I had tucked the phone against the pillow and with Dude settled into the spot where Cooper used to sleep, I fell asleep. Sometime in the night Cooper had hung up his phone.
I never asked him when, it was easier to not talk about a lot of things.
My life was all screwed up.
My heart was kind of broken. Majorly broken.
I was very sad.
I hadlong meetings about my security. I didn’t get to drive my Beamer anymore. I had to have a driver and a new SUV that was outfitted with security features. I didn’t get any privacy: Security guards stood on my porch, taking shifts. Cameras had been installed on the property. And a body guard followed me around whenever I went to the store.
I had a contractor planning to build a panic room in my basement — the thought of ‘why’ made me feel pretty panicky.
My only contact was with people who were worried about my safety.
Most of them thought I needed to be very careful. Timid. They talked about it all the time.
And come to find out my security wasn’t temporary. I had it for always, now.
These were things I never thought of before. I had grown up barely locking my front door.
I thought about my ancestors and how they had built this house with windows that fully opened and screened doors with eye hook locks, and now I was turning it into a fortress.
And I thought about my mom a lot. About the secrets she never told me.
I wondered about my dad, had he known about my lineage? Had he protected me without telling me, or did he not know? And how could he not have told me?
I didn’t call my uncle, I kept putting it off. I didn’t know what to say, what to ask. I was thinking about flying to visit him, but with heightened security at the house and the body guard I now needed, and a horse… It was a lot to figure out.
But I had come to some conclusions. Did he know I was adopted? Probably.
Why hadn’t he ever told me? Maybe he thought it was unimportant?
I guessed he didn’t, definitely didn’t, have any idea that I was a ‘princess’. Definitely.
All of this meant that I did not want the conversation, not yet.
This eveningI leaned against the split rail fence, with Dude sitting on the top rail, trilling his head off, making me pet him.
I had a body guard looming nearby.
Cooper had built this fence around a spot in the backyard big enough for the horse. He had also built a simple stable. I was watching a worker install a perimeter light on a pole, one of the last touches of security out here.
This was after I had taken the first of what would need to bemanyhorse riding lessons. I was abysmal. As bad as I was in the sixteenth century, I was even worse without Torin here to smooth talk me up onto the horse.
It had seemed like Dude was giving me a ‘look’ the whole time, like he couldn’t believe I was so bad at this.
Most of my interactions with Ferrari were feeding him carrots and conversing with him about where Torin was and speculating about what he might be doing.
Cooper was living in the back-shack. It was getting weird. I didn’t know what to do about it. I was thinking about it when the door opened and he walked out to the porch, raising his hand in a distant greeting.
He walked toward me. “How’s it going?”
“I took the first lesson. She’s a good teacher, I’mnotgood at it.”
“I saw, you didn’t look comfortable.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Look, wanna go out and get dinner?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
