As I debated the reason for the flash in Mrs. Finch’s eyes, I realized that, as selfish as it might be, I didn’t want the pageant to be postponed or cancelled. I’d allowed Aunt DeeDee to wax and loofa me. I’d already accepted the fact that I would likely be watching TikTok eye makeup tutorials and caking my face with an inordinate number of products this weekend. Perhaps most importantly, I’d already started spending the winnings in my mind. I would save Momma’s house. I would pay off the debt collectors. I would help Aunt DeeDee’s business recoverfinancially. I might go back to school. We would have a future again. My mantra ran through my mind:You just need to place.But I couldn’t place unless there was a pageant in which to compete.
Plodding feet interrupted my thoughts as another man in uniform stepped forward, holding a black velvet bag with sharp angles above his head and motioning to the sheriff.
Sheriff Strong stepped toward Aunt DeeDee, a look of resolution on his face. He took his handcuffs and held them at his side, and for a split second I thought he was coming for me.
Aunt DeeDee’s eyes bored into mine. “Now, Dakota, don’t believe a word they say, you understand?”
I found myself nodding, even though I had no idea what she meant.
Aunt DeeDee turned back to the sheriff, the hint of a pout around her lips, an expression I’d never seen her wear before. Sheriff Strong’s gaze flickered to me, and I almost thought I caught an apology in his eyes.
As the sheriff pulled my aunt’s hands behind her back and secured the handcuffs, I thought about how I hadn’t been able to save Momma from what had come for her, but now Aunt DeeDee—the only parent I had left—was in a different kind of trouble, one that I might be able to fix if I could think straight and find a solution.
“Arresting me will take time away from you finding the actual culprit,” Aunt DeeDee protested as shocked mouths fell open around us. “You know that.”
The handcuffs clicked into place, and the sheriff turned DeeDee back around, scratching at his jaw. “Maybe. That’s why I’m gonna take you in, get you settled, and hurry back as soon as I can.” He took a deep breath and avoided eye contact with me. “For now, Deanna Green, you’re under arrest for theft. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be…”
As Sheriff Charlie Strong stoically read my aunt her Miranda rights, tears welled in her eyes, and my heart cracked at the edges.
The only time I’d seen Aunt DeeDee cry had been when I’d walked into Momma’s room a week after her death, and she’d been lying in her sister’s bed, holding one of Momma’s ratty sweaters against her cheek, bawling her heart out. Even then, five minutes later, she’d collected herself, blotted her eyes with a tissue, and apologized for bothering me with all that noise.
Now Aunt DeeDee was sad and scared, and I didn’t know how to help her. But I needed to try.
The contestants—their expressions frightened and intrigued despite their colorful hats, lined eyes, and glowing cheeks—parted like a curtain around Aunt DeeDee as the sheriff marched her out of the palace in handcuffs.
TEN
When I was little, Momma tried to make me fall in love withWinnie the Pooh and the Honey Treebecause she’d loved the short film as a kid. We watched Pooh singing to the bees about being a storm cloud so he could steal their honey. For reasons only a good therapist could explain, this scene terrified four-year-old me, giving me nightmares about bees and trees and suffocating in honey. For years whenever so much as a fly buzzed past me on the playground at recess, I would fall to the ground, curl up in a ball, and wail until help arrived. So, Momma did what she always did: She made me face my fears.
By the time I was ten, she’d taught me how to find hives in the mountains. She’d taken me to visit a working honeybee farm where I learned to smoke bees to sleep. She’d encouraged me to climb every tall tree I could find. By my eleventh birthday, I was no longer afraid of bees.
All that to say, before the anger I’d experienced upon Momma’s death, fear had always been my go-to emotion. No doctor had ever diagnosed me, but after taking my first psych class in college, the requisite 101, I figured that some kind of anxiety disorder—a hint of obsessive, a smidge of compulsive, and the smallest zest of depression—had coded its way into myneural pathways. Maybe that’s why grief mowed me down like a Mack truck.
And maybe that’s why time froze around me now. My aunt in handcuffs was a reality I couldn’t comprehend. It made my knees weak and my heart thud in my chest. I stood still, immobilized by questions and that too-familiar fear.
I’d already lost my mother. I couldn’t lose my aunt. I pulsed my fingers in and out, trying to remind my body to move again, trying to make my brain jump-start as I watched Savilla tend to her stepmother.
These two women, the two closest to Mr. Finch, had to know something they weren’t saying—something about this palace, the pageant, or the people in it—and I needed information to help clear my aunt’s name before I let them out of my sight.
I sidled up to Savilla, trying for a sweet tone that came out more eager than I intended. “Can I do anything?”
Savilla appeared relieved. “Thank you, Dakota. I need to take StepMommy back to her apartment. Can you help?” She addressed the person behind me as well. “Summer, you too… can you get her other side?”
I turned to see the petite contestant still hovering behind me. Summer’s dark pink lips turned down in concern. “Of course.”
I did as bid and offered my arm to Mrs. Finch while Summer hurried around to act as a kind of crutch on her opposite side. Mrs. Finch hesitated only a moment before deciding to allow both of us to give her aid while Savilla led the way to the Finches’ personal residence. I caught Jemma watching us from beneath her hat, a hint of envy at our proximity to the Finches in her long-lashed eyes.
As the crowd dissipated, likely at a loss as to what to do with their unexpected free time, we slowly trekked past the library, down a long skylit hallway, past the lobby, around the edge of a solarium, and through a door camouflaged to look like part ofthe wall to a back flight of stairs ascending to the third floor. With all the twists and turns, I would never be able to find my way back to the ballroom, and I could only imagine what kind of montage we made: Savilla and Summer in their hats, me in my boots and jeans, and the glamorous Mrs. Finch sandwiched between us all.
As we strode through the halls of the palace, the light airiness of the public spaces gave way to a dimmed, yellow-tinged hue, and the fading wallpaper grew more ornate, less modern. A vine pattern on a dark blue backdrop meandered round and round the wall in endless figure eights, winding and threading into an infinity of intersecting lines. The Gilded Age influence was apparent and I realized that this must be the original décor. These were the rooms we hadn’t toured back in middle school, the ones reserved for family and close friends.
The rooms in the residential wing were labeled with placards likeAnniversary Apartment,Queen Elizabeth Suite,The Remembrance Room, and the shift in ambiance gave the sensation of stepping into a well-preserved version of the early 1900s. I wondered how many other secret doors fed off this hallway of suites.
I wasn’t sure who else might be staying in the residential wing, but I guessed those closest to the Finches—perhaps the judges, maybe even Aunt DeeDee. I spotted two people trailing behind us, one rather quickly for her age. It was the female judges: Miss 1962, aka Doris Davis, and Katie Gilman.
“Have you checked the wine cellar?” Miss 1962 asked Mrs. Finch.
Of course there would be a wine cellar. I could almost see row after row of expensive labels, of corks being removed, of drinks toasting the woman of the year.
