The Royal Rogue

by Halle, Karina

  Another tear rolls down my cheek and another. “I miss you, mama. I really do. The more that time passes the more I realize how precious time is. I would do anything to roll back the clock and go through it all again with you, love you harder, love you no matter what. Have a stubborn heart. But now I can only do that from here and hope, hope, hope that you feel me.”

  I’m squeezing her hand and I’m crying.

  I’m crying because I miss my mother and I wish I could have her back in my life, in whatever form I can get. I wish that I knew how rare and precious it was to have her love at all and that I didn’t spend so much time fretting about the amount or how she showed it. I wish I had held it to my chest and hung on, even if it felt like I was just getting a morsel at a time.

  And I’m crying because I know she’s not really here. She can’t help me with the baby. She can’t heal my heart from Orlando’s absence. She probably won’t get to see my child, not with the eyes that I know. I’m going to have to go through it all feeling alone and while I should be used to being alone, sometimes it really fucking sucks.

  Sometimes you just want someone to love.

  Sometimes you just want someone to love you.

  I know what I want and what makes it harder is that Orlando is still out there. The man who has my heart. He’s still in Monaco, still with Zoya. He’s texted me often, called too. I try not to answer him. I definitely don’t pick up the phone.

  But I’m torn. I don’t hate him. I’m hurt by him and I feel betrayed but I don’t hate him. I know that’s a silly statement because I’m still in love with him but it’s crazy how intertwined love and hate become when emotions are high. It’s like a switch gets flipped and it’s hard to know which way your heart will turn. Like a waxing and waning moon, it’s a heart of love or a heart of hate.

  It’s…complicated.

  So I text him when I can, just to keep him updated on how the baby is. There isn’t much to report but it’s the best I can do right now. I’m not sure how things are going to proceed in the future and I anticipate things getting harder and harder but for now, it’s best if I don’t have much to do with him. He has his rights to the child, whether legally or not, but I also have to protect myself while I can.

  What a fucking mess.

  Time usually passes slowly when you’re grieving but before I know it, Maja is opening the door and coming in the room, putting her hand on my shoulder.

  “It’s time to go,” she says softly, taking tissue paper out of her pocketbook and handing me one. “Come on. Let’s get the both of you home.”

  I can’t help but smile at that.

  I put my hand on my stomach, which hasn’t started showing to others yet, though I definitely notice it myself.

  We go home.

  * * *

  Two days later I wake up in the middle of the night from an awful nightmare.

  Only it’s not a nightmare at all, it’s just the truth hitting me over and over again.

  I realize that I have to tell Anya about the baby.

  I’ve been waiting for the right time, the right opportunity. But there never seems to be a right time to have the talk. I know I might not ever have the right answers to tell her when she asks who the father is or if he’s going stay around or if he’s going to end up like her own father, someone that only pops his head up on birthdays and holidays. Someone who doesn’t really give a shit, someone who constantly breaks her heart.

  But now I know, that this is it. There is no Orlando, not really. It’s just me and her against the world, just as before, but this time with baby in tow.

  The triangle is the strongest shape.

  Even though it’s the middle of the night, I get out of bed, throw on a robe to protect me from the drafts in this palace, and head down the hall.

  Her door is open and the night light illuminates the room. She wants Mokey to sleep with her but I don’t want her around cat dander that much, so I’ve forbidden it. To my relief, the cat isn’t in here. Sometimes I think he’s sleeping with Maja when he isn’t with me. She seems to have taken a shine to him, even though she won’t admit it. She sneaks herring to him every morning at breakfast.

  “Mama?” Anya asks softly as I walk into the room. “What time is it?” She yawns, which makes me yawn.

  “It’s the middle of the night.”

  “Are you okay?” She sits up straighter. “Is Mokey okay?”

  “Mokey is fine,” I tell her, sitting on the edge of the bed. “I just had a dream and I wanted to talk to you about it.”

  She frowns and reaches for her glasses on the bedside table, slipping them on. “Okay. What kind of dream?”

  “Well it wasn’t so much a dream as it was this nagging feeling. You know the ones you get when your subconscious is trying to tell you something?”

  “Like I didn’t give Patches enough hugs?”

  Patches is the name of her pony that stays at a nearby stable. Since she’s still learning, I opted to get her the roundest, friendliest, oldest horse possible, an ex-lesson horse that needed a good home. One day, when she gets better at it and if she gets more serious, then we’ll spend the big bucks but until then it’s sweet, fat, ornery Patches.

  “Yeah, like that,” I tell her. “Anyway, sweetheart, there’s something that’s been happening to me and I’ve wanted to share it with you but I didn’t know the details. I didn’t know how I felt about it and it’s all so very complicated. But you’re a big girl and you’re old enough and so I think it’s time to let you know.”

  “This couldn’t wait until morning?” she asks dryly.

  I pat her arm. “You make a good point. But now that I’m here, aren’t you curious?”

  “Sure. Is this something to do with your condition?” She says the last word dramatically.

  “You remember that?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Everyone in this house is always talking about your condition. I thought maybe you were hit in the head or something and didn’t realize it.”

  I can’t help but chuckle. “No, I wasn’t hit in the end, though it sure feels like it sometimes.” I pause. “Anya, I’m going to have a baby.”

  Her eyes widen and she jolts back in her bed. “Right now?”

  “No,” I say quickly, putting my hands on her legs to hold her down. “Not right now. Next year.”

  “You’re pregnant?” she says. She makes a face. “Why?”

  I manage a smile. “I don’t know why. I guess the same reason I got pregnant with you. Just what life had in store for me.”

  She makes a more contorted face. “Is it papa’s baby? Is he the father?”

  “No,” I tell her, shaking my head. “Your father will still be around…”

  “He’s never around.”

  “But it’s not him.”

  “Who is it then? Will he be around? Will he be a better father?”

  Jeez. She’s really digging in deep.

  “Maybe,” I say, ignoring the hollow pain in my chest. “But the most important part isn’t that, it’s that you get to be an older sister and we’re going to have the best family ever.”

  “But who is it?” she repeats. Then her eyes go wide. “Your boyfriend!” she gasps. “It’s Orlando!”

  “He’s not my boyfriend.” Why am I even getting defensive with my daughter?

  Grow up, Stella.

  “But it’s him,” she says. “He’s the baby daddy.”

  “Look, I don’t really want to get into why and how you know the phrase baby daddy at your age but yes. He is the daddy.”

  “He’s already a better dad than dad.”

  “First of all, he’s not your dad and second of all, what makes you think that?”

  “Mokey,” she cries out. “He gave me my cat. That’s more than you ever did.”

  “Stella,” I warn. “You got a horse and now a cat.”

  “You made me move from warm, tropical England to cold and rainy Denmark.”

  “Okay, now I think you’re
the one who got hit in the head,” I tell her, reaching over to put the back of my hand against her forehead. She’s fine.

  “So what do I have to do?” she asks.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m going to be the big sister, I have to prepare.”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t think you need to do anything but be exactly who you are.”

  “I don’t want to share Patches with her. Or Mokey.”

  “We don’t know if it’s a her yet.”

  “Oh I can tell. It’s a her.”

  “What else can you tell?” I ask her, amused.

  “That I might be the best big sister in the world. But I’m going to need to do my homework about this.”

  I have to admire her gusto. “Tell you what, I’ll get a book for you that tells you how to be a good big sister.”

  “Not good. The best!”

  “The best then.” I laugh and kiss her on the forehead, my heart swelling for the first time in days. Just the two of us will soon be just the three of us and maybe that’s all we really need. Maybe we’re going to be more than okay. “Thank you for being so understanding.”

  She grins at me. “It’s okay. It’s my job.”

  I kiss her again and then leave the room, laughing to myself as I go. The minute I hit the sheets, I’m out like a light, falling into a deep, peaceful sleep.

  Chapter 15

  Orlando

  Ethiopia

  Two months later

  I’ve never been afraid of a little hard work. My mother was actually half-American and she wasn’t born of nobility. Though her family was upper class, they also had that hardworking, make your own way persona that Americans tend to have and they passed that down to me when I was growing up. I spent a few summers at camp in the states, in upstate New York, and it wasn’t the camp you were pampered at. There it was like a working farm and we had a lot of chores to do every day, which included getting up at five a.m. to milk the cows.

  When I was a teenager, after my mother died, I spent a lot of time at the military bases in France. I was too young to become a soldier but my father insisted that the boot camp-like mentality would toughen me up.

  It did, as did the big wave surfing I did later off the coast of Portugal. Early mornings in the water, the boards smacking you in the face, the waves pummeling you into the sand, and if you were unlucky, the rocks. That was hard work too, especially if you wanted to become good at it.

  But I can truly say I’d never known hard work until I came here to Gambella, Ethiopia, helping Matilde with her organization, which means setting up classrooms and education for refugees from South Sudan.

  It’s March but that doesn’t mean much here. It’s hotter than possible, the air thick with humidity. We’re on the banks of the Baro River, the brown water a tributary of the Nile. Once upon a time this was a busy waterway, fulfilling the classic image of a languid tropical port in Africa. But now, because of all the civil war in South Sudan, only fifty kilometers away, there are no boats on the river and the troubles have spilled into this region.

  When Matilde told me over Christmas that she was going to start moving her charity work into the area, I was against the idea. It was fine when she was working in Botswana and Mali – both those areas were considered safe. But with the fighting and the war going beyond the borders of Sudan, I wasn’t so sure. I said the only way she could do it is if I went with her.

  It was a crazy idea. And because it was a crazy idea, far removed from anything I would normally do or say, she didn’t believe me.

  But I was nursing a broken heart. I was drunk all the time. I was in the throes of depression and dealing with a holiday that has always been hard since my mother passed away. Suddenly going to Africa to put my sorrows in perspective seemed like the only thing to do.

  I don’t regret it. We’ve been here a month and while the work is physically hard, it’s emotionally hard, too. I don’t have a lot of time to think about Stella and the baby. I don’t have that luxury. Instead all my heartache goes toward the people in the region. Seeing things I never thought I’d see, how hard life truly is for the majority of the world.

  That said, it’s not all been gloom and doom. There have been some close calls with attempted kidnappings but we have military presence around us at all times, which helps. And the pupils are wonderful. We’re not just helping to teach children here but adults as well, anyone who wants to learn. This particular camp gets aid from the United Nations in form of food and so our job is to take care of their minds. A different type of sustenance but equally as important.

  Right now, I’m doing the laundry, which consists of washing a basket of our shirts in the river. There are a few fishermen along the water, and every now and then one of them will pull in a giant, long fish and plop it in a bucket, to be sold later at the market.

  A kid runs past and points and laughs at me, saying something in one of the many different languages that they speak here.

  I hear Matilde’s laugh too from behind me and turn around as I’m crouched on the ground.

  “What did the kid say?” I ask her as she walks over.

  “That you’re doing a woman’s job,” she says.

  “I’ll have him know that it’s the man’s job. I’m risking my life doing the laundry. There could be crocodiles in the water.”

  “There are crocodiles in the water,” she says as she wipes her brow. “We’re just lucky we haven’t seen them yet.”

  “They’re probably afraid of my big muscles.”

  She rolls her eyes. Africa suits her. She’s dressed in a long-sleeved white gauzy shirt and a bright yellow skirt that reaches the ground. She’s got a headdress wrapped around her head in the same color, her whole outfit a gift from one of the students.

  She’s tanned as hell but so am I. I’m going to go back home a few shades darker (and covered in scars from mosquito bites. They’re nasty little fuckers down here).

  Speaking of home, we’re supposed to be heading back in a few days. Our work here is done and volunteers will then take over while Matilde concentrates on raising more awareness and money. I don’t know how much of her own personal money she’s put into it, but it’s been a lot. I try to chip in from time to time but she says my actual work is what makes all the difference.

  “What are you doing when you’re done?” she asks, nodding at the clothes. “I decided to let everyone go home early. I need to pack and prepare for tomorrow’s party.”

  Since tomorrow is the last day of school with us teaching, Matilde wants to have a real big party. She’s got a van behind the classroom that’s filled with balloons and party favors and I think she’s even going to attempt to bake a cake in the kitchen of a local woman. All I know is that I’m terrible in the kitchen and should be kept far away if they want to do avoid disaster. I’d normally say I’m much better at eating food than making it but actually since I’ve come here I’ve dropped a ton of weight. I’m still lifting when I can, there’s a makeshift gym with rusted equipment, something I made a note to replace when we return, but you can’t run here for long until it gets dangerous. My weight loss is just from the heat, the stress, and the loss of appetite.

  Though you can’t really blame this place for that. It’s part of the whole fucking broken heart thing.

  I wince at the thought, the pain sneaking up on me.

  Matilde sees it. She says, “I wasn’t planning on making you help. I thought maybe we could go out for a beer.”

  There’s only one suitable bar in town but we’ve been so busy we haven’t had a chance to go there even once.

  “I’d like that,” I tell her.

  An hour later, after the clothes are hung up and drying on the line, Matilde and I are in a bar in the middle of town. It’s dusty and run down but the beer is cold and fresh and the bartender is happy to practice his English on us. There’s a couple of old men in the corner, snacking on dried fish and playing cards and we have two soldiers stationed outside the
door, just in case.

  “To Gambella,” I say to Matilde and everyone else in the bar joins in a cheers.

  “To Gambella,” she says, raising her beer for everyone. She gives me a sweet smile. “And to you, Orlando. Thank you so much for coming here, for helping me, for seeing what I do and why I do it. This really meant the world to me.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say, batting away a fly that keeps trying to land in my drink. “Just don’t say anything else sappy.”

  “It still hurts, doesn’t it?”

  I don’t have to ask what she means.

  “Yeah,” I say hoarsely.

  “Have you talked to her lately?”

  I palm my beer, staring down at the bubbles. “No. I mean I texted her the other day and I got a ‘we’re fine’ and that was it.”

  That’s all it’s been.

  I’ve tried to be as involved as possible but ever since I told Stella were I stood, where I had to stand, things have been strained.

  So fucking strained. I was lucky to get her on the phone once a week over the holidays and I haven’t heard her voice for a long time.

  I miss her.

  So, so much.

  It burns.

  The fear, the loss.

  Like there’s a void in me now that I can’t quite fill, a void that that was paved over during the last month here but still empty and hollow underneath.

  Tu me manques.

  She sighs. “You know…I didn’t want to say this to you over the holidays because I knew how hard you were taking it and I didn’t want to add to it. But…this is all your fault.”

  I’m in mid sip and I nearly spit out the mouthful of beer.

  “What?” I manage to say, wiping my mouth on a tattered cocktail napkin. “My fault?”