Total pages in book: 23
Estimated words: 22425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 112(@200wpm)___ 90(@250wpm)___ 75(@300wpm)
“She’s not in her rooms,” he says.
“Who?”
He rolls his green eyes. “Granny.”
I check the watch on my wrist, thinking of the pocket watch Granddad had—the one he always carried with him—the one he’ll never touch again.
And my sadness pulls harder.
“It’s almost midnight.”
Henry looks at me like I’m an idiot.
“That’s what I’m saying. I don’t think she’s come in yet.”
I rise from the bed, retrieve the waistcoat on the back of my desk chair and slide my arms through it. Henry follows me down the stairs and out the door of Guthrie House, walking up the winding, lantern-lit path to the palace and up to the Queen’s apartments.
There’s a guard outside her door. His face is blank and dispassionate, but there’s a heaviness to his countenance. Because the loss of Prince Edward hangs over the palace like a weighted black shroud.
“Where is the Queen?” I ask.
He bows. “The Queen hasn’t come in yet, Your Highness. She is still at the gravesite.”
“I told you,” Henry says.
I nod, and without another word we head out of the palace. Because my grandfather was fiercely protective of Grandmother. He guarded her like she was something fragile—the most delicate spun glass.
She always seemed more like a brick wall to me, but I know he would want me to look after her. And if I can’t cry for him . . . I can at least do that.
We walk through the ornate statue garden, around the pond, past the cherry trees, and down the long path to the rear of the property. Giant, swirling wrought-iron gates herald the entrance to the family plot. My parents are buried here, an aunt who died in infancy, my great-uncle, cousins, and all the Pembrook ancestors in their ancient tombs.
It’s morbid knowing I’ll be here too one day—right in our own backyard.
The graveyard is silent and still—not even the crickets chirp. Grandfather’s flag and flower-draped casket still rests on the platform, the hole below it gaping. Waiting. In the dim light of the lampposts, I spot the Queen, in the front row beneath the awning—exactly where we left her hours ago.
She looks . . . small. Swallowed up by the high-backed chair and her black gown. Winston, head of security, stands straight and tall behind the last row of chairs—just like the Grim Reaper.
“Grandmother,” I say gently.
Her gray eyes blink, startling slightly, like she didn’t hear us come up.
As if she was somewhere else.
“Nicholas, Henry—what are you doing out here? You should both be in bed—it’s late.”
“Yes,” I say. “Would you . . . like us to escort you inside?”
Her gaze turns back toward the casket, her expression filling with such intense, devastated yearning that for the first time today my eyes burn.
“No. I’m not ready to go in yet.”
Henry and I look at each other, and then we nod, stepping forward, taking the seats on either side of her. There’s no breeze, but the air is brisk and damp. I remove my jacket and drape it over her shoulders.
She looks down at the fabric, touching the sleeve, smiling softly.
And Henry whispers, “It’s all right to be sad, Granny. You know that, don’t you?”
“It’s all right to cry,” I add. Because Grandfather said those words to me once, when I needed to hear them. And I think . . . I think she needs them now. “We won’t think any less of you.”
She takes a deep breath and shakes her head.
“If I start, I worry I’ll never be able to stop.”
She takes our hands—both Henry’s and mine, holding them in a cold, tight grip on the armrests of her chair.
“You are good boys.” Her voice sounds different. It’s soft—tender. “Such very good boys . . . and I love you with my whole heart. And if I never tell you that again, know that it’s true. Now and always.”
She’s quiet after that. And so we sit. Together.
The sky darkens further and the silence is finally broken by the pattering of raindrops. It starts off slow, a scattered pat against the awning, against the ground—but then it grows, coming down faster, building into a wet, drumming percussion.
Grandmother looks up, just barely smiling—like the rain is a private joke only she is privy to. “It’s raining. Of course it is.”
When she stands, Henry and I rise with her and watch as she steps out into the rain, lifting her face to the sky.
The beads of water kiss her face, trailing down her cheeks like teardrops. For a moment the lines on her face are blurred, washed away, making her look younger.
She places her palm on the dark wood of the casket, staring at it, then she leans over and kisses the spot where her hand just was.
I feel like a voyeur—a witness to a private moment not meant for my eyes. But I can’t look away. Because this is a side of her I don’t ever see, a side I sometimes doubt exists. The unguarded side, the vulnerable side . . . the human side.