Oh, yay. A thirty-minute tutorial and a year of picking at Aunt DeeDee’s food while grieving had done wonders.
“Nice… shoes,” I said. I hadn’t looked at her shoes, but she didn’t seem to notice as she kicked up a gold six-inch heel covered in rhinestones… or actual diamonds?
“Do you think so?” She leaned toward me conspiratorially and put a finger over her mouth. “I stole them from Mommy’s closet. She doesn’t even know they’re gone. Gosh, it’s been…”
“A while,” I said, tucking my hands in my pockets. “You’re a photographer now?”
“Anartiste,” she corrected, pronouncing the word with aneewhere theishould’ve been. “What are you doing? Andhere? I thought you, like, broke back horses.” She drew out the words for a beat too long as she narrowed her eyes with a questioning, and perhaps even suspicious, look.
Um, that’s not a thing, I wanted to say. I eyed the row of crowns behind her. “I’ve come to case the joint.”
Savilla stared at me and then broke into a grin as if she realized I was joking. “You’re funnier than you used to be.”
“I’m actually…” I had to make myself say the words. “I’m a contestant.”
“Oh, goody!” she exclaimed, her voice pitching up an octave in excitement. Pageants she understood. “I’m a contestant too.” Savilla carefully brushed a finger under her eye as if wiping away a speck of dust. “Well, not really. I’m an ‘honorary attendee,’ but I can’t, like, win because my family runs things. You know, it’s a contest of interestings.”
I squinted, trying to understand her meaning. Savilla had always spoken her own kind of language that the rest of us had to interpret if we wanted to converse with her. “You mean a conflict of interest?”
“No,” she frowned, like I was slow on the uptake. “Contests ofinterestings. The most fascinating women from the East Coast descend on The Rose once a year, and this year I’m planning to capture it all.” Savilla held up the camera and wiggled it in midair before lowering her voice in a breathless and conspiratorial whisper. “Oh my goodness. Did you see the police here already? A missing crown, if you can believe it!”
A missing pageant queen decades ago and now a missing crown. How exciting! I could almost see the headlines, the swirling rumors, the speculations like thought bubbles above the heads of eager pageant fans:What else might soon disappear from The Rose?
I started to ask when exactly the crown had gone missing, but a woman who must’ve been in her mid-forties yet somehow had nary a wrinkle on her forehead walked up to Savilla and whispered something in her ear. A much older man, slightly stooped but still surprisingly spry, followed behind the woman at a distance, stopping to nod at the workers and contestants streaming past him, their arms filled with organza and chiffon.
I would know this couple anywhere. This wastheMr. and Mrs. Finch, Savilla’s father and stepmother, the two people most responsible for the Rose Palace Centennial, an event projected to bring more than ten thousand people through their gates that weekend.
Their expressions were strained, likely from the police presence at their event, but at the sight of Savilla, Mr. Finch visibly relaxed.
As Mrs. Finch briefly admired her rail-thin reflection in a nearby mirror, one of the passing contestants beamed at Mr. Finch. He was obviously a favorite.
“StepMommy and Daddy, this is Dakota Green,” Savilla said. “You remember her?”
The woman’s eyebrows attempted to turn down, to no avail. “Oh, yes. You poor dear.” Mrs. Finch spoke in one of those northeastern accents that had gone the way of Katharine Hepburn films. “We attended your mother’s funeral, isn’t that right? Or, perhaps, we sent flowers?”
“That’s right,” I said, actually having no idea.
“Some kind of tragic accident, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“Um… cancer,” I answered.
“Yes, of course. Terrible.” Mrs. Finch’s gaze followed a young woman who held boxes stacked atop one another. She didn’t say a word and instead snapped her fingers at the girl, who froze and turned around to head back from whence she came.
“Pretty… you know, deadly,” I said, bringing Mrs. Finch’s attention back to me.
She acknowledged my snide comment with a faux grin. “So glad you could make it, though I don’t remember your application. Fred, dear, do you remember a Dakota Green?”
I didn’t mention that Aunt DeeDee had told me she’d slipped it in last minute.
“Not that I recall, but I’m a forgetful old man these days.” Frederick Finch’s eyes flickered to me and he offered a charismatic smile that featured even, white teeth. “But the name Dakota Green. Yes, I certainly remember you and your family. Your aunt is DeeDee Green, isn’t that right?” He tilted his head in a mannerism similar to his daughter and took my hand in his own.
At seventy-five, Mr. Finch was no longer handsome like he’d once been, but I could see how his eyes could’ve turned heads a couple of decades ago. They were the color of forget-me-nots, a flower that grew in the hills nearby. It was an open secret that he’d had many love interests over the years, that he was a philanderer, but neither he nor Mrs. Finch seemed to let it affect their union.
Perhaps that’s because Mr. Finch was rich. Very rich. Like, rich enough to buy up Aubergine and most of Virginia if he so chose. He didn’t though. Instead, he gave generously to annual town events like the Peach Festival and the Rose Palace Derby, to the subpar school system that educated a thousand or so kids every year, and of course to the annual pageant in his ancestral home that brought in a steady stream of tourism.
“Dakota is a contestant this year,” Savilla told her father, beaming as if I was her new pet project.
“Ah. Yes, perfect. A breath of fresh air.” The comment startled me, made me wonder if Aunt DeeDee had been talking me up, planting the idea of needed change in the minds of these pageant people. “Well, my dear,” Mr. Finch continued, “you have a startling resemblance to your aunt, our very own Miss 1990, though perhaps you shouldn’t mention her this week. Some of the judges might not be on the best terms with her.”
