Four Feet of Hallway
1108 Words
I put the knife on the counter.
Not the drawer. The counter. Within reach. I'm not done with it.
I lean against the sink with my arms crossed and look at the man sitting at my kitchen table. The Crown Prince of Spain, apparently. In my flat. On a Tuesday. Explaining in a very level voice that my six-year-old son has palace enemies who have been watching him since he was four years old. I do the thing I always do when information is too large, strip it down. Facts only. No feeling yet. Feeling is for later, when I can afford it.
"How long have they known about him," I said.
"Approximately two years."
"He is six years old."
"I know."
"They've known since he was four."
"Yes."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"And you," I said. "How long have you known."
"Fourteen months."
I let that land. Fourteen months. Lucas had just turned five. I had taken him to his birthday party at Kofi's house, let him eat too much cake, carried him home on my back because his legs gave out two streets from our building. Fourteen months ago Adrián knew my son existed and said nothing.
"I spent fourteen months trying to find a way to come to you that wouldn't make things worse," he said, reading whatever was on my face.
"Worse how."
"There are people who wanted Lucas managed. Who were considering options beyond money. I needed to arrive in a way that gave you the most protection, not the least."
"What kind of options beyond money," I said.
He looked at his hands on the table, then back at me. He'd made a decision. All of it.
"There was a journalist. Three years ago. She found financial records connecting people inside the palace to arrangements that were not meant to be public. Before she could publish, she had an accident. A car. She recovered, but she has never reported on the royal family since. New city. Different name."
"An accident," I said.
"That's what it was called."
I turned to the kettle. Filled it. Put it on. My hands needed something to do and that was the most neutral thing in the kitchen.
"Who," I said. "Who inside the palace."
"My uncle. Duke Rodrigo. My father's younger brother. He's been second in line his entire adult life. If I die without an acknowledged heir, Rodrigo becomes king. If Lucas is formally recognized —"
"He drops to third."
"Yes."
"And that's sufficient reason for a man to have a journalist run off a road."
"For some people, yes."
I stared at the kettle. The ordinary domestic object. Steam beginning to collect at the spout.
"His own nephew's child," I said. "He'd do that to his own nephew's child."
"He doesn't know Lucas personally. To him, Lucas is a variable. A complication in an arrangement he's been planning for a long time. People like my uncle are very good at not making things personal when it's convenient not to."
The kettle boiled. I didn't move.
"Before any of this," I said. "Before the uncle and the journalist and everything else. I need you to answer one question."
"All right."
"Did you know I was pregnant when you left."
The kitchen went so quiet I could hear the refrigerator hum.
"No," he said.
One word. No hesitation. No preamble. Just no, placed between us with the flatness of a fact.
I watched his face. I've been reading faces my whole life, my mother's when money was short, clients at the salon who love the result with their mouths and hate it with their eyes. His face said: no. Clean. Uncomfortable. A man who is not trying to make the facts look better than they are.
I filed it.
"When you left," I said, "was there a point where you considered not following that order."
"Yes."
"What happened to that point."
"They showed me what would happen to you if I didn't comply." He didn't flinch from it. "I'm not calling it the right decision. I haven't stopped questioning it since."
I sat down across from him. Not because I was comfortable, because I needed to think clearly and fury can be managed from a chair.
"I need you to understand something," I said.
"Tell me."
"The morning after you left I got up, made coffee, and went to work. I had a nine o'clock client and her hair still needed cutting. You don't know what the six weeks after looked like, or the six months, or the year. You don't know what it is to grieve someone who isn't dead, just gone, with no explanation, when the last thing you felt was something you'd been careful not to feel for a very long time."
His jaw tightened. "No. You're right. I don't know that."
"And then I found out I was pregnant."
The word sat between us. Neither of us spoke.
"I raised him alone," I said. "I built everything alone. I'm not telling you this for sympathy. I'm telling you so you're clear about who you're sitting across from and what she has had to carry."
"I'm clear," he said.
My phone rang.
My neighbour. Mrs. Obi from upstairs. I picked up.
"Amara, love, there's a car been sitting at the end of the street since before those other ones arrived. No number plates. Just sitting there. I thought you should know."
I thanked her. I hung up.
Adrián was already on his phone before I could speak, rapid Spanish, short sentences. He listened. His face did the thing I was learning to read, controlled compression. Bad news, not entirely unexpected.
He ended the call.
"It's gone," he said. "Left twenty minutes ago. My team didn't flag it because it wasn't in the immediate vicinity when we arrived."
"So someone was watching this building before you got here."
"Yes."
"Your uncle."
"Almost certainly."
I looked at him across my kitchen table, the Crown Prince of Spain, with his three cars and his palace enemies and his uncle who arranges accidents, and I thought about Lucas at school right now with his bear and his inside-out jumper and his complete, total ignorance of everything that has happened this morning.
A car with no plates had been sitting outside my building before any of this started. Before Adrián arrived. Before I even came back from the school run.
It had already been watching.
"How long do we have," I said.
He looked at me steadily.
"Not long. That's why I need to ask you something." He paused. "I need you to come to Spain."
- Writer
