Chapter 64 – Diana & Tiana (II)

The memory made her feel nostalgic. The fleeting image of Tiana and the duchess in her mind made her feel sad. No wonder her gaze had been pulled by this ledger. The duchess, with her red, flaming hair and silvery, grey eyes, just like Tiana.

She knew that in the original story, the duchess had passed away due to a chronic illness. She couldn’t remember much more than that. Seeing the ledger, she became more curious and wanted to know more about the duchess. She scanned the pages and saw some notes that had been made in clumsy letters on the side of some of the papers:

I didn’t know this was left out.

Same mistake, again. Learn how to calculate better.

I knew it, I can’t write as clearly as Mother.

Mother has beautiful handwriting.

She went through each of the notes and felt emotional. Tiana had been so fond of her mother and lost much for one so young. The duchess must have turned these very pages. It gave her a sense of connection to this person who was long gone. She read every note on the ledger until the very last page. She was wiping the tears on her cheeks, before she even knew she was crying.

The last record had been two years ago, on April 2nd. After that, the pages were blank. Tiana felt sad and bitter. Was that the date when she died? She sat down on the floor, leaning on the shelf, hugging the ledger to her heart as tears flowed down her face in rivulets.

***

After lunch, which she couldn’t taste very well, because of the thoughts in her mind, Tiana came out to the garden for a stroll. She still had the ledger in her hands. Inabelle looked worried and watched her from behind but Tiana needed to be alone right now.

“Inabelle,” said Tiana sadly, “Can you leave me alone for a moment?”

“Of course, ma’am,” said Inabelle. Tiana walked to the corner of the garden. Inabelle and the other maids did not follow. She walked onto the largest tree on the other side of the garden. She sat on the swing that was tied to the thick branch and rocked back and forth. The momentum swung her back and forth and she let it. The ledger was on her lap. Her tears which had stopped for a moment came crashing and flowing out of her eyes.

The longing for the past, and the warmth she had never felt or remembered in her own life overwhelmed her. Ever since she found the ledger, her emotions had tangled and poured out of her eyes. Tiana had never had any parents to give and receive love. But she still longed for the parents who had left her in the modern world. Or was it for this duchess and what she had meant for the original Tiana? She couldn’t say. Her aunt and uncle had brought her up after her parents had died in a car accident. She had never known them; she didn’t even remember their faces. Her paternal grandmother had not allowed her aunt to send her to the orphanage. Her aunt, older sister to her father, had blamed her grandmother for burdening her with the ‘baggage’. She had never known love from her aunt but whenever grandmother came to visit, she had given love freely. She had lost her too, her loving grandmother, even before she entered elementary school.

Her aunt had never shown her kindness, her uncle had never cared. The love she had known momentarily from her grandmother was gone and she cried herself to sleep every night longing for warmth and kindness which was nowhere to be found.

She had pushed these longings far away in her mind to cope as a child. There hadn’t been a problem with money but she had tried hard to earn her own money after reaching adulthood so she could be away. She had given up everything to earn money, devoting her time to nothing else but only that. There came a time when her uncle and aunt had made her pay for her monthly expenses, and she had tried hard to earn more because she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of her pleading with them. She had never had friends, or boyfriends to share her pain with. She thought she was far too busy and broken for any kind of relationship.

She had searched for an escape and found one: web novels. She had picked up a web novel titled Imperial Prestige. It had been her only escape and the character Lucius had made her life better. She had fallen in love with him.

Maybe that was why she felt elated to possess Tiana’s body and be in this world. This was her escape. This was her safe place. Lucius was her home. Her encounter with Tiana’s memories of her mother had shaken her, though. Maybe because she had lost her grandmother early, the only mother-figure she had in her life, it made her feel connected to Tiana who had lost her mother too. She had learnt to read and write alongside her grandmother too, like Tiana and the duchess had done. She looked down at the ledger and the neatly written Diana and Tiana and burst into tears anew.