6
Even alone up here in an aspen grove and tall spires of pines, the little cabin ahead of us was dressed up like a Christmas elf. Antlers hung above the front door wore a fur-trimmed red hat. Pinecone wreaths stood sentinel at each window. Around us, a mild breeze spun an angel song in our ears.
“What’s this? Who lives here?” Brodie, who’d been raised in a palace, seemed awed by the humble little place.
I dismounted, and he followed. We looped our reins over a rustic post. “Nobody. This is Homestead Lodge. It’s kind of a rest stop. This is still Hearts Crossing land, but the family has a contract with the forest service to make sure elk have enough fodder during the winter months. So we have permission to take sleighs through the national forest. Sometimes paying tourists want to help, or see the herds. We’re about half-way up to Blessing Ridge, which has the best view of the herds. Folks can stop in here to warm up. So let’s do that ourselves.”
Like everything else at the ranch, the little cabin was unlocked. We stepped inside, and because we’d already been out in the cold air for an hour or more, the temperature inside was do-able. The fireplace, already prepared with dry windfall and kindling (including dozens of pinecones) came to quick life with a barbeque starter.
“Wow. This is great.” Brodie walked to a small table made from burl wood. “But I can’t believe it’s unlocked. It’s miles from anywhere.”
“Well, we don’t exactly store our crown jewels here,” I said, and Brodie laughed at my first royal joke. “But yeah. In case anybody gets lost or there’s a sudden blizzard, hikers or snow-shoers can refuge here, too. And—” I looked at him probably flirtier than I should have— “it’s the one place we can escape my ten thousand relatives.”
He looked straight at me, and I flushed.
I rushed on. “Um, there’s power, and a microwave. Would you like some cocoa?”
“Yeah. But only with marshmallows.” His laughing eyes dared me.
“You got it. Make yourself at home.” I headed toward the little kitchenette area, and Brodie unzipped his jacket and settled into a buffalo plaid upholstered couch.
I dumped instant cocoa into mugs and poured bottled water over it. When the chocolate was hot, I brought us two mugs-full, and sat by his side. There were other chairs, but I couldn’t help myself. Figured if he’d wanted to sit apart from me, he’d have taken a single chair first. “I’m sure somewhere on Gram-Elaine’s agenda will be a time when everybody’s sleighed up here. We’ll be making pinecone wreaths or stringing cranberries and popcorn before long.”
“Sounds about right,” He grinned at me over his cup. “This would be the place to do it.” True to a prince, marshmallow stuck nowhere on his magnificent face. Which sobered quick. “Now, about Ilka.” His neck tightened as he swallowed hard.
“No, Brodie, you don’t have to. I’d really none of my business.”
He looked somehow surprised. “Of course it is. You’re my friend. Ilka needed me last night.” His eyes closed and his lips tightened. “Olwer broke up with her.”
“Her college love?”
“One and the same.”
“But isn’t she visiting Prince Sebestyen?”
“Yup. Olwer did it by text.”
Ouch. “But…” I started slow. “Uh, well, there wasn’t much hope for a future together. Right? From what you’ve said.”
Brodie’s sigh reached deep into his chest. “Ilka’s an optimist. I guess she’s always held hope something would work out. I didn’t know until last night, but she has petitioned Fokletung—our parliament—to amend the marriage and succession rules about commoners.”
“But doesn’t the monarch—your father, have to approve any royal marriage?”
Brodie nodded. “Yes, of course. And he has always liked Olwer and trusts Ilka’s judgment. However, only the Fokletung has the power to amend new royal and marriage succession laws. And Olwer said even if they could actually marry, he opposes the royal pressure she’s under, her whole life in a glass house for everybody to see.”
I fumed at Olwer. A text? And… “Well, her lifestyle can’t possibly be a surprise to him,,” I sniffed. “And look at all the good her position allows her to do! The children’s charities and relief societies? I know how hard she works with the disadvantaged. She’s in the news just about every single day.”
“That he gets, I think. And interestingly, it was never the paparazzi that bothered him. I think he likes being mildly famous. But to have your nail color or lipstick color dictated?” Brodie snorted. “I imagine he thinks Ilka should rebel a little more.”
Well, of course I know a lot of that from my royal-watching. Skirt lengths, heel height. The proper way to wave a hand. Outfits marked with the date worn so as not to commit a fashion faux pas and wear a favorite too soon again. I laughed inside myself. I had already planned to wear my snowflake sweater again tonight because it looked good on me. Two days in a row.
Another deep princely sigh. “Ilka hasn’t been allowed a pair of shorts in years, should some lucky paparazzi get a good optic. I suppose similar rules like that would apply to her husband.” Brodie mused, then scowled. “Oh, and she must always keep a hat handy, to remind the world her head will one day wear a crown. No matter if it’s just a beanie or a ball cap.”
His sad confusion, mixed with regrets and brotherly love for his sister, chilled my heart, even in this warm cozy cabin. How lost he seemed, how puzzled and almost alone. I had thought today would be the time to bare my soul, about my surgeries and injuries, but I needed to bare the most important part of my soul first.
I took a deep breath. “Brodie, do you, do you and Ilka ever look to God for guidance?”
“What do you mean?” His handsome forehead crunched in puzzlement.
“I mean, ask Him to lead you. Where He wants you to be.”
Brodie slurped down the last of his cocoa in a most gentlemanly way, then stayed silent, staring into the fire.
Heat not from the fire smeared my flesh. I didn’t think I’d overstepped, and no believer should ever be ashamed to mention our Lord, and this had seemed the time and place, but…
Finally, he looked at me and spoke. “Ilka and I were raised in the state religion. Baptized, confirmed Christians. We and our parents worship publicly at the national cathedral. The family have a private palace chapel and our personal confessor. But none of it stuck.” Brodie looked away, cheeks pink and not from the fire. “Because none of it helped.”
His hands flailed like dying birds, and I grabbed them between my own. I didn’t need to hear any more, but wanted him to feel that he could speak free. Settling into the nest of my fingers, his squeezed them.
“Addie, all things considered, Ilka and I had a happy childhood. Our parents were gone a great deal, or at the governing buildings, but we were always left in good hands. My father’s equerry and his family lived in a beautiful stone house on the grounds of our country palace. Their house was far older than the palace itself. Those historic volcanic rocks, remember?” Brodie’s laugh whispered the sweetness of happy times. “His son Rasmus and daughter Randi, Ilka, and I, were inseparable growing up.”
Brodie’s voice lightened, trailed off into good memories, and he smiled. “Swimming, fishing. Skiing at our one mountaintop resort. Snowshoeing. Camping during our brief summer times. We tutored together in the palace schoolrooms. Played together endlessly. Teased each other mercilessly.”
He stopped for so long I asked if he wanted more cocoa.
“No thanks. Just thinking back. Then came time for Ilka’s training. Randi’s too, as she’s in line to be a lady-in-waiting. The girls were sent to finishing school in Switzerland when they were thirteen. To make then into ladies.” He chuckled. ”Girls I’d seen with scraped knees and dirty feet. Anyway, their education consisted of diplomatic languages, etiquette. Fashion weeks in Paris and New York. Rasmus and I, were sent to a—” he snorted “—to a rather rough and tumble boarding school in Finland. To make us into men. Cold showers, overnight hikes foraging for our own food. That sort of thing.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Much of it sounded pretty cool, and not anything to wreck one’s childhood belief. Then I remembered him stumbling through grace last night. What if he hadn’t prayed for real in just ever?
“Then Raz…died. We were thirteen.” His words slowed with pain. “My best friend.”
My heart shattered at the words. I gasped out loud. “Oh, Brodie, I’m so sorry. How tragic.”
“Yeah. A car hit him. He was on his bicycle peddling in a dedicated bike lane. The driver left the scene.” He swallowed hard again. “My parents cancelled their itineraries to be home with Raz. With us. He…was in coma for almost a week. I never left his side. I begged God to let him stay, to be well again. I trusted my childhood Bible lessons. Then…” Brodie lifted wet lashes to me. “Then Raz woke up. Oh, such joy. I still feel it to the ends of my toes. But…he passed away that night. God tortured us with those few minutes of hope. So that’s the reason none of it stuck. Raz was faithful. Obedient. Only to die. What was the point?”
Brodie’s grief hung silent on the air, but I could hear it. Feel it. Remember my dad suffering for years. None of us trusted enough back then, the way I trusted, the way I knew now.
“Brodie, God wanted to take him home, to heaven.”
He scoffed. “Then why build up our hopes? Give us a miracle for a few hours. Only to have him die anyway?”
This was the tough part. And a question the faithful and the atheist have asked for thousands of years. “God doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we want, Brodie. Sometimes He says yes, for sure. Other times, not now. And somehow, plain old no. He wants us to trust Him that the answer He gives is the right one. Even if we don’t like it or understand.”
“So what’s His answer for Ilka?” His voice tinged with agony. “Don’t you think she has prayed, believed? I’ve held her sobbing her guts out in my arms. All she hears is duty, duty, duty for the only life she will ever get.”
I cleared marshmallow and chocolate from my throat, prayed a little request of my own. “Brodie, believing doesn’t give you a free ride to a…to a land without problems and challenges. Even accidents and dying. Believing brings you trust. Trust that regardless of the answers, forgiveness and strength and salvation are always God’s free gifts to us. As for Raz”—I tossed at Brodie what I hoped was a meaningful glance— “Maybe, just maybe, God in His wisdom let Raz wake up to give you a chance say goodbye. To tell him you loved him one more time.”
He shrugged, but it wasn’t an off-hand, rude gesture. “I don’t know. I guess. But yeah, I remember those lessons as a kid. I didn’t get it, but I believed it anyway. Like kids here believe in Santa. In Dornfeld, it’s Juulniss or the Christmas Cat. But I do hear you, and I respect your faith. I’m a little jealous, even, that it helps you so much. But for myself, I just don’t know. Besides losing my best friend, I am part of a family directly involved in global affairs. I see problems and horrors everywhere. More stuff that I and Ilka can never fix. No matter if we do pray.”
“Brodie, I, I get it. I get you. I do understand. But faith isn’t something you obtain that stays the same. We aren’t perfect beings. We all get tired and disappointed and doubtful. Even deny and curse.”
“Well, then what?” Doubt clouded his eyes, his tone, but I could sense him searching.
“Sometimes the challenges of life push us to the end of our rope.” I pushed on, because this was the part of faith I had found, that I had lived. “But that rope won’t ever break. God sees to it. And in the chance you slip off, He’s there to catch you. I know. For sure.”
Now was the time, my time. Not that I compared my puny little challenges with wars and rumors of wars, disease and famine, betrayal and conflict. A dead best friend. “I think I said, or at least hinted, that it took my dad years to get over the plane crash. Well, it took me most of my life.”
“I don’t understand.” Brodie’s deep dark brows drew a straight line of concern. His fingers chilled. “I thought you were a baby and too little to remember.”
“I was.” I wiggled against the sofa back to un-tense my shoulders. This was too deep a time to feel relaxed. “Obviously, I survived, but my spine was terribly injured in the crash. I was strapped in a baby seat, but my—mom was found unbuckled. It looked like she’d turned to help me get more settled, give me a binky or something. So sometimes I felt, I wondered…was that my fault? Did I cause her to die? Daddy and I survived—we were strapped in. As I grew up without a mom, that possibility was always an ugly little, uh, wormhole in my brain.”
He widened his wonderful eyes and squeezed my hand again, his fingers warmer now. I liked it, liked that he was here and now. Liked that I could finally reveal my truth.
“Addie…”
I smiled to un-tense him.
“Anyway, I spent a good chunk of my early childhood having operations and wearing body casts. Constant physical therapy. I learned to walk OK, but balance and muscle tone were always a challenge. That’s how we met the Martins of Hearts Crossing Ranch. They run a hippotherapy program for kids with special needs.” He almost smiled, and I lightly punched his arm. “It has nothing to do with hippopotamuses. I was twelve then, and things seemed pretty good. But…”
His eyes widened, and I saw myself in them, like reflection in a pool. “Nate never said…”
“He teases me like crazy, but he’s a pretty good guy. I doubt he’d break the code of sibling silence.” Yeah, I loved my big bro. “You understand how he is. He kept the fraternity code of silence all these years. And I’m sure you don’t gossip about Ilka.”
Brodie nodded. “Nope. Walls have ears everywhere. Well, except at Hearts Crossing.”
I chuckled a little. It was funny. And nobody had to worry about the cowboys. They had a strict code.
“Anyway…” I had to sigh, remembering again times of bad news and scares. “Finally, we all thought my problems were over. That my spine had moved on. Then when I was fourteen and of course, just about to start high school—” I couldn’t stop the eye roll “—I experienced more issues. Some traumatic scoliosis due to my prior injuries. And spinal tethering, caused by scars from my prior operations. It was affecting even my legs. Ironically, it’s corrected by more surgery. But in a nutshell, just when it was safe to come out of the water, I was zapped again. My point is, if my family and I hadn’t been led to Hearts Crossing, to be enclosed by a family not just by love but by faith, those latest health challenges would have been tons harder to bear.”
“But you’re all right now?”
“Seem to be. Although I’m kind of like Ilka, not being seen in shorts.” I had to go on, tell all of it. “My unspoken rule. I’ve got scars up and down my back, and even the tops of my legs. Not very pretty.”
He rolled his eyes now. “I love how you look. Who care about scars? They mean you’ve healed. Endured. Remember Princess Eugenie?”
Of course. The beautiful royal bride who wore a low back and no veil so show the world the beauty of her own scars.
“Yes, she’s one of my heroes.” And she would have been even if I hadn’t been a royalty groupie. “Just sayin’. I could have whined and complained and not looked ahead to tomorrow. Not that I’m so great. I just depended on God to hold my hand and see me through. I knew He’d never leave my side. He does guide us. And doesn’t ever send something we can’t bear.”
“How do you know?”