neck. “Your Majesty,” she said. “Only you would manage to adopt baseball’s lovable losers the exact year they become legends.”
“It’s no accident,” Eleanor said. “I know another legend when I see one.”
I ran around the room waving my hands in the air and yelling like a maniac, before returning to present Eleanor with her ceremonial beer.
“A promise is a promise,” I said, my adrenaline still pumping.
Eleanor stared at it with a wrinkled nose, then popped open the can and took a deep swig. “Dreadful,” she said. Then she reached over and shoveled a handful of my Cracker Jack into her mouth. “And this is like scraping out the inside of a candy bar,” she said. Then she grinned. A popcorn kernel was stuck in one of her incisors. “How marvelous.”
She tugged on the pristine Cubs hat I’d brought her from my US trip, which I documented for Nick. My head was awhirl with elation and sadness; I felt full and empty at once. My dad should have been here. But in his stead, we’d adopted Eleanor, and to a lesser degree Marta, and having them as surrogate Porters moved me more than I expected. Eleanor clutched my arm and gazed adoringly at Ben Zobrist’s postgame interview, that pesky Cracker Jack still wedged between her teeth, the beer resolutely refusing to wash it away. Part of her long silver hair had tumbled free of its bun; she evoked a witch who’d overslept. And she was, without a doubt, having capital-F Fun.
“Rebecca,” Eleanor said to me, cupping my face in her hands and then patting one of my cheeks with something approaching affection. “My dear, if I ever read about this in one of those Andrew Morton travesties, I shall strip you of your title.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Given England’s propensity for wetness even in the mildest of months, Lacey and I had made several jokes about her getting married in the cold November rain. (“Should we have candles?” I’d asked. “It’d be hard to hold them,” she replied, and our mother looked completely confused.) But England kindly overlooked the easy Guns N’ Roses reference, and instead served Lacey a jewel of a wedding week. The sapphire sky bore no sign of the wintry gloom that we knew lurked around the corner, and the air was crisp like an apple, with a welcome bite.
My sister had demanded nothing challenging of me. The council registry office’s room needed only a flower arrangement or two, which Olly’s sister had gotten from a friend’s shop. The pub for the reception did have to be closed and cleared by my PPOs, but people booked it for parties all the time, so no locals would be suspicious. I helped with the cake tasting at Gaz’s; he’d done twelve different samples with pots of flavored buttercreams so that they could mix and match, and I got nauseated after trying all of them, but that was hardly a trial. I was to be an official witness, but I got to wear whatever I pleased. The bride stumbled on the perfect dress by accident while passing a vintage shop in Cambridge, and had even been unfazed by the minor media excitement that ensued when someone recognized her shuffling up the high street in her new hometown and reported to Clive that she was knocked up.
Looks like the wrong Porter sister is pregnant. Take it from me: The Palace is in a lather about Lacey; the more the unwed Porter pops, the more prurient the public prying will be into this impropriety—and the more obvious it is that the Duchess herself is heirless.
“This Clive has the morality of a pigeon,” Olly said the next time he saw me.
“Are pigeons notably immoral?” I asked. “Honest question.”
Olly thought about it. “They shit on everything and they won’t go away,” he said. “I vote yes.”
And so, all that was left for me to do was show up. Easy. But the night before the ceremony, Lacey called in a tizzy, saying that she and Olly had wanted one more personal touch and she was having trouble making it happen: They hoped to scatter as many elephant trinkets around the party venue as possible, as an aesthetic nod to what brought them together.
“The ones I bought online just got here, and at least half of them are broken,” she moaned. “And there’s nothing in the local shops that isn’t hideous. I can be a chill bride and still get pissed about wanting better elephants, right?”