Firstborn {British Royals}

Chapter 4

 Vic breathed a sigh of relief as her airplane touched down in Missoula, Montana, that night. Glancing out the window, she saw only a few lights sparkling. The rest was pitch black. She could imagine the brooding mountains, the wide sky. It was always such a relief to come home after being in a big city. She wasn't quite home - there was still an hour and a half drive ahead to Spring Meadow, her tiny rural town that didn't even have a stoplight - but this was close enough. She could relax.

The bad headache had come on again so she couldn't really see straight, but she didn't have far to go. She always packed light and traveled with only a carry on, so she bypassed baggage claim and headed straight outside to the curb where her mom would be waiting. She slid into the car, ready to tilt back her seat and close her eyes while she told her mom about the wedding. Instead, she was met with a wall of noise. Her mom had her head turned away from her and was practically yelling into her phone.

"How dare you call me at this number? No. No, I do not have a comment!" A pause while Petra Clewell listened to whatever the other person was saying, then an explosion that was even louder than the first. "This is absolute madness! I don't even know him. Never lived in England. No.. No! Do not contact my daughter. Do you hear me? You contact her and you'll hear from my lawyer."

It was really a shame that this wasn't the 90s and Petra wasn't on a landline, because it's pretty much impossible to hang up dramatically on a cellphone. Petra jabbed hard at the little "end call" button, but that just wasn't the same as crashing down the earpiece of a landline.

"Who was that?" Vic asked, bewildered. She had never heard Petra yell like that. Sure, Vic and her mom bickered from time to time, but they didn't raise their voices that much, and Petra certainly never did to strangers. At least, Vic assumed the person on the other end was a stranger.

"No one," Petra huffed, pulling out into the road that looped out of the airport. It was a good thing that this was Missoula and the lane wasn't buzzing with cars, because Petra screeched into it without even looking in her mirrors.

"Mom!" Vic cried, holding onto the edge of her seat.

"Sorry." Petra let out a long breath and eased up on the gas just a little. "It was no one. Just a reporter with the wrong number."

"Oh," said Vic. She was exhausted and her mind was turning over slowly. Something didn't compute. But what was it? What had Petra said again? It wasn't until they had turned onto the highway that led to Spring Meadow, 70 miles away, that it came to her. "You said 'don't contact my daughter.' How did they know you have a daughter, if it was the wrong number?"

Petra was silent.

"Mom?"

"Why don't you close your eyes a bit? You must be exhausted."

Vic lapsed into silence, annoyed. She had been excited to tell her mom about the wedding - and Matt Feldman. He had messaged her! Her Facebook alerts had pinged right after she had gotten to the airport in Philadelphia. "Hi Victoria," the message read. "It was so nice to see you again after all this time. Hopefully it won't be as long before I see you again? I'd love to chat sometime, if you're ever free."

Vic had messaged him back, and before she knew it, they were messaging about their goals in life, their deepest dreams, their family histories. Vic even paid to have internet on her two flights so that she could continue talking to him. Matt had told her how his grandparents escaped the Holocaust and ended up in America, where the family had thrived in their new home. Matt regretted that he knew nothing about his ancestry prior to his grandparents because the Nazis had destroyed the records; he didn't even know what part of Europe they came from, and he had always felt the hole in him of not knowing.

Vic had told him about growing up with a single mom and not knowing anything about her dad except that his name was Charlie and her mom had dated him for a few weeks in the early 1980s before he was killed in a car accident. She didn't even know what he'd looked like because there'd been a fire in Petra's apartment building shortly before Vic was born and the pictures of Charlie, such that Petra had, had been destroyed. Vic, too, had always felt a hole inside her, the emptiness of not knowing her father.

She had also told Matt how frustrating it was that she wasn't successful like her old classmates were. It seemed like everyone at the wedding had been doctors, lawyers, professors, investment bankers, tech CEOs, etc. And then there was Vic - unemployed, unable to work due to her headaches, and living back home with her mom. Sure, Petra was fantastic and the best friend Vic had ever know, but still.

"Don't compare yourself to other people," Matt had said. "I bet so many of those 'successful' people are desperately unhappy. They chose careers that are respected, but did they really want them? It would be horrible to live your whole life doing what you think will make people admire you, without considering your own dreams."

"You're a lawyer," Vic reminded him.

"Yeah. And I work 80-hour weeks under the pressure of trying to make partner, because that's what young lawyers in Manhattan do. That's what my father and brother did. But it's not really the best for me."

"What would you like to do instead?"

A pause while he considered, then he typed back. "Move out somewhere in the country. Be a schoolteacher. Have a family."

Montana's the country, Vic had thought. She wanted to type it but chickened out. Instead she said, "Sounds nice. You should do it someday."

Vic jumped as her mom's voice interrupted her thoughts. "Did anyone speak to you at that Prince Charles event?"

"No."

"Are you sure? No people in plainclothes standing near you, striking up a conversation?"

"No. I'm anti-social, remember?" Vic smiled. "I suppose I did talk to one person, though."

"Who?" Petra's voice was tense.

"Prince Charles. When I got his autograph."

"No," Petra muttered. "He wouldn't have leaked it. Maybe the timing's a coincidence."

Vic frowned. "What wouldn't he have leaked?"

"Why don't you close your eyes, Victoria? You must be exhausted."