He couldn’t utter a word. His lips felt as stiff as if he’d climbed from a December ocean.
“Take your time reading while you finish eating,” she offered. “Then let me know what you think.” Her accent was flavored with New England. Maple-syrup sweet, with a touch of Yankee logic. He would have liked to get to know her better, a whole lot better. She seemed a nice person, in addition to being so easy on the eyes. But it appeared that more pressing matters were on deck.
Dan took a bite of his cooling crab cake and chewed without tasting anything, then studied her as she sipped her cola. “There’s a lot riding on this, isn’t there? I mean, aside from being hounded by the press.”
She slanted him a look that would have done the Mona Lisa proud. “There might be.”
Dan slipped a thin stack of photocopies from the envelope. He scanned the first report quickly:
Daniel Robert Jennings. Born August 20, 1970. Verified location of birth: Baltimore, Maryland. Birth certificate on record. Mother: Margaret Jennings. No father listed. Name of mother and child legally changed three months later: Eastwood. Reason given: marriage to Carl Eastwood. No Carl Eastwood match through public records. Internet search unsuccessful. Social Security source reports no matches for location and dates given. Results: Suspect fictitious name.
There were other reports, which he read hastily, his pulse throbbing in his temple, his mouth going stone dry…
Margaret Jennings, scholarship student at the Sorbonne, 1969-1970. Superior student. Dropped out of school 3/70. Reason given: personal.
Frigid droplets of sweat skittered down the back of his neck. He stared at the next page’s remarks: “Love letters signed ‘your adoring Margaret,’ no envelopes.” There were even photocopies of two of the letters. He tried not to think about the passion and longing behind the words, which seemed far too personal to be read by other than the two people involved. But he needed only to glance at the handwriting to know it was amazingly similar to Madge’s flowery style. Then there was another notation:
Letters from His Royal Highness Karl von Austerand to one Margaret Jennings in the United States, dated 1970 (3), 1972 (2), 1973, 1975, 1976 and 1980—all returned as undeliverable.
“Well?” Elly asked, glancing up at him from her empty plate.
He smiled weakly. “I imagine Karl’s legitimate son might be a little nervous about this discovery of yours.”
“More than nervous. Particularly since you were born before he was.”
“Ouch.”
“It gets worse,” she assured him. “Somebody in the palace leaked rumors of the affair. A reporter and his photographer are hot on your trail. They were following me, but I shook them off in Baltimore. It’s only luck that I found you before they did.”
Dan no longer felt hungry. He pushed his plate away. Visions of TV cameras, reporters armed with microphones and endless telephone calls from pushy media hawks flooded his imagination. For an instant he tried to tell himself that it might be a good thing—free publicity for the Haven and his City Kids program.
A second later, reality smacked him upside his head. It wouldn’t be his property or his favorite charity that would get all the attention. It would be Madge and the past she’d tried so hard to hide from him, from her friends and neighbors, from the world. This would kill her.
He stared numbly at Elly across the table. “We didn’t ask for this.”
“I know. But I promise you, my father and I had nothing to do with letting your mother’s past become public knowledge. And now we’ll do everything we can to help both you and Madge weather the storm.”
“What do you intend to do? Wave a magic wand and make us disappear?”
She gave him another one of those delicious enigmatic smiles. “Something like that.”
Elly was relieved when Dan told her he would agree to go with her to Elbia. But convincing his mother to evacuate her comfy cottage was, at first, a struggle. Then came the first phone call from a Washington Star reporter.
Apparently the British press who had first been leaked the information had contacted several American newspapers in their search for the missing prince of Elbia. The Star put a team on the story and soon it was clear that the prying phone calls were destined to become even more harassing visits. Madge was so horrified at the prospect of her home being invaded she reluctantly agreed to the trip.
With help from the Elbian embassy, Elly booked all three of them on the Concorde for that night. On their way from the Eastern Shore of Maryland to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C., they somehow picked up two carloads of reporters. “It’s all right,” Elly assured a frightened Madge, “as long as we keep moving, they can’t get to you. And State Department security is waiting for us at the airport.”
The limousine she had ordered raced the two black sedans through twisting roadways approaching the international terminals, then the three of them were led to a lounge where security guards kept the press at bay while they waited to board the plane. Soon, a State Department courier arrived with passports for Dan and his mother, and minutes later they were herded onto the immense jet without being accosted. She felt like giving a victory cheer. But as the sleek, tipped-nose Concorde took off with a gentle rumble into the night, Elly sensed they’d only temporarily eluded their troubles.
The seating on the Concorde felt far more spacious than that on most commercial flights. Elly had never flown on the famous French-built jet that only the elite of the world could afford. Two roomy seats were positioned on either side of the aisle, and the service was impeccably attentive. Madge and Dan sat on one side. Elly was on the opposite side of the aisle, at the window seat, while the place beside her remained empty.
After they’d taken off into the night, Elly closed her eyes for a moment. Exhaustion overcame her. She felt weightless; her mind drifted. Back to another time in her life. A time when there had been more than just two Andersons. Elly, Dad…Mom. She felt herself being sucked back in time as she pictured her mother’s face smiling down at her. Elly fought the memories, struggled to escape from the images that kept her from finding peace in her own life. Her heart began to race. Her breaths came in short, shallow puffs as the muscles in her chest constricted. Resisting was futile…
“It’s going to be all right, Elly,” her mother had promised when Elly became concerned that her baby brother might come at night while Elly slept. Then she’d miss all the excitement. “It’s all planned. The doctor will meet me at the hospital on the date you and I wrote on the calendar. Remember? I’ll have an operation called a cesarean section to take the baby from my tummy. You’ll be able to see him minutes after he’s born, then you and I will fight over who gets to cuddle him.”
They’d laughed together over that. Her father had told Elly that, at twelve years of age, she was almost old enough to be a little mother herself, at least in some cultures in other parts of the world. Even before the baby’s seventh month of gestation, she had begun to feel her little brother in her arms, to sense a growing protectiveness of him and know that they would be a wonderful family together—the four of them.
Then the half sleep she’d sunk into on the plane dragged her deeper into darker memories. Of that night.
Again she was tortured by Patricia Anderson’s agonized screams and her father’s shouts for help to the 911 operator. When she’d tried to go to her mother, Frank had blocked her from the bedroom, shouting frantically at her that she couldn’t go in, shoving her back into her own room as if she were being punished for a crime she didn’t understand.
Blue and red lights flashed in the street outside her window. She’d watched two paramedics rush into the house while the driver pulled a gurney from the ambulance. “She will be okay,” she whispered to herself.