“It’s Saturday and we’re short-staffed today. The front desk person looks like she was helping visitors check in and missed him walking out. Calm down, Bellamy. We’ll find him. He likely didn’t go far.”
Calm down? Impossible. My father has been missing for forty minutes. “He has his phone. I just spoke to him. Hold on, I’m going to track him on the app.” Shifting over to an alcove, I pull up the geolocator app I have and… “Oh my god!” I cover my mouth with my hand. “He’s at the palace.”
“The palace? What palace?”
“The palace. As in where the king and his family live. The palace a half an hour from here. He must have taken a cab or the bus or something.”
“That’s bad, Bellamy. No one is allowed in the palace. No outsiders at all. He’s American and has all but forgotten French. They’ll arrest him.”
“Maybe he’s just walking the grounds and isn’t actually inside it. I’m going to borrow a car and go get him.”
“I need to report this,” Maurice tells me.
“Just give me some time, okay? You said they’d arrest him, let me see if I can get to him first.”
“Okay. I’ll buy you some time, but hurry. The palace guards won’t tolerate a man carrying a strange device in his hands. Good luck and keep me updated.”
Racing back to my building, I borrow my landlord’s car and fly down the road as fast as I can. Despite my dread, the ride is gorgeous, the countryside loaded with sunflowers, cypresstrees, and olive and lemon groves. The air is peppered with their fragrance, and it’s easy to see why Empress Messalina was so in love with this place.
I have no idea what I’ll face when I reach the palace. It’s closed to the public, as you’d expect since the royal family is living there and they stay shut away from everything. Rumor says that the king and his family haven’t left the palace since the queen died.
That happened six months after we moved to Messalina, and since then, the country hasn’t been the same. I mean, it’s not difficult to understand why. I know about the history and tragedies of the royal family. The murmurs of a curse. People smile and are cheery and go about their days and do their business. You’d never know anything was amiss unless you peeled back the surface and looked beneath.
Then it’s not so difficult to find.
The darkness that lurks. Waiting. The tense edginess people feel. There’s an undercurrent in Messalina. A storm cloud hovering in the otherwise pristine sky, perpetually threatening a devastating storm. You never know when or how it will come, but it’s there, always a reminder that it’s just a matter of time.
Such sadness lingers beneath the surface of all the beauty here.
The ride isn’t all that long, half an hour at most, which I cut down to twenty minutes by going thirty over the speed limit. Suddenly I’m pulling up to the ancient gates with tall, foreboding stone walls and high, thick, well-groomed hedges. The palace itself is magnificent and massive, perfectly symmetrical with tall dormers on either side. Despite its beauty, there is something about it that brings an involuntary shudder to my body. The moment it came into view, it was as if everything surrounding it ceased, and now, I can’t seem to do anything other than stare at it.
What these people have gone through.
Perhaps that’s why something about it feels like home somehow.
Tragedy befalls us all regardless of wealth or station in life. Maybe that, more than love, is our great unifier. It’s the sadness in others we see reflected in ourselves. I know loss and I know tragedy and I know despair and I know heartache. Not the same as this family, but loss is loss and pain is pain for all of us, no matter the cause or form they come in.
Gravel crunches beneath my boots as I step out of the car, pulling up my app once again. My father is inside the palace. Fuck. Just fuck. “What the hell are you doing here, Dad?”
Nervously, I follow the path up to the exterior gate. Three guards are standing at attention.
“Palace is off-limits, mademoiselle,” one of them says to me in French, his expression stern and unyielding.
“Yes. I know. I…uh.” I blow out a breath. “Listen, I have reason to suspect that my father is inside. He’s unwell and I’m tracking him on an app.”
I flip my phone around so he can see it.
“One moment, please.” He presses a button on his earpiece and murmurs into it. “I’m sorry, but he’s been detained inside. He broke into the palace and tried to take something. He’s been combative.”
I practically collapse, my body trembling, my mind dizzy. “Please, you have to let me in to get him. He has early-onset dementia. He thought he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States. He doesn’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He means no harm. I promise.”
His severe expression is unchanged. “I’m sorry. There isn’t anything we can do until we investigate further.”
“So he’s your prisoner? No,” I cry, my breath short and choppy, my hands clinging to the bars of the gate. “Please, I’m begging you. Just let me take him back to the facility he lives in.Isn’t that the easiest thing? He’s not well, but he knows me. I can help.”
He exchanges a look I can’t read with the guard beside him. “I’m really not allowed to let anyone in. The palace is forbidden to visitors. The king and his children are inside, and under no circumstances is anyone permitted near them.”
“I’m not interested in the royal family,” I counter. “Can’t you bring my father out to me?” The words come out strangled.
