Royal Wedding - Meg Cabot Page 0,49

my observations, it is. I was there, remember? I don’t think you really have a solid grasp on normal tween behavior.”

“Please let’s move on. It’s not like Olivia can live with my dad. He’d be the worst person to raise a tween. He stays in a hotel room here in New York half the year, and the rest of the time he hangs around Genovia, pretending to govern it.”

“Yeah,” Michael said. “That’s true, but I thought the whole point was that her mom didn’t want her to know she’s Genovian royalty.”

“Right. But if my grandmother’s right, she’s going to find out eventually. So it’s better for me to be the one to tell her. I can do it gently and compassionately. And so it will be nice if we had a room for her to stay in,” I said. “So she feels welcome. If she wants to.”

“Okay,” Michael said, sounding skeptical. “You’ve decided you’re going to tell your long-lost sister that she’s Genovian royalty. That will probably go well. When are you going to do this?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t decided. But soon. Stop making it sound weird. It’s no weirder than the fact that we had to stay in a hotel last night because our places were swarming with paparazzi.”

“It’s a little weirder than that,” Michael said. “But that cop did advise me to get a new apartment. I suppose I can just buy one with a spare bedroom for your sister—”

“See?” I said. “That’s the spirit.”

How amazing is he? I can just buy a new place with a spare bedroom for your sister. I’m seriously the luckiest girl in the world.

• Note to self: Remember this for gratitude-journal entry.

(Wow, it’s sad that I have to make notes in my regular journal to remember to put things in my gratitude journal.)

“Why don’t I buy it with you?” I suggested. “Our first place together! Should it be uptown or downtown? Or what about a place looking out over Central Park? Too bad everyone is having embolisms about the safety of those carriage horses, I bet my sister has never had one of those—”

“Why don’t I have my real-estate broker look into where the market is strongest right now,” Michael interrupted, “and we can buy where we get the most square footage for our money?”

For someone who came up with such a romantic wedding proposal, Michael is certainly practical when it comes to money matters—and without necessarily needing to be. (Fortunately he laughed and said he’d find a way to get over the disappointment when I admitted to him that I did not, in fact, inherit $100 million in cash on my twenty-fifth birthday, as was reported by Rate the Royals.)

“Fine,” I said. “Maybe I should just put on our wedding invitations that in lieu of gifts people should send money to an escrow account for us to buy our first home.”

“Now, that’s a great idea.”

“Michael, I was kidding. We could tell people to donate money to the Community Center or Doctors Without Borders, though.”

“Okay. But look, don’t you think you should discuss this whole thing about your sister with your dad first?”

“No, I do not. All my dad’s done lately is screw things up. I’m not going to let him screw this up, too.”

All the magazines—and Star Trek movies starring Chris Pine as Kirk—say that in stressful situations where you don’t know what to do, you just have to follow your gut.

What they don’t say is how you’re supposed to know what your gut is telling you. Sometimes your gut gives conflicting advice. Often you don’t know which path is the right one because all the paths seem right, and in cases like that, your gut is no help at all.

Except that in this case, when Michael suggested I talk to my dad, I had a sudden and very strong signal from my gut. It said, No.

“Well,” Michael said, sounding dubious. “Okay, Mia, but I really think you should reconsider. Your dad’s going through a tough time right now.”

“I’m aware of that, Michael, and look how he’s reacting to it. He’s a mess. I left him a message yesterday, and he never called me back. Instead he got drunk.”

“Yeah, but—”

“If he wants to talk to me, he knows how to reach me. In the meantime, I’m going to figure out what to do about Olivia, and my own life. My dad has to take care of his own life, even though I have to say so far he’s