Every Star in the Sky

by Danielle Singleton

  “I’m busy,” Richard said as his thumbs typed on his cell phone.

  “This is more important.”

  Richard looked up at Tricia and saw the fear on her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “The Times has the story. Not all of it, but a lot of it. The commuting, the refusal to travel, Gus staying at Rosewood.” She paused. “I said ‘no comment’ on everything, but we should give them some kind of response before the story breaks.”

  “I don’t have to tell them anything,” Richard replied. “It’s my life. My personal life. It didn’t, doesn’t, and won’t affect my job performance in any way, shape, or form. Besides, all they have is speculation. I was sleeping at one house instead of another. It’ll blow over. Trust me.”

  Tricia nodded and left the office but shook her head as soon as the door was closed. “It won’t blow over,” she whispered to herself. “He can’t hide this forever.”

  ****

  Three days later, Richard sat at his desk surrounded by newspapers. The front page of every outlet in the country blared headlines calling him a liar, a thief, and a coward. Most of them also demanded that he resign. Richard rubbed his forehead with his hand, hoping to make his headache go away.

  He heard a knock on the door and looked up to see Tricia standing in front of him.

  “Don’t say it,” he told her.

  “Don’t say what?”

  Richard raised his eyebrows, and she nodded in understanding.

  “Well, I did tell you so, sir. But that’s beside the point. Now we focus on fixing it.”

  The prime minister sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “There’s nothing to fix. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t misuse public funds. I always made sure my work was complete before I left for the day. Surely, I’m not the first prime minister in history to lose a spouse while in office. Or get married while in office for that matter.”

  “That’s not the point, sir. It’s not about the money, or the commuting, or Rebecca.”

  Richard flinched at the mention of his wife’s name.

  “It’s about the deception,” Tricia explained. “The people think you’re lying to them. And the longer the questions go unanswered, the more outlandish the theories will be. I understand why you kept it quiet. I do. But it’s time for the truth. Before the media invents its own truth and we’re all sunk.”

  Richard sighed and nodded his head. “You’re right. Set up the press conference.”

  “Yes sir. Do you want me to send in Carlos to work on your speech?”

  Richard shook his head. “No. I’ll be writing this one myself.”

  NINETY-FOUR

  “I’ll make a brief statement,” Richard said, “and I will not be taking any questions. Nor will my staff.” He paused. “I will begin with the most important information: I have neither stolen nor misappropriated any public funds. I have not lied under oath. And Her Majesty has been fully informed of the entire truth from the beginning.”

  Cameras clicked and clacked, and murmurs rose through the group of reporters.

  “So it’s all a lie?” someone shouted. “The whole story is bollocks?”

  Richard opened his mouth to respond, then stopped. He let out a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair.

  “The Times’ story accused me of many things. Lying. Stealing. Cover-ups. Those things,” he conceded, “are all true.”

  The crowd rumbled again. “C’mon, mate. Give us the truth!”

  “The truth?” Richard asked. “All right. Well, settle in. Because the truth is thirty-five years in the making.”

  He looked down at the cobblestones in front of him, paused, and let out a deep breath. Silence filled the air, with dozens of reporters in the street and millions watching at home all waiting to hear their prime minister try to explain away the growing scandal.

  “It’s hard to know where to begin,” Richard said, his voice full of emotion.

  He sighed again, and a car alarm blared in the distance. Richard closed his eyes. When he opened them, they glistened with tears.

  “I suppose I shall begin by saying that everything in The Times report is true. I did fly to America four months ago without disclosing the trip. Up until last month, I was commuting regularly from my private home in Sussex to London. And I have had a large increase in expenses lately – all of which were paid out of my own personal accounts, for which I have records and receipts.” He paused. “That’s all true.”

  Richard picked at the edge of the podium with his fingernail. “I also intentionally hid those facts from the public.”

  The prime minister stood up straight and his voice regained strength. “What’s not true are the rumors that I am ill. I’m in excellent health, as confirmed by my annual physical last week. And the speculation that I am involved in some form of illegal or immoral enterprise is unequivocally false. I informed Her Majesty of everything that was happening and, more than that, received her blessing.”

  Murmurs began to rise in the crowd. Phil Davies’ working assumption in his article was that Arrington had gone rogue. If the Queen was involved, the reporters wondered, what was going on?

  The prime minister paused and let out a deep breath. The bastion of English aristocracy looked up at the sky and back down at his feet, unsure how to continue.

  “Thirty-five years ago, I enrolled at Harvard Business School. September of 1984. Back in those days, you took all your classes with the same set of people. By sheer circumstance, or perhaps providence, I was seated next to one of the few women in the school. I promptly proceeded to fall in love with her.

  “A variety of circumstances,” Richard continued, “my cowardice and her stubbornness among them, prevented us from being together. But for thirty-four and a half years, I loved her from afar.” A slight smile creased his face. “Nearly every journalist here today has asked me at some point why I never married. I always said I hadn’t met the right woman. Well, that was a lie. I had met the right woman, but she married someone else.”

  Richard shoved his hands in his pockets and gripped the engagement ring box as hard as he could.

  “Four months ago, her daughter called me. Her mum, my classmate, had gotten divorced several years earlier. I knew that – we stayed in touch over the years. But anyway, her daughter called me and told me that I needed to go to their house in America. No explanation. Just ‘come now.’ So I did.”

  He paused and blinked back tears.

  “She had cancer. Stage Four. She did chemo and radiation, and even joined a clinical trial for a new medication. The only fight we ever had was me trying to convince her to continue treatment here in England. Full disclosure, since you’re already learning all my secrets today, my first plan was to resign and move there to care for her. She refused that offer, but I did get her moved to England and a medical team set up here. At my family’s estate in East Sussex.

  “The night of our graduation from Harvard,” he added, “I asked her to marry me. She said no. Four months ago when I asked again, she said yes.”

  Richard covered his mouth with his hands, and a long silence filled the air.

  “We lost her a month ago,” he concluded. “She was a fighter, but the cancer was too far progressed. There wasn’t anything else we could do.

  “Those three months together – even with the cancer and the commuting and the secrecy – those three months were the happiest of my life. This past month, without her, well, the light has gone out of my world.” Richard paused and sniffed back tears. “Even while I loved her from afar, although I couldn’t be with her, I knew she was happy. That was enough. But now she’s gone.” Richard dropped his voice to a whisper. “She’s gone.”

  He took a deep breath. “I said at the start that I lied, I stole, and I covered up. That remains true. I lied about some aspects of my personal activities in order to protect the privacy of my family. I stole a few precious months with the love of my life, after being separated from her for far too long. And I covered
it all up to keep her safe. Even though, in the end . . . in the end I couldn’t keep her safe at all.”

  The prime minister closed his eyes and bowed his head, once again reaching into his pants pocket and grabbing hold of his grandmother’s ring for strength. Rebecca’s ring, he thought, correcting himself. One of Rebecca’s final instructions to him was to take the ring off her finger when she died.

  “I don’t want to bury it in the ground for all eternity. I want it to stay with you. As a symbol of me and our love.”

  Richard squeezed the ring box, but this time he brought it out of his pocket and held it in his hands. “When I was ten years old, my grandmother gave me this ring. It was hers – my grandfather had it custom made for her when he proposed. Abuela gave it to me and told me to keep it somewhere safe until I met the right woman.

  “‘But how will I know she’s the right one?’ I asked. And Abuela replied: ‘when you are together, all of the stars will align. Every star in the sky.’”

  Richard flashed half a smile at the memory and held the ring box up higher for everyone to see. “I kept this ring in my nightstand for forty-six years. Rebecca wore it for three months. But it was – and always will be – her ring all along.”

  Richard heard the crowd begin to rustle and cameras start clicking again, with the reporters seeking to capture the moment. He stood up straight and squared his shoulders, letting out a deep breath of defiance.

  “I will not resign. I will not resign because I have done nothing wrong. I have faithfully served Crown and Country whilst coming through this whole ordeal, and Her Majesty The Queen was apprised of my situation and my wife’s condition from the beginning.

  “Now you, the public, know the truth. I am a man as well as a minister. I eat, sleep, breathe, and even love just like the rest of you.” Richard adjusted his tie. “Now, if you will excuse me, I have a country to run.”

  EPILOGUE

  Late that night, long after the rest of the staff went home and the exhausted prime minister retired to his private quarters, Tricia Howell stood up from her desk and walked toward her boss’ office. Even though she knew no one was around, she still glanced over each shoulder to make sure. Then slowly, carefully, she opened the door to Richard’s office.

  The room was empty, as expected, with his desk covered in a laptop, an external monitor, and scattered stacks of paper.

  Tricia smiled and shook her head. He insists he knows where everything is in all those piles, but I don’t see how. Stepping forward, she scanned the papers for the object of her late-night search. Ah ha! Here you are, she thought, picking up the small set of notecards that contained Richard’s planned speech for the day.

  Having worked for her boss since he graduated business school, Tricia knew Richard better than anyone else in the world. She knew that he preferred coffee to tea and took one cream and two sugars. That he had his suits made at Desmond Merrion on Savile Row – each costing upwards of £50,000 – and that he secretly did yoga in his bedroom every morning.

  Picking up the notecards from the desk, Tricia also knew that Richard hadn’t used them at all during his speech. He looked at the cards, to be sure, but his mind was pulling information from somewhere else. Tricia was positive that she was the only person to notice, and now she wanted to be the only person to know the truth.

  “What did you plan on saying?” she asked aloud.

  Glancing back down at the desk, Tricia saw the unmistakable royal coat of arms stamped on an envelope.

  The note from Buckingham Palace, she thought. It arrived right before he went down for the press conference.

  Looking over her shoulder once again to make sure no one was watching, Tricia picked up the envelope and pulled out a handwritten card.

  Lord Dublinshire – I know your plans for today as discussed at our last audience. I write now to urge you to reconsider your offer of resignation. I cannot imagine performing my duties without Philip by my side, and you should face no penalty for seeking out Rebecca and caring for her. I have found, over the years, that my prime ministers govern best when their home life is full of love.

  Elizabeth R

  ###

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book was a long time in the making – so much so that I almost feel like a different author than the one who wrote my previous six books. I’ve gone through a couple different “day jobs”, gotten married, moved homes, and had a baby. Oh yeah, and lived through a global pandemic. But the constant Rock of Jesus remains, and He deserves all glory and praise.

  A huge thank you also to my wonderful husband, Will, for always believing in me and encouraging me to keep writing. To Allie, my baby girl, for your smiles and laughter and motivation to build a better world for you.

  Thank you to my family and friends, both old and new, for your support and companionship. To my Reading Committee, for helping turn my jumbled thoughts into a coherent novel. And to my fans who supported me during my writing hiatus and hopefully return to read and enjoy this book. A special thanks as well to Benjamin J.S. North, via Severin Wiggenhorn, for the “sometimes I wonder” quote in Chapter 81.

  To Caymus, my “second born” – thank you for showing me what it is to embrace every day and love out loud. And, as always, to Gus – my baby. My ride-or-die O.G. and still the best book editor around. Gracias, mijo.

  I hope y’all enjoyed the story.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Danielle knew she was born to be a writer at age four when she entertained an entire emergency room with the – false – story of how she was adopted. Every Star in the Sky is Danielle’s seventh novel. She lives in Georgia with her husband, daughter, and two dogs.

  Please write a review online to let Danielle know what you thought of the book!

  Connect with Danielle online:

  www.daniellesingleton.com

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