by Jessica Daw
the pride and prejudice of musicians
jessica daw
Copyright © Jessica Daw 2017
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
epilogue—even sooner
chapter one
“You will never guess who your father just got off the phone with,” Mom said excitedly as she burst into the recording studio. Her heat-damaged, carefully curled blond hair looked windblown, as if she’d run to the studio from the house. She’d been known to do it before. Her light blue eyes were earnest with whatever news it was she had, her soft frame almost quivering.
I rolled my eyes at Jane, though without rancor—this was hardly the first time Mom had made a noisy entrance in the middle of a recording session. Jane, of course, simply smiled, one slim hand releasing her cello to tuck her chin-length honey hair behind her ear. She was easily the prettiest girl I’d ever met, or woman, I suppose, at twenty-seven, with her slim 5’7” figure; soft, perfect features; and gorgeous warm brown eyes. She wore almost no makeup, not needing it with her smooth skin and dark eyebrows and lashes, and dressed simply, but I had never heard anyone call her anything but beautiful.
Mary was the most irritated by the disruption, which was in character. She slammed her music binder shut, a disgruntled expression on her frankly plain face, her pale blond hair beginning to come out of her bun and her dust blue eyes indignant. Mary took everything in life very seriously, including interruptions of our recording sessions.
Lydia immediately asked, “Who?” and her twin, Kitty, echoed her. Lydia turned the microphone from her face and smiled her favorite mischievous smile, the one she always said drew the most attention to the beauty spot on the corner of her mouth, the only distinguishing feature between the pair. Otherwise the eighteen-year-old twins both had long blond hair, athletic frames, pretty elfin features, and laughing blue eyes.
“Was it Aunt Fee?” I asked teasingly.
“No,” Mom replied scornfully. “It was Cade Bingley!” We all stared at her blankly. “He produced, oh, what was it? That movie with the casino? I don’t remember, but he’s very famous and important and he wants to work with you!”
“With us?” I asked, trying my very best not to believe it. We’d been independently producing music for years now, in my dad’s recording studio, performing locally and barely earning enough to maintain our web page. But all of us believed we could make it one day, really make it. Except there was doubt, at least in my mind, and it grew darker as every day passed and nothing ever came our way.
“Oh, do you mean that one with that guy from Angel Mine?” Lydia asked excitedly.
“Yes, that one!” Mom exclaimed. I swallowed, working on that disbelief a little harder. There’d been too many times where this one was going to be the one that would launch our family band from next-to-nobodies to shooting stars.
“Cade Bingley,” Kitty said slowly. “Is he related to Carrie Bingley?”
“Who?” Mary asked, her pale brows furrowed.
Kitty started twirling her drumstick, making a face at Mary. “She was in that horror movie last year, remember, with the creepy little kid.” The crease didn’t disappear from Mary’s forehead.
“I imagine they’re related, with a last name like that,” I interposed, nearly achieving my usual lighthearted tone.
“He talked to Dad?” Jane asked, the same hope that kept shoving its way through my chest clear in her voice. Dad was our manager, according to our website. In actuality, I did most of the managing, but he handled calls from people with potential interest in hiring us.
“Oh, yes, and you’ll never believe what he said!”
“What did he say?” I snapped impatiently. Most days I didn’t mind Mom’s circuitous way of speaking, but most days she didn’t have anything to say that affected my entire future. Hers, too—Mom had recorded one successful song when she was seventeen, a classic one-hit wonder, and though we still got a little from royalties, we weren’t doing well financially. A legit producer interested in us . . . it could change everything. And she couldn’t spit out what he’d said.
She didn’t notice my irritation, smiling broadly. “He said he hates meetings on the phone, and that he’s never been to Meryton—as if anyone comes to this middle-of-nowhere place—so he’s flying out in two days to speak with us!”
Lydia squealed, and Kitty followed suit. Mary’s jaw dropped, and Jane’s eyes widened. I felt my eyes widen too, belief worming its way into me while my guard was down. This could be it—really, truly it. This could mean no more free concerts in Meryton Park, no more living at home so every penny we made could go towards Dad’s failing recording business, no more dragging ourselves through exhausting shifts of menial labor only to come home and force ourselves to do one more recording session to finish a song that less than a thousand people would ever hear. This could make us.
I drew a shuddering breath and forcefully ejected the image of our name on an album cover on iTunes’ homepage from my mind. Even if Cade Bingley existed and was in a position to be our jumping point, he may not like what he heard, or if he did I could be wrong and our music could not be good enough to save us.
Chatter had flowed around me while I’d reined in my imagination.
“Lilly?” Jane asked quietly, noticing my abstraction.
I managed to smile. “I almost wish she hadn’t told us.”
She bit her lip. “You don’t think he’ll like us?”
“Heavens, I don’t know. I’m afraid to hope,” I confessed quietly. Not that I needed to worry about Mom or the twins overhearing, or Mary for that matter, who for once in her life was listening rapturously to Mom’s neverending monologue.
“So you are hoping?” Jane asked.
I laughed. “I can’t seem to help myself,” I said, throwing my hands up.
She smiled, and I was glad to see it. “We may as well hope, a little.”
“Ha! Found him!” Lydia exclaimed abruptly, loud enough to draw Jane’s and my attention. She had her phone out and began eagerly reading. “Cade Bingley, or Charles Theodore Bingley, was born in London, England, March 25—he’s twenty-nine. Um, son of producer Frederick Bingley and actress Isabella Thorpe, oh, and Carrie Bingley is his sister! He is a producer, a sound mixer, a stunt man, and a location scout! Ooh, and he’s handsome, look!” She passed her phone to Mom, who oohed and ahhed appropriately (or inappropriately, for a woman her age), then passed it on to Kitty, who handed it to me.
I bent over to look at it with Jane. He looked younger than twenty-nine, and Lydia was right—he was surprisingly handsome for a behind-the-camera guy, with smiling brown eyes, gently curling dark brown hair, expressive eyebrows, and a broad, genuine smile.
“He’s coming here?” Jane asked, her eyes fixed on the phone, which she unconsciously took from me. Lydia grabbed it back from her after it buzzed with one of her hundreds-daily texts from boys.
“Yes, that’s what I just said!” Mom was passingly frustrated by the question, but her brow soon cleared. “We have to clean the house,” she said urgently. “He will want to eat with us, as the only decent restaurant in town is Ashworth’s and I’m sure it can’t be up to the standards of a man like that.”
“And our food is?” I couldn’t resist asking, holding back a grin.
; “Of course!” Mom declared. “I am a fantastic cook, and Jane isn’t bad herself.”
“A genius, I think you mean,” I contradicted, smiling at Jane, who characteristically blushed and demurred.
Mom ignored me. “Let’s see, Jane, tomorrow is your half-day at the elementary school, isn’t it?” Jane nodded. “Good, you can help. The rest of you . . .”
“School in the morning, hotel in the afternoon,” Lydia immediately announced.
“Me too,” Kitty was quick to say. The twins hadn’t yet finished high school, in the last weeks of their senior year.
“My shift at the bank ends at five,” Mary said austerely, inordinately proud of her job as a teller.
“Dawn has me at the boutique until nine, but I can help in the morning,” I offered. The boutique was the only job I could find in Meryton that wasn’t food service or full-time. At least, it was the only job that I was qualified for and could work while composing our music and assisting Dad in mixing and editing and other managerial things he did. I’d done a brief stint as a music teacher, but had quickly discovered that repeatedly telling children what a grand staff was while they ignored me wasn’t my strong suit.
“Hmph. I guess you shouldn’t take a day off, since you’ll probably want to while he’s here.” She contemplated a moment. “All of you request that day off,” she said decisively. “He’ll want someone to show him around town, and who better than one of you?”
I laughed. “Mom, do you think he’ll fall in love with one of us?”
“I don’t see why not,” she said indignantly. “And you know celebrities are always getting married.” Her tone got wistful then. “I just want to see you girls happily married to men who’ll support you, and think of the glamorous life you’d have if you married a producer like Cade Bingley!”
Mom’s life goal was to have five married daughters. Having gotten married herself at eighteen, she believed that marriage was the only route to stability and happiness and that any woman who didn’t get married was bound to end up on the streets. I privately thought she was ridiculous, but (though I usually refused to say so in front of her) always figured I’d marry someone if I fell in love. Despite my experience as a music teacher, I’d always thought I’d like to have kids of my own. But no one in Meryton was even remotely interesting to me as a marital candidate, so for the time being, I was focusing on my career. Mom worried enough about me getting married for the two of us, and despite what she said, in this century, girls aren’t spinsters at twenty-five.
“Yes, because celebrity marriages tend to end so well,” I said in an undertone to Jane.
“I heard that, Lilly! But no celebrity has ever married my daughter,” she said confidently.
“I suppose that’s true,” I replied gravely.
At that point, Dad entered the room. “Ah, Cynthia, I see you’ve beat me again.” He showed no sign of having hurried, his brown hair combed just as it had been that morning, his plain gray T-shirt dry, the faint wrinkles at the corners of his eyes no more pronounced than usual. His dark brown eyes twinkled with amusement. “So you’ve heard that one of you will soon be married to Cade Bingley, have you?”
“See, even your father says it,” Mom said in triumph. “You asked him to dinner, didn’t you?”
“I did not,” Dad sad imperturbably.
She rounded on him. “Robert! I distinctly remember telling you to ask him!”
“And I had the audacity to disobey, my dear.”
“But he’ll be hungry and we can’t have him going to Ashworth’s,” she said, bordering on distraught.
“Will they be closed?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in pseudo concern.
“No,” Mom snapped. “But he shouldn’t have to eat at that place. It’s not posh, and he’s a celebrity!”
“Is there something wrong with it? Do many patrons complain of abuse at Ashworth’s?”
“No, it’s not that,” Mom said impatiently. “But it’s not classy.”
“And a man of his caliber must always dine at a classy restaurant, is that it?”
“Yes! And since there isn’t anywhere nearby, he’ll want to eat with us!”
“I suppose he’ll say so, if you’re so certain that’s what he wants.”
“But you need to ask him!” she insisted.
“I won’t, my dear,” he said amiably. “You could. I’m sure you could finagle my cell away from me and find his number. You have a pleasant voice and I’ve no doubt he’d rather hear it than mine.”
“I can’t do that, Robert,” she said seriously. It never ceased to amaze me how poorly she understood him, after twenty seven years of marriage. I hadn’t realized how odd their relationship for a long time, assuming as a child would that the familiar is the norm. I couldn’t remember when I’d learned that Dad had married Mom when she’d gotten pregnant, both of them eighteen years old. He’d written her song—the song that had rocketed her into three months of fame and kept a vital trickle of money flowing into our bank account.
I suppose I should have been amazed that they were still together, but they had never done anything to make me believe there was a serious threat of them falling apart. If one were to leave, it would be Dad, since Mom didn’t have the imagination to think she may be happier with someone more similar to herself. I’d asked Dad once, when I was in a particularly vile mood after Mom had harassed me, why he stayed with her. He’d shrugged, then said, “I promised I’d stay with her ‘til death do us part. Neither of us is dead yet, so I’m sticking around.”
Dad ended his argument with Mom abruptly by asking us when were come to the house for dinner.
“Now, I think,” I said, looking to my sisters for confirmation. They nodded—the session had been too thoroughly interrupted to be resumed.
“I haven’t made anything!” Mom cried, evidently just remembering that we’d need to eat that evening.
“Never fear, dear. We are all remarkably good at foraging,” Dad said, patting her shoulder reassuringly as he walked out of the room.
“I suppose there are some leftovers in the fridge, and I bought that box of microwave burritos,” Mom said as she meekly followed Dad. The rest of us came after, Jane and I bringing up the end.
“Cade Bingley,” I said thoughtfully, curious about what Jane was thinking. “I suppose one of us will have to marry him, with Mom so set on the idea.”
Jane smiled. “I suppose we will. And will you be the lucky one?”
“Heavens, no. I assumed you would do the honors.”
I was a little surprised to see Jane blushing, faint but visible in the streetlight we were passing under. I wondered vaguely when the sun had gone down and realized we must’ve been in the studio longer than I’d thought. Time passed so quickly when I played and sang with my sisters.
“I don’t know why I liked his picture so well,” she confessed, falling further behind the group.
“It was a very nice picture,” I said, suppressing a grin.
She saw. “Don’t tease, Lilly, it’s not nice. Just because I admit to liking his picture doesn’t mean I’ll fall in love with him.”
“You could do worse than him, I think. That last one, I forget his name, for example.”
“I only went on two dates with him!”
“And he proposed on the second. I remember that much, poor unfortunate man.”
“I don’t know why they keep doing it,” she remarked a bit helplessly.
“I do. Who wouldn’t want to marry the sweetest, smartest, prettiest girl in the world? The only confusing bit is that you are able to refuse them—you, who’s never spoken an unkind word in her life.”
“Of course I can say no! I hate doing it. They look so crushed, but I don’t want to marry someone I don’t love, even if I upset them by telling them so.”
“You admit, then, that you didn’t love them?”
She shook her head, her eyes watching the pavement we traversed. “I liked them, all of them, honestly. . . .”
“Naturally,” I said when she didn’t continue.
She smiled faintly. “But when they ask that question, I wish they wouldn’t have. That isn’t what you should think when you’re ready to marry someone, is it?”
“I don’t imagine so,” I said, grinning at my dear, silly sister.
“I know it isn’t,” she said, almost defensive, catching my grin.
“Do you?” I asked, blinking innocently.
“Stop it, Lilly,” she said, but she smiled and ruined the effect of her almost-stern tone.
“I can’t help myself and you know it,” I said, and then laughed because she did know it. “But whatever are we to do with the handsome Cade Bingley?”
My question was destined to remain unanswered; we walked through the door of our worn little house and were immediately ambushed by Mom with all the things she’d thought of on the walk over.
The fateful day of reckoning came very quickly. I worked at the boutique until five, despite Mom’s best efforts to make me stay home, including but not limited to pleads, threats, tears, and silent treatments. When I came home, the kitchen was filled with my entire family, as Mary got off work at the same time as I, Jane earlier, and Kitty and Lydia had stayed home, submitting all too easily to Mom’s entreaties. Dad kept his own hours, being his own boss, and Mom didn’t have a paying job.
“Lilly!” I was assaulted the moment I came in. “You’ll never guess!” Mom told me yet again.
“He did propose to Jane?” I asked, biting my lip as I grinned irrepressibly at my target. She tried to frown but didn’t quite manage.
“No, better,” Dad said.
“Impossible!” I shot back at him.
“Prepare to be amazed, Lilly,” he said, his eyes alight with amusement.
Mom’s eyes were alight with excitement. “Cade Bingley, though I did not meet him and your father refused to ask him to dinner, but I can’t be angry about that, because he came to Meryton and said he liked it so well that he told your father that he was buying a house here today! He is coming back next week with a small group of friends to work with you girls, which he will be doing for his next movie, and that isn’t all!”