“Uh-huh.” I leaned against the galvanized bars of the corral. Bella nuzzled my shoulder as if she wanted to read the contents.
It was the eleventh such letter I’d received in as many months. Momma knew that if she’d given me all twelve—one for each month after her death—I would’ve read them in one sitting and then stayed in bed for weeks. This way, I could wean myself off her voice.
“You know I only read them because she told me to,” Lacy said, as I slid my sun-kissed finger underneath the lip of theenvelope. “She said at least one person needed to know what she was asking you to do, to make sure you didn’t become a complete hermit. I think you should read this one sitting down.”
So I did. I plopped my butt onto the hard earth as Bella huffed out a breath, blowing my long brown ponytail.
“Not what I meant.” Lacy squatted next to me.
My eyes scanned the contents like someone dying of thirst after a day in three-digit heat seeing an oasis.
Dakota,
Huh. Momma usually called me “Honeybee” because I’d overcome my fear of them—and because from the time I could walk, I loved helping her in our back garden, filled with vegetables, peach trees, blueberry bushes, and wildflowers.Dakotameant that this one must be serious.
It’s been eleven months since you buried me. Grab a pint of butter pecan and curl up on the sofa with Bucket.
The corner of my mouth lifted. I could almost see the look on Momma’s face—the pert nose, the dimple in her left cheek that I’d inherited, the thin lips turned into a nearly constant smile—as she wrote the words.
After I finished reading, I gave back the letter to Lacy and stood, reaching out a hand to stroke the white on the bridge of Bella’s nose, acting as if Momma hadn’t just asked me to do something utterly ridiculous.
Lacy watched me with a practiced eye. Like most people in our tiny hamlet she viewed the Rose Palace Pageant as a harmless pastime. She’d never competed, said she refused to be the token Black girl in the show’s PR pics, but this year she’d been contracted to be the event coordinator. She suddenly cared about the show because she was kind of in charge of it.
In similar fashion, Momma had raised me to view the pageant as a necessary evil for our small town’s economy. She would explain away Aunt DeeDee’s involvement every year witha wave of her hand:It’s just a job.We both knew that wasn’t true. My aunt lived and breathed all things pageant.
“You okay?” Lacy asked.
“Fine,” I answered, even though my heart beat against my ribcage like a hummingbird flapping its wings. I think I sensed even then how all of this would end, how I’d be forced to do something that would upend my predictable existence.
“No, you’re not,” Lacy insisted, folding her arms across her chest as she studied me.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, guiding Bella into the stable. “Because I won’t do it. I will never compete in that awful show.”
Lacy knew that I’d already humored Momma when she’d asked me to have a picnic at her graveside behind First Baptist at month four, and I’d reluctantly agreed when she’d encouraged me to try a couple of blind dates at the Spoonful Diner, which Lacy had arranged in month nine. But this? Compete in the Rose Palace Pageant? I hadn’t thought that the chemo had damaged my mother’s brain cells, but maybe I was wrong. Either way, she could haunt me all she wanted. I’d actually prefer that. I could tell her little orb what I thought of her absurd request.
“There is no way I’m dressing up and prancing around in high heels for money,” I said, hoping Momma could hear me from the Great Beyond as I led Bella into her stall.
“Even third place comes with cash,” Lacy said. “We both know you need money.”
I unbuckled the saddle and raised an eyebrow. “I’m not going to win any place because I’m not competing. The Rose Palace is a”—I tried to find the words—“danger to thinking women everywhere.”
“It’s a pageant,” Lacy said, rolling her eyes. “Not the annual Hunger Games.”
“What about that winner who disappeared when we were kids?” I hated my condescending tone but couldn’t keep it out of my voice.
Lacy’s mouth screwed up in thought. “Do you remember when we were in high school, and we did that big project about the town’s history for Mrs. Ember’s class?”
My brow furrowed at the change of subject, but I answered anyway. “Sure. I wrote about the first hospital.”
“Right. And I tried to write about the missing pageant winner. True crime before true crime was a thing.”
I listened, not actually recalling much of this.
“I had to change topics,” Lacy said. “Couldn’t even find the woman’s name in the newspaper archives. Like it had been scrubbed clean.”
“This isn’t helping your argument that I should compete.”
“What I’m saying is that we can’t base what we do on things that happened more than two decades ago. If we did that, no one would drive down Hickory Lane after that terrible car accident. Or attend the Peach Festival because of those out-of-towners who threw fruit at the mayor a few years ago.” Lacy gave a shrug and her face relaxed back into a smile. “Anyway, the pageant’s not like that now—women, including your aunt, mostly run everything. We gotta let the past lie.”
