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2005–

It’s innocuous—my name and my birth year, that’s all. But my heart starts to race, and as I lean forward, it takes me a moment to understand why.

The space after my birth year isn’t blank. Instead, so faint that it might as well be my imagination, I can just make out the shape of four more digits that look like they’ve been removed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“This past year, my family has been through a great many challenges that have tested our fortitude and courage. But it is our love for one another, and our love for our country and Commonwealth, that have allowed us to persevere in the face of trying circumstances. While the future may be—and always is—uncertain, we can count on this love, and our love for the people, to ensure that our faith and devotion to serve this great nation never waver.”

—Excerpt from His Majesty’s Christmas Speech, 25 December 2023

WHEN THE CLOCK STRIKES MIDNIGHT, Maisie has left, and both Kit and my mother are sleeping soundly on the red velvet sofas in my sitting room.

I should be resting, too, but my mind is buzzing even though my body feels like it’s full of sand. The photo album Ben gave me is barely a foot beneath my mother’s head now, seemingly forgotten among the other gifts scattered throughout the room, but I can feel its presence like a black hole, sucking me in whenever I so much as glance in that direction.

Alexander and I sit at the dining table now, the twinkling Christmas lights illuminating his tired face as we flip through my new record collection. I know I should say something—about the gold lettering on the cover that only I saw, about the death year that Ben didn’t bother to properly remove, and about the very real possibility that his so-called gift was originally meant to be a memorial to me. But after Alexander’s repeated assertions that Ben had nothing to do with the attack, I don’t know how to tell him without sounding like a broken record that can’t move on. Besides, I already know exactly what Ben will say—that the photo album was meant to only chronicle the first eighteen years of my life, but after the shooting, he thoughtfully removed the end date, realizing belatedly what it looked like. Or maybe he’ll insist it was a simple printing error that arrived too late to correct. Either way, it’ll be an uphill battle, and in the end, I still won’t be able to prove a thing.

I’ll tell Alexander soon, I decide. After the holidays, or if Ben refuses to crawl back underneath a rock and stay out of our lives. I can’t make myself destroy the fragile contentment that’s settled over my father, though, not after the few days we’ve all had. And so, for these last moments of my first Christmas with my family, I make myself focus on the selection of records Kit and Maisie chose for me instead. Most are predictable, from bands they know I love, but a few of them are curious choices, and I set them aside to listen to first.

“You and Kit have grown rather close lately, haven’t you?” says Alexander in a low voice as he examines the back of a Fleetwood Mac album.

“Isn’t that the whole point of dating?” I say, studying one of the many Taylor Swift records Maisie included. She wasn’t kidding—it really is signed specifically to me. The majority of the covers are, and it’s daunting to see the evidence of just how many favors she can call in for a simple Christmas present.

“Does it feel like a long-term thing?” says Alexander, and my face grows hot as I set the album aside and select another. Ed Sheeran. Also signed.

“He jumped in front of a literal bullet for me,” I point out. “I think I’m going to hold on to him for a while.”

“And if none of that had happened?” says Alexander.

“Then he’d be stuck with me anyway. What about you and my mom?” I add, glancing at her sleeping form. My gaze automatically drifts to the space beneath the sofa, however, and I look back at my father. “What’s the plan there?”

He clears his throat. “Your mother’s the love of my life,” he says. “I was a fool and walked away from her twice—once when my father died, and again when she needed me the most. I won’t make that mistake a third time.”

“What about Helene?” I say, picking up another album. Reignwolf. My favorite band, and definitely one of Kit’s choices. “Are you planning on getting a divorce?”

A beat passes before Alexander answers. “I don’t know,” he admits. “That’s a conversation she and I’ve been having for a very long time, and neither of us is eager to throw our family—your mother and Nicholas included—into that particular fire.”

“So you want my mom to be your mistress again?” I say, and the words taste foul.

“Of course not. She never was my mistress,” he says, and when I open my mouth to point out the obvious, he keeps going. “She was always the real thing to me—the true center of my life. My marriage and the rest of it…that was the part I couldn’t escape.”

I pull another vinyl from the stack—a Spice Girls album bearing four signatures. Apparently even Maisie’s power has limits. “You’re going to hurt her again.”

“I’d rather throw myself off a cliff,” he says without affectation. “Regardless of what happens with the status of my marriage to Helene, I have every intention…no,” he corrects himself. “I will spend the rest of my life making your mother happy and giving her every wonderful thing she deserves. I promise you, Evan, I will never hurt her again.”

He says this with more conviction than I’ve ever heard from him before—maybe more than I’ve ever heard from anyone—but I still can’t help the niggling doubt worming its way inside me. “What if Helene decides she does want a divorce? What happens then?”

“What do you mean?” says Alexander.

“I mean—will you marry my mom?”

This seems to bring him up short, even though this can’t be the first time he’s thought about it. “Why do you ask?” he says carefully.

“Because…” I hesitate. To me, it’s obvious, but apparently not to him. “Because that would make her queen. And you said so yourself—she doesn’t want that.”

“No, she doesn’t,” he agrees quietly. “And I would never force her into a role she doesn’t want.”

“Then you wouldn’t marry her?” I say. “She’d still be your mistress?”