The camera zooms in on Will and the king, who is thrashing about wildly with his ladies hat, hanging off his neck by a string, slapping Will in the face. With a grave tone, Giles begins to speak again. “This does look extremely dangerous indeed. You can see here that King Winston is clearly in some type of distress.”
“Yes,” Miranda says. “But I want to assure your viewers that the king is fine and did not suffer any physical injuries during his fall.”
“Really? No injuries. Miraculous,” Giles says. “What exactly happened to cause his fall?”
“Well, this is the shocking bit, Giles,” Miranda says. “A heated argument broke out on the boat over whether or not dolphins are fish or mammals.”
After a pause, Giles says, “Um…are you certain?”
“Quite. I can’t get into further detail as we need to run some things past the network’s legal team, but I can say we’ve got it all on film.”
“But surely everyone knows they’re mammals,” Giles says, his face appearing on the screen again next to the words “KING ALMOST DROWNS IN YACHT MISHAP.”
“Apparently, not everyone,” Miranda answers.
“But who was arguing on the side of fish?” Giles asks.
“I can’t say.”
“Wow. And how exactly did King Winston wind up going overboard?”
“That’s the odd bit. Mr. Banks’ sister-in-law, a one Ms. Libby Banks, knocked him over with her pregnant belly.”
Giles stammers. “Are you…sure about that?”
“I watched it happen,” Miranda says authoritatively. “She’s got a huge pregnant belly, to be honest. Apparently, there’s only one baby in there, but that’s got to be one enormous child.”
“That is…well…I don’t even know what to say. In all my years as a newsman, I’ve never heard of a woman using her baby bump as a weapon. Did she mean to do it?”
“Oh, yes. She was quite furious,” Miranda says, quickly adding, “But, I really can’t say anything more. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have said that much.”
“Wow, shocking. Absolutely shocking.” Giles shakes his head, then says, “I guess we’ll have to wait until the story unfolds further. In the meantime, God save the king.”
Well, that couldn’t have gone much worse. My family is now in an all-out war with Arabella’s, and I’m certain things are broken beyond repair. I only heard the rest of what happened on the yacht second-hand from Emma. I was on one of the rescue boats with Reynard for the trip back to the resort, but from what she told me, there was a significant amount of yelling, many tears, and lots of snot. All the transgressions of the last twenty hours came out, including, but not limited to: a) my family being judgemental, as proved by their use of the phrase hoity-toity, b) her family being told in no uncertain terms that they definitelyarehoity-toity due to their use of the word commoner, c) lots of back and forth over who’s smarter than whom, and d) my family being accused of being horrible liars, trying to lure unsuspecting tourists to their death by great white shark.
Oh, and in the irony to end all ironies, apparently the three kids started to like each other so much that they all bawled and clung to each other when it was time to get off the yacht (which was the cause of the aforementioned snot). And it’s all on film, which is just terrific.
While I’m not sorry I missed it, the reason I was in the rescue boat and not at the helm of the yacht with Arabella was because my future father-in-law broke my nose by bashing it with the back of his head while he was panicking. This meant Harrison had to climb back aboard to sail to shore while I waited for the bleeding to stop, which it didn’t. So I had to go to the hospital to have my nose reset. It was either that or live with it being sideways for the rest of my life.
The speedboats arrive much quicker than the yacht, so I didn’t even get a chance to see Arabella before I was whisked off in an ambulance along with my father-in-law, who burped and shook the entire way into San Filipe. He’s fine by the way. The waters are too warm to get hypothermia, and I managed to get to him within a few seconds of him falling in, so, other than a mouthful of water, he’s got nothing to complain about. Well, except for being taken out yachting in the first place, and I suppose being knocked overboard. He and I didn’t say a word the entire ride, but, needless to say, it was awkward.
It took four hours for me to have my turn with the doctor who reset my nose (not fun). Apparently, King Winston was released after an hour when the full team of doctors who attended to him gave him the all-clear. And now I’m on my way back to the resort, with Emma at the wheel of one of the resort’s jeeps. She’s been surprisingly quiet since she picked me up. Not one sarcastic comment. Not even a tiny joke about the super suave nose splint I have to wear for the next five days.
Finally, after we ride in silence all the way through the streets of San Filipe and make it onto the highway, she glances at me. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, my voice sounding like I have the worst cold of my life. “This is nothing.”
“No, I meant about the big dust up.”
I blow out a puff of air and shake my head. “Why couldn’t everyone just be nice to each other? Seriously? Would it have been so hard to just let things slide? It’s not like we’re going to have to spend much time together in the future.”
Emma nods. “Yeah, that was rough. It was like we all just brought out the worst in each other. And that shit Arthur said about Clara—not cool. I don’t care who you are, you don’t talk about my niece that way.”
I close my eyes and lean my head back against the seat. “I figured it might be a little uncomfortable, but I had no idea it would turn into this.”
“For what it’s worth, Libby feels awful about knocking the king overboard with her baby bump. She said she forgot how big she is.”
I wave off the comment. “I know she didn’t do it on purpose. But how the hell do we move on from here?”
