my work.”

  “Why you?” Margaret whispered. “Did we know each other well?”

  “We barely knew each other. Margaret, babe, can you tell me what all you remember?”

  “Your perfume. You were crying. You stood close to me and breathed on my neck.”

  “Why was I crying?”

  “You didn’t want to do it, but I yelled at you.”

  “What didn’t I want to do?”

  “Kill him.”

  Tessa drew in a quick breath. “Oh, God.” She rose from the bed and went to a dresser drawer. She threw on underwear and a tracksuit. A series of gulps. “Margaret,” she said. “I did not kill your father. What are you remembering? Let’s break it down. Let me show you why it couldn’t have been me.”

  “I said it was your fecking job to know shady characters, and of course you would be able to find the necessary people to carry out the deed. Are you going to tell me that a police officer wouldn’t know shady people?”

  “On that count, no, I can’t.” A faint thread of hysteria in Tessa’s voice. “But there’s more. So let’s break down the rest.”

  “I’m supposed to take your word for it? It’s a coincidence that you were guarding Katharine months before my father died? That you had every opportunity to be in communication with me?”

  Tessa swallowed.

  “And your face was there. Your face with a halo around it. Your face and your mouth saying these things and that you would do it.”

  “What did my hair look like?”

  “What?”

  “I had short hair back then.”

  The halo crowded out Tessa’s hair. Margaret could only see her face, and she explained that to Tessa.

  “It wasn’t me,” Tessa protested. “I swear. It was another woman.”

  “Why should I believe that?”

  Tessa made a fist with her hand to show Margaret her ring. “This, all right? You wouldn’t have asked me to marry you if I’d done what you claim.”

  “Because I didn’t know! I didn’t remember. Besides, we were in it together.”

  “I didn’t do it! We didn’t do it. Can I show you a picture?”

  “Why?”

  Tessa grabbed the phone from her briefcase. “Tell me if you recognize her.” Tessa started to jab at the phone, and Margaret yelled for her to put it down.

  “You’re contacting someone,” she accused.

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Give me the phone.”

  Tessa did, and Margaret saw it was open to Safari, with “Alic—” typed in.

  “Look up Alicia Hastings,” Tessa said. “She is a therapist in London, so include these search phrases. She had sex with your sister when Katharine was fourteen. Alicia was her therapist.”

  “No! Dr. Astley was her therapist. Don’t try to distract me. I need to think.” Margaret’s head hurt. She felt mice coming. Their feet were like the roar of a river over rocks, and Margaret didn’t trust that she had time to find pen and paper or to open Tessa’s phone and type a note (YOU AND TESSA KILLED YOUR FATHER).

  Maybe if Margaret kept saying it aloud, she would remember. “You killed my father. You killed my father.”

  Tessa shook her head no, no, no, and it triggered another memory, actually from the NYC flat.

  In the memory, Margaret looked at her, this woman who would be her wife, and said, “It won’t be easy all the time. Maybe it won’t be easy most of the time, but we can do great things together. We will change the world. I want this to work for you too. I want to make you happy, and I think I can. You had fun tonight. You miss being with a woman. You miss kissing and sex.”

  Margaret had been happy when she said these words. Ecstatic. She’d seen a future with Tessa. She’d known Tessa was the one, and these feelings didn’t go away because of the other information Margaret remembered.

  “You killed my father,” Margaret said. “You and me. We. Us. The both of us killed my father.” She said it neutrally, calmly, but the turmoil in her heart belied her emotional state.

  “Margaret,” Tessa said pitifully. “No, we didn’t. It was your mother and Alicia Hastings.”

  **

  This was what Tessa got for befriending Amalia, for letting her feelings for Amalia cloud her judgment. She’d been accused of murder! Margaret could get on the phone at any moment now and call the commissioner of police or the head of the Royal Protection Command or whoever, and say that her wife, Princess Tessa, conspired with her in the killing of the king.

  Amalia wouldn’t let her take the fall for it, and Tessa had Alicia’s name to turn in if necessary.

  But to be accused of murder! On the one hand, Tessa knew the accusation was not personal. Margaret herself had thought for years that she killed her father, and she did again, apparently.

  Plus, Amalia had warned Tessa about the potential of false accusations at the meeting Katharine required before she would announce their engagement. Amalia explained that people with memory issues and dementia got paranoid. Something wasn’t where they left it, so ergo, it must have been stolen.

  Margaret was a sweet woman, Amalia emphasized, but her daughter had accused her and many caregivers over the years of stealing jewelry, pens, pencils, Lego blocks and assorted items.

  Bit of a step from Lego blocks to murder, but Tessa couldn’t say that Katharine or Amalia failed to warn her what Margaret could be like during a bad period.

  Tessa had been in love. She saw Margaret as a normally functioning adult who moved somewhat slowly physically and who sometimes said quirky things.

  So Tessa married Margaret.

  Tessa took in her wife’s desperate face, the lines of despair, the trembling chin. This woman was the other mother of Tessa’s child. This woman was her wife.

  Tessa sat on the bed. She took both of Margaret’s hands in hers. Tessa looked into her eyes and said, “Your mother worked with a woman called Alicia Hastings to kill your father. I had suspicions that your mother was involved in his death, but that’s all they were. Then you came to New York and sought me out because you could tell I knew something. Plus, your mother had…” Tessa took a deep breath. “She got in bed with you one night when you were twenty-eight. She needed to unburden herself. She told you everything, and your brain went in denial that your mother had done such a thing or your brain translated it to your memory slightly wrong. You thought you did it—that you ordered Alicia to kill your father. You and I, we put our heads together and figured out the truth.”

  “You knew this whole time and didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m not sure how to tell you such a thing,” Tessa admitted. “How could…and you love your mother. We weren’t sure what to do.”

  “For the past two weeks, I’ve thought you and I killed him! I’ve hated you for it. I’ve hated us.”

  Tessa felt her breaths turn ragged.

  “If what you say is true, why do you cover for Mum?” Margaret asked.

  “She helps with you. She’s a complicated person, and in many ways, I like her. She’s your mother, and you love her.”

  Hurt in Margaret’s eyes. “I’m your wife.”

  “I won’t make the same mistake again. I’m sorry.”

  “Or it’s not true. There’s a lot about it I don’t remember, but I see your face clearly, Tessa, and I hear my words clearly. You’re going to suggest we go to Mum now, but she knows already, doesn’t she? You two are thick as thieves. You’re together all the time! She’s prepared to lie because she thinks it’ll save me mental anguish or whatever. What she doesn’t realize is that—” Margaret jabbed her finger to her temple. “I remember. I remember the smells, the play of the light. There’s nothing she can do or say to make me believe it wasn’t you and me in that room.”

  **

  Tessa got in bed with Margaret in the faux NYC flat. She saw no other choice. If she left Margaret alone even for a minute, Margaret might freak and attempt to turn them in for something they didn’t do.

  They lay in the dark with their eyes open, their bodies stiff like mannequins and not touching.

  “We got in a cab one night,” Margaret murmured. “We went to Newark, and you forgot your wallet.”

  “You remember that?”

  “In flickers.”

  “And my face? Is it my face you still see in that other memory?”

  “Yes.”

  Funny how the brain worked. Margaret had not been present for the conversation between Amalia and Alicia. She knew only what Amalia told her, but apparently, it was enough to paint vivid, sparkling and entirely wrong pictures in her scarred, wounded brain.

  “Please believe me,” Tessa whispered. “I am your wife, and I really need you to believe me. I would be honest if we had done it. I’d tell you, ‘Yes, it’s true.’ But it is not.”

  **

  Margaret’s brain resisted sleep. It’d gone on a shopping spree in a pet store and scooped up hundreds of hamsters. They ran squeakily on their wheels, each flashing out a different memory. Some undoubtedly had to be false. For example, Margaret remembered Aunt Josephine at her wedding. She looked so pretty in her light-blue dress, but Josephine had been dead for years, killed at the same time Margaret’s brain ceased to exist in any healthy way.

  Margaret wiped a tear away. She and Tessa had lain awake for hours being paralyzed, being scared of each other.

  “I remember Aunt Josephine at our wedding,” Margaret said. “Her dress and her white shoes and hat that looked like a bird’s nest. But it couldn’t have been her.”

  “No,” Tessa agreed. “It couldn’t have been.”

  Other memories Margaret knew to be true, or she hoped they were. Her playing with all three boys, Alexander, Augustus and Henry, in Alexander’s playroom, the four of them laughing and looking for green blocks.

  Margaret’s first time meeting Cheryl. Emma brought her to Buckingham, and Amalia, Margaret and Katharine lined up, a formidable threesome. Emma came in holding Cheryl’s hand, and Margaret’s first thought was that her sister looked happy, truly happy. “Your Majesty,” Cheryl said timidly, curtsying to Katharine. Then to Amalia, “Your Majesty.” For Margaret, a “Your Royal Highness.”

  Margaret said, “Never…mind that,” and she held her hand out. She hugged Cheryl, and Emma gave her a grateful hug afterward.

  Margaret’s speech. Oh, how glad she was to no longer speak haltingly. She thought back to the scene between her and Tessa many years ago as they talked about killing her father. Margaret had been in a rage, yelling and hurling accusations. She must’ve been eighteen or nineteen then, depending on when exactly it happened, and it was rare back then for her to glue together more than a few words without having to pause. Rare—but possible. For example, she’d done a nice, smooth paragraph at her father’s funeral.