Rayner - The Princes Baby Mystery

Copyright 2020 by Holly Rayner

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All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.

C harlotte!

Charlotte Lange turned to see her leading actress, Emery Masterson, hurrying toward her in a disheveled state. Emerys makeup was only half applied, and though she was in costume, she still wore her yoga pants under the skirt she would wear for the entire first act. Her hair hung loose down her back instead of being arranged in the elaborate updo Charlotte had worked out with the hair design team.

Charlotte grabbed her by the elbow. Are you serious? she said. Its twenty minutes to curtain! Youre nowhere near ready.

Stop worrying, Charlotte, Emery said. We have a lot of time. Have you seen the size of the audience?

Ive seen it.

She had been waffling about it, her opinion changing every five minutes. The last time she had looked, it had seemed like an overwhelming amount of people. A frightening amount. The time before that, shed felt ashamed of how few had turned up.

I wonder if every playwright is this much of a mess on opening nights.

Just get back to hair and makeup, Charlotte said, giving Emery a gentle push in that direction. Dont let me see you again until youre ready for the stage.

Emery affected a fake pout. So bossy, she said, but she took off in the direction Charlotte had indicated she should go.

It was like herding cats. Already, Charlotte had caught two members of her cast sneaking out for cigarettes, even though she had expressly forbidden smoking on performance days. The last thing she needed was raspy-voiced actors choking their way through their lines.

This wasnt her first production, and yet she felt more nervous about this play than she had about any of her past ones. She wondered why that was.

Maybe it was just the fact that shed been working on this script for so much longer than anything else she had ever produced. It really had been her lifes work so far. Seeing it on stage during the final dress rehearsal last night had been surreal.

And now she was going to show it to the rest of the world.

God, she hoped people would like it. It would be painful in such a personal way if they didnt.

She took one last look around backstage and then made her way out to the front of the house. There was nothing else for her to do here, and she was making herself far too nervous lurking in the wings. The cast knew what they needed to do. The crew had been well trained. The best thing Charlotte could do now was to get out of their way and let them do their jobs.

That was easier said than done, though. As soon as she took her seat, she began to feel fidgety, thinking of things she hadnt checked.

Were all the props in place? She hadnt looked. Her prop master was a pro, but there had been that one rehearsal in which the bicycle had been a complete no-show. You could laugh something like that off in rehearsals, but if it happened tonightshe didnt even want to think about it.

And what about the costumes? She always liked to do final checks with the actors on opening nights, just to make sure they looked the way she wanted them to, and Emery had been so far from ready

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. No. She was just going to have to relax and let go of her worries. Either this would go well, or it wouldnt. She had done all she could in rehearsals and her work with the crew. They were ready. She trusted them.

As the curtain lifted, Charlottes anxiety reached its peak. For a moment she felt almost blinded by nerves.

But then Emery walked out onto the stage and spoke her first lines. She was perfectly in character, just as she always was, and Charlotte could feel the audience around her becoming swept up in the story.

The play was a reminiscence on Charlottes own years in graduate school, and it was there, in fact, that she had begun writing it. She had done her best to represent the way the pressured environment of an institute of higher learning could create unbreakable bonds between people.

Emerys character, Anna St. Clair, was not directly based on Charlotte herself or on anyone she had known in school, but she was an amalgam comprised of many different people. Charlotte felt deeply and personally connected to the character, more so than she did to any other she had ever written.

She had cast Emery after a single audition, thrilled with the spark the young actress had brought to the role. She hadnt expected to find someone who so completely was Anna St. Clair, but watching Emery made Charlotte feel as if the character she had spent so many years creating had literally come to life.

It was almost perfect.

Almost.

In the second act, things began to slip just a little. This was the part of the play theyd struggled with a few times in rehearsals. Anna was supposed to abandon the friends who had become like her surrogate family during her time at school, leaving her free to focus more wholly on her studies, and Emery had never been able to really capture the characters motivation.

I dont get it, shed said on more than one occasion. Everything good thats happened to her so far has been because of her friends. Why would she think shes got to leave them now?

Charlotte had done her upmost to explain the pivotal moment in her characters coming-of-age tale, but she knew that Emery had never quite managed to wrap her head around it. Sometimes she acted the part flawlessly anyway. But sometimes she thought too hard about what she was doing, and Charlotte was able to see through her portrayal.

Unfortunately, that seemed to be the case tonight.

Emery fumbled a line in the second to last scene of the play, and Charlotte felt as if she was choking. The actress never really got her feet back under her after that misstep. Fortunately, she didnt have much to do in the final scene, but Charlotte was excruciatingly aware the whole time that the person standing on the stage was Emery and not Anna.

The curtain call couldnt have come soon enough. She was relieved, as the cast took their bows, to see that the audience around her was applauding enthusiastically. Although she had been nervous about what their response might be, she allowed herself to look around.

Several people were on their feet. That was a good thing, Charlotte knew. She had only produced one play that had failed to bring anyone to their feet at its end, and that production had closed after only a few weeks. At least this one was looking more successful than that.

She looked to her right and noticed a well-dressed man applauding especially vigorously. He was tall, with light brown hair that fell across his forehead. Undeniably handsome, he looked to be about her own ageno older than thirty-five, surelyand the grin that split his face momentarily stunned her.

He really liked the play.

That was more than just approval. He was enthusiastic about it. Excited.

She knew that some productions had regulars, fans who loved them so much that they came back again and again. Was it possible that this man would come back to see her show again? She had never had a regular beforeat least, not that she knew of. It would feel like quite an accomplishment to know that someone was such a fan of her work.