Page 93 of The Princess and the Fraud

Caroline shut her door, her tinted windows shielding her expression from me until the end.

* * *

That night, I grabbed my earbuds and tucked myself into bed with my phone. Electricity teemed through my veins, leaving me far too wired for sleep.

After settling in, I pulled my covers over my head. It created a cocoon of darkness, and I used it as my theater. The breath I pulled in trembled, but I unlocked my phone, tapping the YouTube app.

Only on very, very rare occasions did I go back and listen to my cover renditions on YouTube. Only when my soul was desperate. And even then, Ineverlistened to my last one. The final recorded performance before my mother passed; the last one she ever heard me play.

Already feeling the pinpricks behind my eyes, I tapped the video, plugging in my earbuds.

My mother was not in frame, of course. It was just me in the studio space my instructor let me use, with a muted deep brown wall as my backdrop. My hair then was a light brown, and I had it tied into a loose bun at the nape of my neck. My clothes weren’t even that nice—when Mom had asked to hear me play, I hadn’t wanted to waste time getting ready.

My eyes traced my cello through the screen. It belonged to my instructor, one I’d borrowed during my years of playing, and returned to her upon quitting. Its shiny lacquer almost glowed underneath the lights, and I watched my younger self cradle it between her legs, body morphing to it like second nature. I could almost feel it now, a sort of phantom limb, and my breath caught.

And then eighteen-year-old me began to play.

It was strange, watching myself perform. Even though I was obviously younger, it didn’t feel like this moment had been so long ago. Like I could blink, and I’d be right back there. Both a lifetime ago and just yesterday.

This Lovisa hadn’t lost her mother yet. She hadn’t had her first boyfriend yet. She hadn’t learned what it meant to be truly alone. And for a fleeting second, watching her, it felt like I hadn’t either. Like I could reach through the screen and slip back into a version of myself untouched by grief, by heartbreak. Untouched by everything that came after. There was only the peace that came with sliding my bow across the strings.

The cello’s voice was as familiar to me as my own, swelling and singing its own notes. Young Lovisa’s face contorted with the measure, and I watched her pour her heart out. She didn’t realize it’d be the last time.

The movement I played was just over four minutes long, and my lungs burned as if I hadn’t breathed throughout it. The air underneath the blanket was thick and suffocating, but I couldn’t move. Not until young Lovisa gave one last dramatic sweep of my bow as she nailed the final note, and the recording fell silent in my earbuds.

And then came the real reason I’d never played this cover until now. Unlike my other videos, I didn’t cut this one off a few seconds after the last note.

Young Lovisa looked off-camera. “Was this time better?”

“It was beautiful.” My mother’s voice was an instrument itself, a high, reedy sound that pierced through me. “The first time was beautiful, too.”

“I knew you just wanted to hear it again.” Young Lovisa sounded smug, easing her cello down onto the floor and rising. “Do you want me to play another?”

“That’s good for today.” The exhaustion in my mother’s voice was clear. Young Lovisa strode toward the camera, and just before she turned it off, my mother spoke one last time. “But there’s always tomorrow.”

The whole dialogue lasted ten seconds. Ten seconds that meant nothing to the average watcher—there had even been comments asking why I’d let it run so long, why I hadn’t cut it in editing—but those seconds meant everything to me. I double tapped on my screen, rewinding, listening to it again.

“That’s good for today. But there’s always tomorrow.”

Tears blurred the screen. A sob clawed its way up my throat, escaping in a shuddered breath. I pressed a hand over my mouth, curling my knees to my chest as grief crashed over me—deep, raw, overwhelming. All these years, I’d been so afraid to hear her voice. Afraid of what I kept in—afraid of being disappointed or gutted further.

There’s always tomorrow.

My mother never fully understood music, but she understoodme. She was proud of me. She loved me. If someone had presented her with the choice of me buying her dream house or living my own dream, she would’ve made her choice easily. She already had.

There’s always tomorrow.

CHAPTERTWENTY-TWO

Friday night crept up on me in a blur of linen tablecloths and string lights and aching feet. It’d been all hands on deck all week at Alderton-Du Ponte as the country club geared up for the Spring Has Sprung fundraiser on Saturday. With both the music hall and the ballroom to prepare, it’d been a busy frenzy of making sure each space was as glamorous as the country club’s usual standards. They had Rhythms of Hope to impress, after all.

Or, really, one last shot to convince them to sell.

The past four days had been back-breaking work of unloading food delivery trucks for the catering, pulling the round tables out of storage, and setting up both rooms—the ballroom and the Du Ponte Music Hall. It was cleaned, decluttered, and ready for the performance Rhythms of Hope had lined up.

I rarely worked in the same department as Paige, but I could feel her absence throughout my days. It had me thinking about what I would do long term. Was Alderton-Du Ponte a part of this new phase of life I’d decided to start? It wasn’t like I needed the big paychecks to afford a house renovation anymore.

But it was familiar, and the idea of abandoning everything entirely was terrifying.

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