Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I cried long enough that the realtor ended up coming back in to check on us—and then awkwardly backed out of the kitchen and returned to his car.
I’d let one thing direct me for the last five years, and it’d been this house. Every decision I’d made always had the undercurrent of how will this push me closer to 1442 Everview? Picking up extra shifts, skipping eating out, putting almost all of my paycheck into my savings rather than treating myself. The dread had compounded as the time passed, but I hadn’t noticed—not until I’d come face to face with the reality.
It was hard to reconcile the decision in my mind, putting my mother’s dreams to rest. It felt selfish, wrong. I felt like a bad daughter, choosing myself over her. But Aaron was right—Mom had never asked me to set my dreams aside for hers. She never would’ve. And she would’ve hated knowing I’d done so when my traitorous heart called for something else.
Maybe I was a bad daughter for not buying the house, but I’d be a bad daughter if I did.
After my cry session in the kitchen, Aaron and I had toured the house in its entirety, checking out the rot in the basement and the decaying drywall upstairs. We even wandered down to the bay, quietly soaking in the view. In each room we wandered through, I allowed myself to feel all the pain and loss, but it was less suffocating now. A weight fell off my shoulders with each step through the property, getting to see the place my mother always wanted, and knowing I could leave it as hers .
Especially with Aaron there beside me every step of the way, the back of his hand brushing mine in a silent reminder. We’re here together.
By the time we left 1442 Everview Road, it was mid-day, with the sun beginning its slow descent toward the horizon. Sitting in the passenger seat, it was almost comical how different I felt as we drove back toward Addison. The sunlight thawed me, leaving me feeling brighter than I had in a long, long time.
That, combined with “ Ave Maria ” playing over the speakers and Aaron’s hand curled around mine in my lap, for the first time in a while, I felt nothing but peace.
Aaron had reached over as soon as he’d pulled from the driveway out onto Everview Road, as if even though we were leaving the dream house behind, he wanted to remind me he was there. His slender fingers wrapped around my long ones, the sight strange, but like the sun, it left me warm.
“This piece played before, in the country club lobby,” Aaron murmured, the fingers of his left hand curled around the steering wheel, his elbow propped against the door. “Right? I remember you seemed… stunned by it.”
“It’s the piece I chose for my mother’s funeral,” I told him, listening to the rendition that bled from the car’s speakers. Aaron had selected it from his playlist, knowingly or unknowingly, I wasn’t sure. “I hadn’t heard it since. It felt like a sign.”
“A sign?”
“That I was on the right path.” I’d thought hearing it meant I was doing the right thing, helping Fiona and Aaron get together, but thinking back, the piece hadn’t started playing when Fiona came into the lobby. It’d started playing before that, when I was speaking to Aaron. “But maybe it was a different sort of sign.”
Aaron didn’t ask what I meant and didn’t push further. Instead, he gave my fingers a comforting squeeze, and my heart thudded in response.
That was another thing that felt different. Looking down at Aaron’s hand, tracing the bumps of his knuckles with my eyes, I could feel the difference almost as if it were a physical thing. As if, when Aaron had his arms around me, whatever existed between us shifted. We’d been on a similar station before, but now, it was like the static between us cleared. My body wholly relaxed now, leaving itself unguarded for the first time in a long time. I felt light with him. Safe.
It was terrifying, confusing, and exhilarating all at once.
And the horribly huge, unspoken thing still sat between us: If I proposed to you, would you say yes? I was ninety-nine percent sure those words hadn’t been a drunken fantasy. Those green tea shots might’ve given me a small dose of creativity, but no way would I have come up with Aaron Astor saying that .
The reasons why I’d almost immediately taken my words back hadn’t changed. I wasn’t refined, or well-educated, or impressive. I didn’t have wealthy parents or a family business to run. But I did have one leg up on Fiona—I liked Aaron. For real.
I let out a little breath at the realization, a silent exclamation. I liked Aaron Astor.
But enough to marry him ?
It wasn’t like I had an infinite amount of time to mull it over. Aaron’s birthday was in two weeks. He needed to be married by then—to someone. Could I really marry someone I met two weeks ago? It sounded insane. Who was I kidding? It was insane. But the whole situation was off the hinges. Forcing someone to get married to receive their inheritance? How the heck was that legal? What kind of loving grandma would put that upon her grandson?
I forced myself to speak before I could spiral further. “Aaron?”
“Yes, Lovisa?”
And then I hesitated. I needed to ask it, to launch into the topic that plagued me, but the sunlight was still so bright in the car—too bright for such a dim conversation. “Did someone tell you that you weren’t made for love?”
On instinct, I tightened my curl around his hand, almost afraid he’d tug away. He didn’t, though. If anything, his hand settled more heavily in mine. “No.”
“Then why did you think that?”
Aaron blinked at the road, hesitating as if something suddenly knocked him back. I wondered, with pain like a knife to the chest, if he was thinking about his family. I knew that pause. It was the kind you made when the ache was too big to name. “I’ve just… never felt it before.”
“You didn’t believe in love just because you never experienced it?”
“Oh, no, I believe in it. Margot and Sumner were clear examples for me.” A small smile lifted his lips. “Even Annalise and Michael, as different as they are from each other. The words make sense, I suppose—affection, intimacy, romance. Everyone acts like it’s simple and easy to understand, but it’s like playing ‘Gaspard de la Nuit.’”
I frowned, not recognizing the composition, and Aaron noticed.
“It’s famously difficult. Erratic, fast—horribly hard to master. You can know the notes, read the sheet music, even understand how it’s supposed to sound—but that doesn’t mean you can play it.” He tilted his head to the side a little, eyes still on the road. “That’s what love feels like to me. Everyone else is performing it perfectly, and I’m just… fumbling with the keys.”
He was definitely overthinking it. “No one really understands love?—”
“But you do. At least a little. You know when to hold someone’s hand, or embrace them, or even kiss them. You know what you should say when, what the other person might be feeling in intimate moments.”
“You grabbed my hand,” I pointed out, squeezing his fingers again. “When we got in the car, you held my hand without saying anything.”
Aaron glanced over, as if he’d forgotten where his right hand had been resting entirely. “I suppose I did.”
Annalise had been right when she said Aaron saw things in black and white. He lived his life in absolutes—he’d never felt love, therefore decided that he wasn’t made for it. He didn’t understand love, therefore thought he wasn’t good enough for it. He didn’t get love from his parents, therefore thought he didn’t deserve it. It was such a simplistic way to view such a nuanced thing. It was almost strange how clearly I understood him now, hearing all the things he meant but didn’t say.
I wanted to press more, but going deeper also terrified me. I was afraid of where the conversation could lead. And I didn’t want to push him, not if he wasn’t ready.
“It’s strange to jump,” I mused, cupping his hand with my right hand. His palm was sandwiched between mine, something fluttering low in my stomach. “I sort of feel like I’m free-falling, not sure what will happen next.”
“What do you want to happen next?”
I suppose that was the point, wasn’t it? What I wanted. My mind blanked on ideas because it’d been so long since I’d let myself dream anything. The savings account I’d grown over the years now no longer had a purpose. But what would I do? Take myself out to eat? Go shopping? What did I want ?
I want to play the cello .
The music playing over the car’s stereo stopped, and the screen on the dash signaled an incoming call. Fiona Flannagan .
My stomach sank.
For a beat, neither of us moved, listening to the ring. Aaron withdrew his hand from mine to press the ignore button, but instead of returning to our grip, he placed his hand back on the wheel. “I’ll call her when I drop you off,” he said, as if he needed to justify the hangup.
It was the perfect segue, if only I could’ve just been brave enough. The words were there, sitting prettily on the tip of my tongue: what are you going to do about Fiona? I stared at my empty hands, knowing it was wrong that I hadn’t clarified yet. I didn’t like Fiona, but I also didn’t like feeling like I was being a man stealer, either.
I curled my hands into fists, forcing myself to bite the bullet. “Aaron?—”
Now, this time, it was my phone that’d begun ringing. I pulled it from my jacket pocket, finding Caroline’s picture grinning back at me. It was a picture of us from before Grant started college, when I was still brunette, and Caroline’s hair was still dark. I quickly flipped it over in my lap. “It’s just Caroline,” I said. “She’ll text if it’s important.”
“You can take it if you need to.”
“I don’t need to.”
Aaron slowed down as we entered Addison’s city limits, flipping on his blinker before I needed to tell him to. “How did you two become friends? You and Caroline?”
I quirked my lips to the side. “We just… did, I guess. When I started dating Grant, we got close.” I looked at him. “Why?”
Aaron paused. “I’ve always been curious. You two seem so different.”
“How so?”
“You just seem so much more… compassionate, I guess.”
I brushed it off. “She’s compassionate.”
“She didn’t call you on your mother’s anniversary. Last June. Outside on the patio. Everyone in your life forgot to reach out to you on the five-year anniversary of your mother’s death.”
“Neither did Annalise, but would you call her a bad friend?”
“No.But it was the day before her wedding. Caroline, though…” With a quiet sigh, his left hand gripped the steering wheel tighter. “She didn’t even tell you Grant was coming home.”
“She didn’t have a chance to.”
“Has she talked to you about it since he’s gotten here?” Aaron turned on the road of my apartment complex. “Did she give you a heads up about that, at least?”
No, she hadn’t. Even this morning, after I was sure Grant called her and told her everything—like he always did—she hadn’t reached out. Hadn’t even texted, but I hadn’t thought much about it. I raised an eyebrow. “Did something happen when you went out yesterday?”
He seemed to hesitate. “No.” Aaron pulled into the apartment complex’s parking lot, just barely dodging the pothole at the entrance. “I’m just thinking about you, that’s all.”
I sat quiet in the passenger seat, fighting a small smile. “Well, I appreciate it.”
Aaron pulled into a parking spot the closest to the building he could find, sliding the gearshift into park. He then turned to me, slipping off his sunglasses. “I’m sorry for hijacking your day off.”
“I wouldn’t have gone to see it without you.” I curled my fingers tighter around my phone. “I needed it. And… I needed to hear it.”
And strangely enough, had it been anyone else, I might not have listened. Heck, even if he’d been the one to say it weeks ago, before I got to know him, I wouldn’t have listened. But knowing everything Aaron put himself through to impress his family, it felt like he was the only one who understood. I could trust him.
Aaron’s eyes were soft as he looked at me, in a way that caused my heartbeat to feel like a tickle in my chest. I thought about the way his arms so easily encircled me, as if he’d been holding himself back up until that moment I’d fallen into him. Hugging Grant had always been awkward, with him being a foot taller, but it felt so right being in Aaron’s arms. As if I was meant to be in them.
The air pumping from the heaters was suddenly too warm. “Aaron,” I began, deciding then and there that the third time was the charm. “About Fiona. What are you going to?—”
A light rap on my window had the both of us jumping, and I nearly jolted again when I turned to see who stood right outside the car. Caroline. The clench that’d gripped my stomach earlier absolutely tore into it now, dread sinking within me like a stone.
Caroline tugged open the passenger door, a stream of cold air freezing out the heat. “Ah, so that’s why you ignored my call,” she said in an odd tone. “You were with someone.”
She backed up to give me space, and as I climbed out, I could hear Aaron’s door pop open on the other side. “I was going to call you when we got back.”
“Back from where?” Caroline readjusted her pink scarf at her throat, lowering it to expose more of her neck. “You went on an adventure without me?”
I couldn’t explain the atmosphere beyond it being uncomfortable . And it really shouldn’t have felt that way. I wasn’t sure when things had shifted, but I could feel the difference now, plain as day.
“We just went for a little drive.” Aaron leaned his arms over the top of his car. “Lovisa was showing me around the area.”
“I could’ve done that,” Caroline said, flashing him a grin. “I could’ve shown you the nicer spots. Bayview doesn’t have a lot of them, but Addison has a few… intimate ones.”
“She showed me a really good one.”
He and I exchanged a look that I felt a little lost in, but in a good way. Lost, but seen .
Aaron tipped his head at us then, slipping his sunglasses back on. “Have a good rest of your Sunday.”
I stepped back from his car, fighting the urge to ask him to stay. Instead, I merely gave him a small wave as he pulled out of the parking space, watching his taillights. Aaron’s car pulled out of the lot, and only then did I feel like I could look away.
“You’re spending a lot of time with Aaron,” Caroline murmured from behind me. “Didn’t your boss warn you against fraternizing?”
“This isn’t Alderton-Du Ponte,” I replied as I turned. “I’m allowed to do whatever I want off the grounds.” I started toward the apartment complex, assuming she’d follow.
“Does Fiona know?”
The leading way she spoke had me stopping on the sidewalk. “Know what?”
“That her fiancé is going on dates with other women.”
I turned around again and faced her, finding her expression completely blank. Something had happened between her and Aaron—I knew it in an instant. There was no jovial teasing, no softness in her gaze. “They’re not engaged yet. And it wasn’t a date.”
“Oh?” Caroline lifted her chin. “Then where did you go?”
Caroline acting like this would’ve normally made me nervous, and I would’ve scrambled to salvage her mood before she’d gone past the point of no return. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was emotionally wrung dry after today or what, but in that moment, there wasn’t a single trace of anxiety within me as I stared at her. “Why does it matter?”
“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were going to lunch with him?” I countered. “Does Fiona know about that ?”
“Who cares what she knows or doesn’t?” Caroline huffed. “He isn’t going to marry her.”
“He isn’t going to marry you.”
Caroline’s expression locked up. This was not the way to handle her, I knew—and not the way I ever had spoken to her before—but I couldn’t hold back. She hadn’t been teasing that night, saying she would’ve been better than Fiona. And if I thought she’d brushed it off, forgotten about it, I was sorely mistaken. Caroline sniffed, trying to feign indifference. “Did he tell you that?”
If I were crueler—if I were a part of the Alderton-Du Ponte world—I might’ve lied and said yes. The spring breeze whipped through the apartment complex’s parking lot, far colder than it was before.
I thought back to the last time I saw Caroline, the last time we’d really talked, and what had happened between then. I went through the days, and with a sinking feeling, something snagged in my memory. “The flowers,” I said slowly, staring at her. “The baby’s breath hidden in the roses sent to Fiona. There was no card. Was that you?”
Caroline just smiled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She didn’t even bother to try to lie well, and didn’t try to conceal the almost gleeful look in her eye. It turned my stomach. “Caroline.” I came closer, reaching for her hand that hung at her side. Her fingers were cold. “What are you doing? He’s a guy . You can’t—you can’t poison Fiona to try to win him. He isn’t some trophy you need to steal from her. You can’t just?—”
“I can do what I want.” She pulled her hand from mine, staring me down with a twist to her lips. “Gosh, when did you get on such a high horse, Lovey?”
“You didn’t tell me Grant was coming home early.”
Immediately, her scowl dropped from her expression, something almost like irritation crossing her face.
“I specifically asked you to give me a heads up.”
“I didn’t know he was home.”
I could almost feel my blood humming. “Grant told me he talked to you.”
“Well, he lied. Is that a shocker to you, given your guys’ history?”
Another deflection. “He told me about your brunch meeting with Aaron. At Pierre’s.”
“He said we went to Pierre’s?” Caroline arched an eyebrow. “Did you see me at Pierre’s?”
I hadn’t; I hadn’t even gotten out of the car.
Caroline saw my uncertainty and jumped on it. “Wow. You’ll turn on your best friend just like that? You’d believe Grant over me?” She started walking to her car. “Cool, Lovey. Real cool.”
Any other time, I would’ve rushed out an apology. The idea of Caroline mad at me would’ve made me sick to my stomach. Instead, Aaron’s words were fresh in my mind, and they bolstered me, strengthened me against all the manipulation tactics I’d never noticed before.
“I like him,” I called after her. “Aaron.”
With her hand on her car door, she froze. The air stirred her hair, though she didn’t turn. “He isn’t going to marry you,” she said, using my words against me.
I lifted my chin. “You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know him .”
“I know him better than you do.”
The moments dragged on as she turned, hiding her face from me. My spine stiffened, the tension building as I waited for some sign of what she was feeling.
Okay, now anxiety trickled in.
In the end, though, she didn’t turn around. “You might think so. You know what he’s showing you.” Caroline popped open her car door as if the conversation were over. “That’s what people like him do, Lovey. They only ever show you what they want to. And they’re good at it.”
“People like him,” I echoed as she slid into her tan leather seat. “People like you?”
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, I never listened 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 understood me . 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 .