Royalty Exposed

Chapter 38

After calming Carter down a bit and letting him know that yelling wasn't going to get him anywhere and that he needed to be the levelheaded one, I left Carter at the library and headed to his office where I would be able to use his computer. I don't know how much work I was going to get done with Julia in the palace, but I was going to do my best to focus and find some suitable options for my parents to choose from. That fence needed to go up as soon as possible before anything serious happened to my family.

My mind of course wondered towards Julia as I searched online. It wondered why she was here and what exactly was she up to. Neither Carter nor I had seen Julia in a while since none of us had made the effort to get together and catch up with one another. The last time that either one of us had seen her, we hadn't been married. And that hadn't been a planned visit. It usually was never a planned visit when we saw Julia.

Now she had shown up at the palace unannounced and I knew that meant that she had some kind of agenda. But I wasn't going to find out why she was here until Carter was done with his meetings. So I pushed Julia out of my mind and focused on finding at least five good recommendations on contractors who built fences. It took about an hour and a half before I found five that I was comfortable with choosing and knew my parents would be happy with. I was going to just choose three, but I decided to add a couple more options.

And once I had printed out some reviews on each of the contractors, I gathered everything up and grabbed an empty folder to put all the papers in. I checked the time and saw that it was just five minutes after eleven. Carter's last meeting wouldn't end until after eleven thirty if him and all the government officials had been able to agree on whatever they were discussing.

The meeting could run longer than that especially if Julia was there and had been there since the first meeting. She wouldn't make things run smoothly because she would want to put in a lot of her own input and wouldn't agree easily with others. But just in case she wasn't in the meeting currently, I decided to stay in here. I didn't want to run into her because I knew that was just going to create problems. She never had anything nice to say to me so I could never have a decent enough conversation with her.

I would have preferred to have gotten along with my mother-in-law, but I didn't think I was ever going to have that kind of relationship with her. And I don't think Carter was ever going to have a good relationship with his mother either. She made it impossible to have a good relationship with her. I didn't really think Julia had any real friends that she could rely on, but that wasn't a surprise. She didn't let anyone close to her. I heard a knock on the door and looked over at the door that I had shut earlier.

"Come in," I said hoping that it was just one of the employees and not Carter's mother. I had shut the door so that if she happened to walk by she wouldn't know right away that I was in here. On second thought, it probably wasn't Julia. She wouldn't have knocked. Julia would have just barged in so it must be an employee of the palace.

The door opened up and in came a maid, one that I hadn't seen before so I wasn't sure what her name was. I knew that Carter would probably know her name though. She smiled, bowed, and then said, "The king's meeting is going to last longer than expected. Would you like me to have lunch made for you?"

"Do you know how long his meeting is going to last?" I asked her. She shook her head.

"Do you know if they're going to take a break soon so I can talk to Carter?" I asked her. She shook her head again. Maybe Carter had been the one to suggest that I have lunch while I was waiting for him to finish. It was possible that everyone in the meeting was going to have lunch while they were still discussing whatever topic that was holding them up.

"I'll take a sandwich. And I have one more question," I said pausing to make sure she knew not to leave just yet. The maid nodded her head so I asked, "Do you know where Carter's mother is?"