They pulled up in front of the school with five minutes to spare. His phone rang—again—as he parked haphazardly.
“Hi,” he said, picking up Dani’s call as he held the passenger-side door for the princess. Dani had been calling for the past twenty minutes, but without a Bluetooth system in the rental, he hadn’t been able to pick up while driving. “I’m here, I’m here.”
“Okay, good. I was starting to fear you weren’t going to make it.”
“I’ll be there in two minutes.”
“I’ve saved you a seat. On the left about halfway back.”
He glanced at Marie, who was looking around like she was a tourist in Times Square instead of on an unremarkable street in the Bronx. “I need two seats.” He was met by silence, so he added, “I, uh, brought a guest.”
“Oh my god, you brought the princess of Eldovia, didn’t you?”
“I did not,” he said as he grabbed the very same princess and started towing her toward the entrance.
“Oh my god!” Dani went on. “I can’t believe—”
He hung up, turned to Marie, and said, “Remember when you were running for the boat?”
She nodded.
“This is my version of running for the boat.”
And bless her, she nodded again, more vehemently this time, and took off ahead of him toward the door.
Inside, Leo spotted Dani right away. She was standing near the back—she must have moved from her original spot—guarding three chairs. The silver lining of their late arrival was that he didn’t have to do more than quickly introduce the two women before the lights went out. And even that he didn’t really have to do because after he’d said, “This is my friend, Daniela Martinez,” Marie preemptively stuck out her hand and said, “Marie Accola.”
The lights went out, and after some scrambling and whispering from backstage, some high-powered fans started imposing a “tornado” on Kansas.
The show was pretty great, and not just kid-great. The school was a technology magnet, so Leo hadn’t had high hopes, but whatever the play lacked in terms of show-biz skills of its actors, it made up for in production values. Beside him, Marie gasped audibly when Dorothy woke up and a cool trick of light and engineering saw the black-and-white sets of Kansas replaced by the splendor of Oz.
He was acutely aware of Marie’s reactions to everything, even though most of them were more subtle than that gasp. She clapped and laughed, and when he sneaked a glance at her, she was rapt. He would have thought she’d be accustomed to . . . he didn’t even know. Opera? Ballet? Whatever it was rich people did when they wanted to be entertained. But it seemed that this modest, homespun production truly delighted her.
And then the Lollipop Guild—not League—appeared along with the rest of the Munchkins. And there she was, his Gabby. It was probably all the mucking about he’d done the last two days in memories best left undisturbed, but something turned over in Leo’s chest. He was so fucking proud of her. Which was dumb, because it wasn’t like this was an actual achievement. She was just on the side of the pack, dressed in neon colors holding an oversized piece of cardboard made to look like a lollipop.
She was just standing there.
But, she was standing there. Alive and thriving—mostly. Smiling through the nerves that were clearly visible—to him, anyway—on her face. Growing up so fast.
The one thing he hadn’t been prepared for when it came to his role as a pseudodad was the wrenching contradictions that came with the gig. He wanted her to grow up, yet he didn’t. She was a child, yet not a child. She’d had her first period, yet there she was, part of a crowd of Munchkins, looking younger than her years.
As the Lullaby League wrapped up their welcome to Dorothy, that Aidan punk stepped up. Leo leaned forward in his seat. There was a pause.
Say it. Say it.
“We represent the Lollipop Guild.”
Leo expelled the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Then Gabby, smooth as anything, handed Dorothy her lollipop and said, “And on behalf of the Lollipop Guild, we welcome you to Munchkin Land.”
His hands shot up into the air. He wasn’t sure if he meant to clap them over his head or to pump his fists in victory, but of course neither was appropriate for this context. This wasn’t an Islanders game. The show had moved on and there were people behind him, people who were probably just as excited about their own kids’ theatrical triumphs.
So he lowered his arms, trying to be smooth. And failing, judging by the fact that both Dani and Marie were looking at him with amusement. Dani actually snorted.
The rest of the play was boring. What could he say? Other people’s kids were boring.
But at the end, even though the play had been a nonmusical version, everyone came out and sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Gabby was back, smiling and singing and waving the cardboard lollipop she must have gotten back from Dorothy.
When Leo leapt to his feet along with the rest of the crowd in a standing ovation, he had never meant anything more.
As the applause died down, Marie leaned over and whispered to Leo, “Can we keep the princess thing quiet?”
He turned to her but didn’t answer. His eyes raked over her body in a way that made her feel . . . funny. “We can try,” he finally said.
Was she not dressed appropriately? She’d tried to dress more businesslike than princesslike this morning, but it seemed that coat dresses were not quite the thing in America.
“I don’t want to upstage your sister, or any of the other children,” she whispered, and it was true—or part of the truth. The rest of it was that she was having so much fun. The students’ enthusiasm for the play, the parents’ pride—it was all contagious. And, goodness: Leo. He could be such a grump, but he was practically oozing love for his sister.
“Yeah, well, my sister is the one likely to bust your cover. She hasn’t had the easiest time socially since she started middle school, and having an honest-to-God princess come see her play is probably the best thing that’s happened to her all year.”
Daniela handed Leo a bouquet of flowers. “We’re supposed to meet them in the lunchroom.”
“Thank you for this,” Leo said, his tone fervent. “I should have thought of this.”
“That’s why you have me.” Daniela must be Leo’s girlfriend. Marie had been so fixated on the fact that Leo was Gabby’s brother and not father, but of course why would a handsome man like him not have a girlfriend?
And why was that disappointing?
Marie reminded herself that Leo’s romantic attachments or lack thereof were no concern of hers, had absolutely no bearing on her life.
Some awkwardness settled as they made their way to the lunchroom. Munchkins and flying monkeys and all manner of creature were milling around, reunited with proud parents. Marie’s awkwardness wasn’t only that she didn’t want to out herself as royalty, but that she felt her otherness. Her apartness. She wasn’t a parent. There were no children running up to hug her—and she probably wouldn’t have known how to act if there were. There was no place for her in this circle of warmth and goodwill.
She tried to tell herself this was nothing new. She was accustomed to feeling like she didn’t belong—like she wasn’t charming enough, or graceful enough, to meet people’s expectations. It happened all the time. At parties—like last night on the boat. Anytime she had to dance. When she was trying to get her father and his advisers to let her allocate some time and capital to what they snootily called her “do-gooder projects.”
But it actually made sense that she felt like an outsider here, at this middle school in the Bronx. She was one, objectively speaking.
So why did that fact make her so sad?
Marie watched Daniela approach Gabby. She had the dog that had played Toto—and that had been in the taxi the other night—on a leash. They embraced, and soon they were talking easily. Dani didn’t have a child here, either, but she had an ease about her that Marie envied.
Her brooding was cut off by the appearance of Leo by her side.
“There you are. I was starting to wonder if you’d turned into a pumpkin.”
She tried not to smile. She didn’t want to be so easy for him to amuse. “I think it was the carriage that turned into a pumpkin, not Cinderella.”
“Whatever.” He hitched his head toward the center of the gathering, where Gabby and Daniela were still smiling and laughing. “Come on.”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“Are you kidding? She would murder me in my sleep if she found out you were here and she didn’t get to say hello. Actually, no, she wouldn’t wait for me to fall asleep. She’d just do it here, in cold blood. Do you want my blood on your hands?”
“I do need someone to drive me around this weekend.”
“Follow me.” Leo cut a path for them through the crowd, nodding at the occasional parent. As they passed Dorothy, who was huddling with Glinda the Good Witch, he leaned over and spoke low in Marie’s ear. “Contrary to appearances, Dorothy and Glinda are first-class bullies.”
“Is this the source of the social trouble your sister is having?”
“I think so. She seems to want to be friends with them, but I’m not sure why. They seem awful.”
“Like the Plastics.”
“Like the what?”
“From the movie Mean Girls.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
Marie was tickled that she could pull out an American pop culture reference Leo didn’t know. “The only thing to do, really, is to wait it out. Grow up and have your revenge.”
“Is that what you did?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean Lucrecia von Bachenheim,” he said without hesitation.
She was surprised he remembered her actual name, given that he’d been calling her Lucrecia von Whatever yesterday.
“Well, I’m not sure I really achieved revenge. I guess my revenge is more in my position, but I was born to that, so I can’t really take credit for it.”
“Did Lucrecia von Bachenheim address the United Nations yesterday?”
She was saved from having to respond, because they’d reached Gabby, but she took his point. In fact, his point made her smile to herself.
“I told her you were here but that you wanted to keep things locked down,” Leo whispered.
“Hi!” Gabby whisper-yelled. Then she started to curtsy. It was impossibly cute and completely unnecessary, so Marie, before she could overthink it, intercepted her with a hug. See? She could do this.
“You were wonderful!”
“I can’t believe you came!”
Marie glanced at Leo. It wasn’t like she’d been planning to come.
Leo winked at her. “She said she couldn’t miss it.”
“Gabby, you were so good!” A voice from behind Marie caused her to turn, but not before she’d caught sight of the look on Leo’s face.
It was Dorothy, with Glinda by her side. Hmm.
Gabby stiffened. “Oh, I only had one line. You guys were the ones who were so good!” Her enthusiasm was clearly forced. Marie had no idea precisely what these girls had done to Gabby, but she found herself inclined to dislike them on sight. That inclination was ratified when Glinda outright ogled Leo in a way that was entirely inappropriate for an eighth grader to look at a grown man. “Hi, Leo.”
“Girls,” Leo said, and Marie wondered if he was stressing the word to remind them of the age gap.
“I don’t believe we’ve met,” Dorothy said to Marie, the formal phrase making her sound like a little girl impersonating an adult.
“This is my friend, Marie,” Leo said quickly, and though she appreciated that he was rushing to introduce her like that so her cover wouldn’t be blown, Marie had changed her mind on that front. What was a little unwanted attention if it would earn Gabby some social capital?
So she lifted her chin, tried to channel her mother, and said, “Good afternoon. I am Marie Joséphine Annagret Elena, Princess of Eldovia, and I’m a friend of Gabriella’s.”
Well, eff him. Leo didn’t know whether to laugh or to whoop in victory. The bomb Marie had dropped on Rosie and Allison, aka Dorothy and Glinda, literally struck them dumb, something he would have thought impossible.
Marie took advantage of their silence, waiting only a few beats before turning to him and saying, in that snootily regal tone of hers, “Gabriella, Leonardo, Daniela, shall we be going?”
“Why yes, Your Royal Highness,” he said—no fake honorifics this time—“I think we shall.” He held his arms out wide, intending to encompass all three of the amazing women he had in his charge this afternoon, and gestured toward the exit. He caught a glimpse of each of their faces before they turned to leave. Gabby, with her eyes wide and jaw dropped, looked like the surprised-face emoji. Dani was clearly holding back laughter. Marie had notched her chin even higher and was positively radiating regality.
Neither her face nor her bearing changed as they wound their way through the crowd in the lunchroom, drawing stares. It wasn’t until they were outside on the relatively sparsely populated sidewalk that she became more herself. Dani started outright laughing, and that cracked Marie’s facade. She smiled, and the dimples—the real ones—came out.
“I like you,” Dani said, and Max yapped happily, as if to signal his agreement. “This is Max,” she said, gesturing to the mutt.
“Oh!” Marie exclaimed. “I met him yesterday!” She smiled. “I know a Max. A human one. This one is much cuter.”
Suddenly there were more people. People with phones taking pictures. Leo could see why Marie hadn’t wanted to blow her cover, though he appreciated the hell out of the fact that she had. “All right.” He shooed the women and the beast down the sidewalk toward where he was parked. He needed to get Marie out of here. “Do we need to get Max’s crate?” he asked Dani.
“Nope. Let’s get it later. I think it’s best for us to make our grand exit right now.”
And so once everyone was buckled in, they did.
“I hope I didn’t overstep there,” Marie said. “Those girls just seemed like they could use some . . .”
“Moral correction?” Dani supplied cheerfully.
Marie laughed. “Yes.”
Leo turned to her. “If you don’t mind, I’ll drop Dani at our building before taking you back to the hotel.”
He thought for a moment that Marie was going to argue, probably something along the lines of she could make her own way back, but he shot her a look that successfully quashed whatever it was she’d been about to say.
They rode in silence a ways until Marie surprised him by twisting around to look at Gabby in the back seat. “Would you like to come to tea at the Plaza Hotel tomorrow afternoon?” Then she gestured to him and to Dani. “All of you. I would love to have you.”
“Oh my gosh, like Eloise!” Gabby said.
“Like who?” Leo asked.
“There’s a famous book set at the Plaza,” Dani said. “About a girl named Eloise.”
Must have been before his time. It was strange sometimes, to be so enmeshed in the minutiae of Gabby’s life now but also to have these big holes in his knowledge of her past. He knew what she was reading today—Wonderstruck and that book of fairy tales their mom had given her. She never seemed to grow out of that. But he’d missed Eloise and everything that came before the accident. It wasn’t that he blamed himself for that, particularly. He was fourteen years older than she was and hadn’t lived at home for years by the time of the accident. But the gaps in his Gabby-knowledge felt like shortcomings all the same. He added this one to the list.
“Oh, can we, Leo? Please?”
He sort of felt like he should say no. Would having tea with Marie at the Plaza be like taking charity? He sure as hell was going to feel out of place. He glanced at Dani in the rearview mirror. She always knew what to do.
“I would adore tea at the Plaza,” she said, spearing him with an intense look.
“Sounds great,” Leo said, the fact that he had to clear his throat to get the sentence out torpedoing the casual delivery he was going for.
“If you like, you can invite your . . . friends,” Marie said to Gabby.
Leo knew what she was doing, offering more of her princessness for Gabby to use as currency at school. He hoped Gabby would say no. As much as tea at the Plaza was not his thing, having his sister’s teen tormenters there would guarantee that nobody would have a good time, not Gabby and not Marie, either. Marie would be in princess-performance mode, which made her project a stiffness and snootiness that wasn’t really her—though it was a little startling to realize he knew her well enough to say that.
“No thanks,” Gabby said. “I think it will be more fun if it’s just us.”
Atta girl.
A few minutes later, Leo was pulling up at home.
“I don’t have anything planned this evening if you want to stay with me rather than go with Leo,” Dani said to Gabby.
He could see Gabby waffling. On the one hand, the drive into Manhattan and back would take a ridiculously long time. On the other hand: princess.
“We can watch some more of I Am Not a Robot,” Dani added.
Gabby got out of the car. “Yes!” But then she paused and looked back at him. “But we should wait for Leo to watch.”
Oh, this girl and her big heart. She was going to kill him.
He’d insisted on Thursdays for their formal K-drama nights because he hadn’t wanted to tie Dani up on weekend nights, in case she wanted to go on dates or out with friends. But Dani’s social life was about as exciting as his was, and she didn’t have guardianship of a tween and impending financial disaster as excuses. Still, it gratified him to know that their little ritual meant as much to Gabby as it did to him. He cleared his throat. “Don’t wait for me to start the show. I’ll bring home pizza.”
“Oh, we’re waiting for you,” Dani said.
“How else are you going to know what happens to Seung-ho and Ji-ah?” Gabby said teasingly.
“I’m sure you’ll fill me in.”
“We’re waiting,” Gabby confirmed, and he could not argue.
“Leo.” Marie placed a hand on his forearm. “I am going to call a car to take me back. That way you can—”
“Nope.” She was paying him a ridiculous amount of money to drive her around, and drive her around was what he was damn well going to do. That aside, Leo definitely owed her for what she’d done for Gabby today. Marie Joséphine Annagret Elena, Princess of Eldovia, was getting a ride back to the Plaza whether she wanted it or not.
“But I don’t want you to have to postpone—”
“Will you hush?”
She hushed.
It was very gratifying.
She didn’t stay hushed, though. As soon as they got on the road, she started interrogating him. “It sounds like you’re watching a television program with Daniela and Gabriella? Is it one I would know?”
“Probably not. It’s a Korean drama. A soap opera, basically. Dani got us hooked on them.”
“I’ve heard about those! I should try one. Do you have any recommendations?”
He must have looked as puzzled as he felt—it was hard to wrap his mind around the idea of the princess doing something as mundane as watching TV—because she said, “I watch a lot of TV.”
“You do?”
“But only American TV. I should branch out.”
Leo chuckled and shook his head, because, again, he wasn’t seeing it. Ice skating in the Alps, yes. Bending over watches with one of those eye things jewelers wore, okay. But sacked out watching Real Housewives? Not so much.
“My mother was educated in America, and she developed quite a fondness for American TV,” Marie said. “When she came to Eldovia—she was French, but she married my father right after her graduation from Yale—she brought a trunkload of VHS tapes and DVDs with her, and she continued to order them.”
“And you watched with her.”
“Yes.”
“Is that why you don’t have an accent?”
She laughed. “I don’t think so. If I’d learned diction from American TV, I would totally talk like a valley girl, like oh my gosh.” She had attempted—and failed—to deliver that last line with a valley-girl accent. “My mother’s favorite show was Beverly Hills, 90210.”
“Well, I’ll be.”
“But I should switch to something else,” she said with an odd sort of vehemence.
“Why?” Even if Beverly Hills, 90210 hadn’t been from before his time, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t have been his thing. But he wasn’t one to shit on other people’s choices.
Marie didn’t answer right away. She turned her head to look out the window, in fact, so he thought she was dismissing him. So he was surprised when she said, very quietly, “Because watching them without her hurts too much. And yet I can’t seem to stop.”
“Ah.”
“Do you have anything like that? Any routines that are part of your life that remind you of your parents?”
He sure did. Reading the fairy-tale book with Gabby. Looking at his mom’s handwritten recipe cards. Driving past buildings he’d worked on with his dad’s crew. “Yeah,” he said, his voice having gone all gruff. “Though I mostly try to avoid them.”
“Like Fifth and Fifty-Eighth?” she asked gently.
“Like Fifth and Fifty-Eighth,” he confirmed, feeling a bit sheepish. “But you know what? Not that I’m an expert, but I don’t think it matters whether you face those things or try to ignore them. It hurts just the same. So I say, watch 90210 if you want to.”
She didn’t speak for a while. Maybe he’d overstepped. Really, who was he to give lessons on grieving? He didn’t know shit.
But then the quiet voice was back. “I think you are a very wise man, Leonardo Ricci.”
He wasn’t sure he agreed with that, but hell, he’d take it.
“Is your butler going to be mad at you for being gone all afternoon?” he asked as they crossed into Manhattan.
“He’s not a butler,” she said with a laugh.
“So you keep saying.” Leo shrugged. “Looks like a duck, walks like a duck.”
Marie looked out the window. “Yes, he will probably be angry with me. I texted him that I was going to the play with you, but he’s . . . displeased. The larger issue, though, is that my father will be angry with me.”
“He’s going to tattle to your father?”
“He no doubt already has. He’s my father’s equerry, not mine.”
That was the second time she had used that word. Leo made a mental note to look it up when he got home. “So let me get this straight. You had nothing else to do, so you weren’t shirking any duties. But still, going to a school play is gonna get him mad at you.”
She huffed a small laugh, as if she realized how silly that sounded. “That is correct.”
Well. “I hope it was worth it.” He was kidding. There was no way the Bronx Technology Charter School production of The Wizard of Oz was worth the wrath of a king.
When she didn’t laugh at his little joke, he glanced over at her.
“It was.” She smiled at him. “It was worth it.”