Yes, ma’am. We’re investigating. We’re confident that we will find her soon.

  You better!

  That had been five hours ago, and Margaret remained missing. I stayed out of the search process, knowing if I demanded answers and accountability right then, it would slow things down. Time was of the essence. Margaret had to be found as soon as possible. So, yes, I stayed out of it, but I neared the end of my rope. If only I had someone to talk with, someone who would hug me and reassure me. Katharine was six months pregnant and still had little to do with me. As for my youngest daughter, Emma was in Chicago paying a quick visit to Cheryl. I’d let them be.

  “We’ve got her!” came a jubilant cry at last. “Found her near the gates with a former staffer. Says she was trying to return Margaret home.”

  “Who?”

  “She used to be a cleaner. Adriena Agata.”

  **

  I threw my arms around my daughter, who pushed me away and chided me for daring to express concern at her being gone.

  “I’m a grown woman, Mother,” she huffed. “If I want to dash out to see an old friend, I will.”

  “An old friend? Who?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Adriena, the woman I was walking with.”

  Something queasy jabbed the back of my throat. “Oh.”

  Margaret yawned. “I’m tired.” She went off to bed.

  The next afternoon, I went to see Adriena. She lived in a charming tiny flat a few blocks from Buckingham and apparently had turned the cheque I gave her into a lucrative business. Good for her. I knew she could do it—her eyes showed keen intelligence. That intelligence was on display again as she discussed my daughter thinking she was the one to give Adriena the cheque.

  “Has she got one of them personality things?” Adriena concluded, slurping from her tea. Crumbs from the biscuit she’d eaten speckled her lips. “Multiple personality thingamajig?”

  No. Worse.

  I travelled through time to a rainy and stormy night seven years ago. Margaret’s life after the shootings had been one rough patch after another except for these precious few months when she was eighteen and nineteen. Now, at age twenty-eight, she seemed to have hit new lows. The crown princess even started sucking her thumb again. Her short-term memory was shredded, absolutely shredded. I would tell my daughter what we were having for dinner or who was visiting, and Margaret wouldn’t remember five seconds later. It had always somewhat been that way after the shootings, but now Margaret lost awareness and willpower. Most days, on some level, she had remained cognisant that something was wrong with her.

  Now she didn’t know. She’d forgotten. She quit trying. She accepted her lot in life.

  I almost gave up trying too. It was utterly exhausting trying to restore my daughter to health. What kept me plugging on was the knowledge that I’d done this to Margaret. If not for Henry’s passing, Margaret would have continued her upward climb to ruddy good health. The death of her beloved father broke her again.

  Again, me and my selfish ways. Me and my secret. Carrying it became heavier every day. I needed to talk, and one evening, I told Margaret’s nurse to take the night off. I got in bed with my daughter, stroked her fine hair that smelled of peaches and creme, and told her what I’d done to her father. As part of the entire story, I told her about Adriena, the woman I passed over in favour of Alicia Hastings because her simple-mindedness could be a huge liability.

  Part of me hoped that the horrible truth would jerk Margaret out of her rut. I fully welcomed the prospect of Margaret leaping from the bed and screaming, “Murderer!” if it meant she was recovered.

  Margaret kept sleeping, and I felt the same dark heaviness after unburdening herself.

  Now I looked at Adriena and wondered what else my daughter remembered. Suppose she knew I killed Henry or believed that she herself did, like she believed she gave Adriena the cheque. In either scenario, if Margaret told just one person the truth about her father’s death as she recalled it, I may have sentenced my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren to a future in exile, a future where people whispered about the family that once used to rule Britain but then their mother killed their father and tattled about it to her dimwit daughter, which may have been fine in the 1500s but wasn’t in modern times, oh no.

  If I hadn’t been crying before, I was now. I’d hated myself from that first moment I let Henry show me his penis and conquer me.

  Since then, I’d been unhappy. I blundered through life cold and calculating because I was dead inside, and…and nothing. Excuses. I let myself get the way I was.

  I wiped tears and snot and gunk off my face with my bare hands. I forced a deep breath and then another. I used to be queen of England. People still called me, “Your Majesty.” They would until I died. I was one of the most powerful women in the world. I’d killed my husband. I would triumph again. The monarchy would triumph too and reign a long, long time.

  And if it collapsed due to an errant word from Margaret? Fine, then. Bloody fine. It was because of that damn monarchy that Katharine and Emma couldn’t be themselves for an extensive time. It was because of that bloody monarchy that I had to give up my firstborn, else the king have an illegitimate child. It was because of that bloody monarchy that I’d had to kill my husband because the king and the queen could not divorce, and Henry refused a separation.

  So, if it fell? Fine with me. Emma and Katharine wouldn’t want to admit it, but it was fine with them too.

  “To double check,” I told Adriena. “You played along?”

  She nodded. “Best way to go about it, but after I see she no have security, I tell her I walk her back to palace. I say I need fresh air.”

  “Good,” I said. “If she comes back, play along again, I suppose. And call me. I don’t have a personal phone yet. I’ll get one. What’s your number?”

  She gave me her number, and then it was time to say goodbye. She and Margaret had hugged multiple times, and I could tell that Adriena wanted the real thing with me.

  Least I could do for her. At the door, I held my arms open, and she stepped into the embrace. We stayed like that for minutes. In fact, she was a wonderful hugger, soft and smelling of chocolate and sweetness and kindness. I recalled that the day before, I’d wished for a friend, someone to talk with me and reassure me.

  “We’re friends, Adriena,” I whispered into her ear. “I want you to know that. After I get a phone and give you my number, you call me. Anytime for any reason.”

  She smiled, and I swore tears glimmered in her eyes. “You call me too. Any reason.”

  **

  Foolish me. On the one hand, I knew that Margaret’s trip to New York could result in bad outcomes—drain her of mental and physical resources, for example, but at the same time, I was glad for her to go. It wasn’t that I cared for Adam. I practised politeness towards him for politeness’ sake, but I saw no future between that twenty-two-year-old boy and my daughter. Still, he was satisfactory rehearsal for the real thing, a future with a prince her equal.

  The trip to New York seemed another step in the right direction toward a full recovery. Margaret had made her first official appearance and starred in Emma’s wedding. True, both events drained her tremendously, and I hoped that doing a mere a handful of things in New York over the course of that week would keep her in balance.

  I let her go and even restrained myself from giving her a talk about taking care of herself. That, I reserved for Adam.

  I called her bodyguard John for updates twice that first day. The second day, I waited until evening to call, and John told me Margaret was with Tessa Donovan, her friend.

  Friend? They barely knew each other.

  John added that my daughter was in Tessa’s flat at the moment and was spending the night there. “Don’t worry, ma’am,” he said. “As you may recall, Detective Donovan served as a bodyguard for Katharine at Purcell.”

  Ha! He thought I worried about Tessa being the only person around to physically protect my precious child.

  No. That fact paled in comparison to the stark reality staring me in the face.

  “Whose idea was it to meet? Margaret’s or Tessa’s?” I barked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  I remembered Adam and asked about him.

  “Oh yeah,” John said. “Margaret sent him packing. Another breakup. I get the feeling this one’s gonna stick. She’s done. He’s done.”

  I called Adam and left a voice mail for him to return the call ASAP. My hands shook, but as long as I continued to take action, fear couldn’t swallow me.

  I went into Margaret’s suite and gazed over the endearing assortment of reminders she’d posted.

  New York today! She’d plastered magazine cutouts of the city all over one section of wall. The Mark hotel, the Empire State building, Central Park, several of the bridges.

  I’d begun to go through her drawers and other things after the Adriena incident. It didn’t make me proud, but needs must. Once a week or so while she attended therapy or some appointment or the other, I dug and dug. Never found anything. Maybe I didn’t look thoroughly enough. Maybe she hid the evidence well enough. Either way, this new search yielded a swift result in Margaret’s top dresser drawer. Six letters.

  Mum, she wrote in that stern block handwriting. I’m not coming home for a while. I need to atone for some things. Please don’t ask what things. They’re things you, Emma and Katharine have no need to know about. Of course, Christmas is coming soon, so maybe for Christmas I will come back briefly…I just don’t know yet. I will probably stay in the U.S. because if I come back, I might not get to leave again. I hope I fall in love with New York because I plan to stay.

  She wrote similar letters to Emma and Katharine. The letters she penned to Veronica and Cheryl went along these lines: Take care of my sister.

  To Katharine and Veronica’s three children, she wrote:

  Lucas, Jo and Alexander,

  I wanted to write in case I don’t see you again. Life can be odd. It can be joyful but deadly also. A horse ride can turn tragic in an instant. So can a plane ride. You never know, and I want you, my dear nephews and niece, to go out there and live life and climb mountains and help other people climb mountains. Be good people. I hope that one day, I can be a good person too.

  The final letter, to Peg and Sally, started much the same as the letters to me, Veronica and Emma but had extra paragraphs because of this:

  Please look in after Mum. She’s going to miss me, and she’s lonely. Desperately lonely. She pretends she’s not, and she can get away with it sometimes by throwing herself into me. Calling all my doctors and doing that research into the brain takes hours.

  Spend more time with her if you can. Invite her places. Take her mind off the fact that I’ve gone. If you meet any good men, feel free to set her up on a date! One of my wishes is for her to find love and happiness. :)

  Lovingly,

  Margaret

  I sat in a crumpled heap on the floor sobbing and my heart breaking for my poor lost child. At one point, a cleaner must’ve stuck her head in and alerted someone, for Emma came in momentarily. She read the letters, and she started crying too. She put her arms around me and said, “Shush, shush, don’t worry, Mum, she’s going to come home, of course she is.”

  Chapter Seven

  Margaret had a wife and a child. She stared at Tessa, who cradled little Henry in her arms.

  A memory: The first time Tessa went down on her. Margaret melted into the bed as Tessa’s tongue ravished her, as Tessa’s fingers explored her insides, and Margaret’s body had no idea what to do with the exquisite sensations. They overwhelmed her, caused her brain to misfire, caused her to feel nearly as scared as she had the first time she imagined her father’s body, his broken neck.

  “Stop,” she whispered, but of course Tessa couldn’t hear, not even a superhero with the best hearing on the planet would’ve been able to detect her whisper, and Margaret said, “Stop!” again, but then it was too late, the area between her legs had become its own warm pulsing country, a country of hellfire and lakes and fireworks, a country filled with sorrow and incredible joy, and a pure, explosive wave of heat erupted through Margaret.

  Aftershocks followed it, eliciting more tormented wails from the little country between Margaret’s legs where the citizens spoke British English, and her body truly didn’t know what to do, it kept tripping over itself, her heart twisted upside down and her brain, her brain…

  In the memory, Margaret became vaguely aware of Tessa at her side, Tessa sitting with her and her own cheeks wet. Oh hell, Margaret hadn’t been crying, had she?

  “Did I hurt you?” Tessa said. She looked concerned and sweet…also scared to be faced with this caricature of a crying woman.

  Margaret couldn’t begin to understand her reaction. It’d never been like this with Alec. Tessa, who must have left for a second, suddenly had a box of tissues and handed Margaret one.

  This outpouring of emotion, it somewhat resembled how Margaret imagined she’d feel the first moment she met her husband. This. This!

  Now with her wife and baby, Margaret felt much the same, only with more confusion and no sexual, post-orgasm aspect.

  Margaret looked into Tessa’s face, into the face of…the person she had married. Again, Tessa brought her tissues and water.

  Margaret blew her nose. “Can I have a few minutes?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Tessa said. “One second.” She did some fiddly things with the TV and DVD player, turning them on and causing a blue screen to appear. “Press ‘play’ if you want,” Tessa said, then she and Henry were gone.

  Margaret stared at the blue TV screen with unseeing eyes and a confused mind. Marry a woman? To become the third sister to…and how could she have explained her and Tessa to her mother, Katharine and Emma?

  Margaret pressed ‘play.’ Her sister the queen appeared on the screen, sitting on the same couch Margaret currently presided over.

  TV Katharine smiled at Person Margaret. “Here’s the thing,” Katharine said. “You’re on a new medication.” She held up a bottle, and the camera zoomed in on the label. The name was so extensive, Katharine had to rotate the bottle. “So, you’re on a new medication, and it is supposed to help a lot. It’s necessary because, let’s face it, you’ve been getting worse. It started about a year ago. I know you don’t like when we try to soften things around you, so I’ll tell it like it is. You started waking up about a year ago and saying things like, ‘Where am I? I’m supposed to be in New York.’ You would get in tremendous distress for fifteen minutes, sometimes thirty minutes, crying, yelling, screaming, throwing things, saying why why why weren’t you in New York, why weren’t you in Tessa’s flat. In the end, it was a no-brainer for us to cobble the replica flat together. Waking up there soothed you. Your memory slipped away even more. You no longer remembered the flat, but it didn’t distress you to wake there.”

  After a pause, Katharine continued. “Anyway, it seems like you’re stuck in a loop. You mostly remember the events around the time of Alexander’s birth and what happened before but not much after that. Too bad because I gotta tell you, it looks like fun stuff. Check this out.”

  A picture tumbled across the screen, Margaret and Tessa kissing amid snow-dappled trees. Central Park! read a caption.

  Next, a video of a TV news anchor: “Kensington Palace announced today that Princess Margaret’s wedding will be a small event meant for friends and family only. The move was expected because the princess, like her sisters, is marrying a woman, and public enthusiasm for this wedding is lacking.”

  The same news anchor in different clothes: “Kensington Palace announced today that plans for Princess Margaret’s wedding have changed somewhat. The public has finally warmed up to the idea of another lesbian wedding and want to see Margaret happy no matter whom she marries. The princess and Ms. Tessa Donovan have made new plans to marry at Windsor Castle like Princess Emma did. They will travel via public routes so that…”

  Video from the wedding itself, Margaret and Tessa at the altar, the both of them beaming radiance.

  A skip ahead to the news anchor. “The statement put out by Kensington Palace today confirmed the intense speculation that Their Royal Highnesses the Duchess and Countess of Wessex have adopted a newborn child, whom they named Henry William Joseph Louis. He is not in line for the throne due to the strict rules laid down by the Act of Succession. Anonymous royal sources say that the Wessexes turned to adoption because of fears of what a pregnancy might do to Princess Margaret. Princess Tessa would have needed to undergo IVF to become pregnant.”

  A montage of photos: Tessa and Margaret with baby Henry, grinning at him, hamming it up, his christening photo.

  Margaret paused on this one. She took in each person photographed: Her and Tessa and Henry, of course, and then there was Amalia, Katharine, Veronica, Emma, Cheryl, taller Lucas, taller Jo with breasts, a little boy who had to be Alexander, and an even littler boy in front of Emma and Cheryl who must be their son.

  Margaret had to smile. Three adult sisters, three adorable little boys.

  There was also a set of people Margaret did not recognize, but she surmised they were Tessa’s family.

  TV Katharine resumed: “That about catches us up, eh? You and Tessa have been married four years, you’re still madly in love, and I’m not saying that in case this DVD gets stolen and leaked to the tabloids or whatever. I’m saying it because it’s true. Trust me, you do love her even if you feel nothing for her. You are truly in love with her. Now, there should be a binder that Tessa did with pictures and more information. Try the table in front of you.”