The Surprise Princess (14 page)

“Go away.”

He’d barely given her time to get inside the house. Much less time to assess this new twist. If she simply kept refusing to go on the trip—

“You know I won’t leave,” Brad shouted from outside her door.

She did know.

She yanked the door open, then walked away.

He came in, all easy-going reason now that he’d gotten his way. “You seem upset.”

That might have been the wrong thing to say.

Brad gathered that from the glare Katie pointed at him.

“I left work after my official ending time. I came home like I always do. Didn’t take a single step on the campus paths,” she added pointedly. “So you have no reason to say I seem upset.”

Katie was battling to hold onto calm.

A calm he needed to do something about if he was going to find out why she’d nearly fainted at the idea of going to Bariavak. If he was going to find out the true reason she’d built walls up against the idea of testing whether she could be this lost princess.

“You know, this reaction worries me more than when you went berserk that first day Hunter showed up.”

“I did not—” She bit it off. He watched her breathe, breathe, breathe.

“Let’s talk this through. There’s got to be a way—.”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it. Understand?”

“No. I don’t understand. Nobody does. I told you before it’s downright weird that you’re putting off finding out if you’re this Princess Josephine-Augusta.”

“I’m not a princess.”

He sliced his hand through air. “Okay, forget the princess part. But you’d know if King Jozef is your grandfather. And going to Bariavak—”

“What purpose could that serve? That baby was taken when she was months old. She couldn’t possibly remember anything.”

“Maybe not. But aren’t you curious? It’s not natural not to be curious. You can go and—”

“If I go, I can’t come back – No.” She turned away.

But he’d already seen how much she regretted the words she’d snapped out. They were getting closer to whatever was tying her in knots.

“What do you mean you can’t come back? Even if you
are
his granddaughter, King Jozef can’t make you give up your life here. You’re—”

“It’s not him.”

“—an adult. You can make your own choices. What do you mean it’s not him?”

“Never mind. Forget it. Forget I said anything.”

“The hell I will. Katie, tell me what this is about.”

“Go away, Brad.”

“You know I won’t. Tell me, Katie.”

She didn’t. Instead, she turned and headed deeper into the house. After an instant, he followed her.

H
e wasn’t sure if she was heading somewhere or trying to get away from him when she swung open a door off the kitchen he hadn’t seen opened before. Either way, he was going after her.

As she started up steep stairs beyond the door, he decided she was, in fact, heading somewhere.

The attic, he realized when his eyes came above the floorboards into an area lit by three light bulbs hanging from the ridge pole.

She walked down the center of the space to under the last light bulb and sat on the floor. He followed, crouching to avoid hitting his head, then sat beside her.

“Katie?”

“After the first of the year,” she said in a voice that remained scary calm, “when there were all those stories about April and King Jozef, with everyone telling me how much I looked like her, I remembered this suitcase. I came up and searched. It was way back in a corner with things from my childhood. Things my fa— Bob never would have bothered with. I was about to give up, thinking I’d dreamed the memory of this suitcase. Then I found it. And found …”

A shudder passed through her. She drew a battered suitcase in front of her crossed legs and flicked open the clasps

First, she removed what appeared to be tattered and yellowed tissue paper.

She set that aside and he saw the next layer held something wrapped in fresh, crisp tissue paper.

She carefully folded back the sides of the paper, so they fell down on either side of her palm. Resting there, not much larger than her hand was a piece of fabric.

“What is it?”

“I think it’s a corner cut from a larger piece.” With her other hand she pointed to the difference between two finished edges and two that looked frayed.

“Are those letters written out in thread?”

“That’s embroidery. Silk, I think. The fabric and the threads. I looked up about the gold thread. It’s called goldwork. The thread can have real gold in it, not only the color.”

He looked at her as he pursued the question she hadn’t answered, “You mean the gold where it looks like letters.”

After a pause, she murmured, “Uh-huh.”

“That second letter’s an A. The first one … If I had to decide, I’d say a J.”

Josephine-Augusta.

He concentrated on drawing in oxygen to lungs that suddenly felt as if he’d been playing one-on-one for hours straight.

He forced himself to continue. “And up here?” He pointed without touching. “A crest, right? Bariavak’s?”

Her silence was an answer.

A princess’s monogram embroidered in silk. In an attic in Ashton, Wisconsin. In Katie’s attic.

“My God, you really
are
. You are a
princess
.”

No longer a kid … now a princess. Even more untouchable.

But that was for him to deal with. Now was about her.

“Knowing this, why on earth are you holding back from taking the test? To let the world know – your grandfather—”

“I also found this,” she said evenly.

With her head still down, she covered up the fabric piece again, then retrieved a folder from beneath another layer of new tissue paper and handed it to him.

He opened it to see what appeared to be Katie’s birth certificate on top. Next, he found yellowed newspaper pages. Not complete editions, but a few pages from several dates. Nothing to do with the rebellion or the missing princess, which had been his first thought.

These were obituary pages. Faded circles marked at least one notice on each page. The circled notices were all for babies. All girls. On the third page he spotted Katherine Mary Davis, two months old, daughter of Robert and Annette Davis.

He checked the date of the paper, subtracted the two months and came up with Katie’s birthday.

When he looked up, she was staring at him, tears glistening her eyes, but not falling.

“Now do you understand?”

He was beginning to.

He had to think this through. For her sake. No sudden leaps. Step by step.

“You think they gave you this baby’s identity? Your par— The people who raised you.”

“I don’t know.”

“It sure seems reasonable as a working hypothesis. Though why they’d keep these newspapers… The embroidery, maybe, if they wanted to prove someday that you—” He bit it off after a glance at her. “But why the newspapers?”

“It was her. My… Anna. He didn’t know she’d kept any of this. I’m sure of it. The one time she got really angry at me was when I tried to get in this suitcase. But I think it wasn’t me seeing it that made her that way, but that
he
might have seen.”

He sat back on his heels.

“You’ve known this since
January
. Before Hunter Pierce ever showed up, you’d seen all this, you’d known… Why haven’t you told—” He shifted in mid-question, suppressing the word he wanted to use and substituting, “—anyone?”

“I don’t
know
anything. It could be nothing. It could be coincidence.”

“Coincidence? That’s stretching it, Katie. What about this crest. Did you look it up? It’s Bariavak’s, isn’t it?”

The smallest nod possible confirmed his supposition. “According to the Internet, anyway.”

“DNA would tell you for sure.”

“It might not. You heard what Hunter said that day at the Monroes’. And I’ve looked it up since then. It might not provide a definite answer. So I could be nobody—”

“Bull. You’re Katie. You’ll always be Katie.”

She’d let his voice override her, but now she said, “Nobody with no country.”

The despair as much as the words brought him up short. “Of course you have a country. Hell, you’ve got two. Bariavak and here—.”

“No.” Her head jerked in a sharp shake.

Then he saw it. “Illegal. You think you’re illegal.”

She nodded. “If this—” She gestured toward the folder still in his hands. “—means what it seems to mean, then I wasn’t born here. I was brought here as an illegal alien, presumably smuggled in by two other illegal aliens who stole an identity for me.”

“Through no fault of your own. You had no way of knowing—”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ve talked to three immigration lawyers and they all agree. I’m not a citizen. I’m here illegally. I could get kicked out any time.”

“Only if someone has a reason to dig into—”

“
Someone
? A
reason
? Like the State Department or King Jozef’s people or the media or the king’s nephew or someone else who’s interested in whether I’m this lost princess? And that’s if Ashton’s travel office doesn’t find out first.”

“Travel office? Why would –?” He breathed out a curse. “Your passport.”

She nodded. “The passport I don’t have and I’m afraid to get.”

“This is why you’ve been trying to hold everybody off? This is why you’ve been so adamant you’re not the princess?”

“I sat up here in January and thought it through. I decided I would never tell anyone about any of this.” Her gaze flicked to him, then away. “The day Hunter first came I was up here preparing to destroy it all when you showed up at my door with Chinese food. Afterward I decided to wait. I’ve kept stalling, and now they’ll find out without this.”

“You’re worried they’ll find out your documents are fake?”

“They already suspect. Michael Dickinson said it flat-out that day at the Monroes’. How long would it take an expert to confirm it? That would mean I’m not a citizen. Worried? I’m more than worried. Wouldn’t you be?”

“Yeah, I might. Even if you get the passport and get to Bariavak, if something comes out about your being here illegally…”

“I would have to stay in Bariavak. Whether I belong there or not. Whether I’m… It’s not that I don’t think King Jozef would be kind, but I couldn’t come home. Ever.” Her voice broke on the final word, but no tears fell. “And even if I went and came back okay, I’d know that at any moment…”

She’d been carrying this alone for months. Building the wall of worry higher and higher with each new bit of information she’d found.

He wanted to give her hell for holding on to all this. He wanted to take her in his arms and rock her.

Both reactions would have been for himself. They weren’t what she needed.

“I know you’re worried that if a DNA test proves you are Josephine-Augusta that you’ll lose your U.S. citizenship, but you can’t stall forever, Katie. Not even for much longer. The king’s nephew sending somebody after your DNA shows others are interested – really interested — in whether you’re the heir to the Bariavak throne. But there’s another reason – you have a grandfather.”

“I
might
have a grandfather. It’s not like you and Andy, Brad. He’s a stranger. And he’s a king. It’s risking my home, my job, my country on a gamble that we might get along.”

He started to argue, but stopped himself. If he’d had the experiences she had with what she’d thought was her family would he be willing to risk everything he knew on the chance of more family?

“Katie, those immigration lawyers you talked to. Would they remember you?”

“I don’t know. They might remember the scenario I asked about, with a baby brought in illegally, now grown, and did he have any standing in the U.S.”

“Did you disguise yourself at all? Use another name?”

To his surprise, she smiled. “I not only used another name, I used a pre-paid phone I’d bought with cash in Milwaukee. They never saw me and I made up a name.”

He grinned back. “Good for you, Ms. Mata Hari Davis.”

At the use of her last name, her smile faded.

“I shouldn’t have told you, Brad. It’s not fair to ask you to keep this quiet when you could get in trouble—”

“Yeah, right. I’m going to run right out and report you.”

“You should,” she said, but he could see what it cost her. “I shouldn’t have involved you—”

Her head dropped forward. He scooted closer, using a hand at the back of her neck to bring her head against his chest. His other hand stroked her back. He kissed the top of her head. With his lips still on her hair, he pledged. “You’re not alone in this anymore.”

“You can’t tell C.J. or Carolyn. The university—”

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul. You and me, we’ll figure this out, Katie. We’ll figure it out.”

“How?”

“I don’t know yet, but I swear to you we will. There’s always a way.”

K
atie heard his familiar footsteps coming down the hall outside the offices Friday afternoon and prepared herself.

Forty-three hours since Brad had left her house.

They’d talked a little more without arriving at answers, because there weren’t any. He’d insisted she go to bed early, and with her head fuzzy from crying that had been a relief.

She’d slept better than she had since … well, since January. Not only Wednesday night, but also last night. Even though she felt so guilty for putting any of this mess on him. But apparently she could sleep through guilt.

Brad breezed into the office.

Officially, he’d taken personal days yesterday and today. Since he had piled up enough to take a couple trips to Mars and back, no one objected.

Except her. Inside her own head.

She’d called three times. And hung up twice. The third time she’d left a vague message that no one could possibly ever use against him.

Telling someone to forget that you’d involved them in your potentially illegal immigration status was not something to say on the phone.

“Brad, I have to talk to you,” she said as soon as he walked in.