I had no idea why she was thanking me.
“Upstairs with StepMommy. I’m sure Daddy will show up soon enough. He’s done this kind of thing before—flown off to Paris for the night or taken the car into town at the worst moment—though I suppose that was years ago. Still, she can be a bit melodramatic. Has a bit of history of onyx, you know, but she means well.”
History of onyx?I glanced at Lacy, but she hadn’t heard Savilla’s misuse of the English language. Then it hit me.Histrionics. Her stepmother was prone to histrionics. No one could say Savilla wasn’t trying to use those big words, althoughperhaps with tonight’s glittering theme she’d actually meant what she’d said. I was beginning to suspect her odd phrases might be intentional. Maybe she was a Shakespeare in the making.
“I’m sure your stepmother is…” How to describe what Mrs. Finch must be feeling? “I’m sure she’s processing.”
Savilla patted my arm before someone caught her eye from across the room and waved her over. She yanked Jemma along behind her, and the gold-clad Barbie look-alike went willingly.
Before anyone else could interfere, Lacy, Summer, and I darted through the foyer, down a wide corridor, and toward the library where my aunt’s office was apparently housed.
The library doors were thick and wooden and, through those, shaded sconces cast a soft yellow glow across the floor-to-ceiling rows of books of all colors and sizes. A full wall of outward-facing paperbacks on display appeared to have been written by former pageant queens. I picked up two of them:Heavy Lies the Crownhad been written by Miss 1983 andHow to Give Yourself a Self-Permby Miss 1978. Very different topics. At least twenty other varied titles were lined up beside these.
“The pageant had its own publishing press for about twenty years, starting in the seventies,” Lacy said. “Winners were required to write a memoir of their experience or a ‘tip guide’ for future contestants.”
“I’ve read all of them,” Summer enthused. “You can get them on Kindle too.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised since First Baptist hosted a literary festival celebrating one of our town’s many obscure claims to fame: revivalist John Cartwright, a nineteenth-century preacher who wrote mostly about fire and brimstone and who set up a printing press at our town hall in 1834 to distribute pamphlets across Virginia. We were nothing if not literary.
“So where exactly is her office?” I asked.
“On the other side of the fireplace,” Lacy answered, nodding at a high white mantel above black grating. “The door is remote-controlled.” She reached under the mantel, pulled out a slim device, and pressed in a code. The fireplace wall began to move, turning ninety degrees to let us walk inside.
In front of us were slatted steps leading to a second floor with another door.
“Her office is up there,” Lacy said, pulling a key from around her neck as she led me and Summer up the steep stairs, which creaked in a sort of singsong melody. “They built the palace with hidden rooms and tunnels in anticipation of the next war. DeeDee told me that most of the spaces are now used as offices, storage, or as a way to get quick access to other parts of the property.”
I thought of the secret world around, above, and under me as I breathed in the musty scent of books. That was the kind of thing I’d dreamed about when we’d been invited to Savilla’s tenth birthday sleepover here as kids, but all Savilla had wanted to do was gossip, eat brownies, and play with a Ouija board that told all of us that we were going to marry someone whose name started with the letter C. I thought of the sheriff—Charlie—and swallowed hard.
Maybe Savilla had been a lonely child, surrounded by toys and diamonds and a household staff and little else. Maybe she’d felt neglected in this huge house with only a doting nanny for company. Maybe she’d simply been trying to connect. I was beginning to realize that people’s realities—Aunt DeeDee’s included—might be all kinds of different than I’d imagined.
Lacy used her key to open the door. Once inside, she felt along the wall until she found a light switch. The overhead fixture was a sunburst pattern in copper tones with a globe emanating from the center. It looked original to the 1910s, when it would’ve been installed.
The décor inside Aunt DeeDee’s office was tasteful, as I would’ve expected. A reprint of Monet’sWoman with a Parasolhung next to Renoir’sLuncheon of the Boating Party.I knew them because every summer Aunt DeeDee dragged me and Momma to her favorite art museum in Richmond, and one year I’d spent hours staring at the originals that were on loan from some faraway place. In between the paintings hung her framed pageant-winner’s sash.
“What should we look for this time?” Summer asked.
“This time?” Lacy asked, her brow quizzical.
“Summer and I explored Aunt DeeDee’s guest room earlier,” I explained.
Lacy seemed to accept this and peered over my shoulder as I opened the tall filing cabinet behind my aunt’s orderly desk, which was lined with a jar of pens, a stack of pageant programs, and photos of our family.
Inside the cabinet I was glad to see everything neatly labeled by year with colored tags indicating marketing material, contestants, and winners.
“Looks like files on each of the contestants,” I said as I flipped to 1990 and saw photos of Aunt DeeDee, as well as an application scrawled in her handwriting. Next to the question,Why do you want to be the next Rose Palace Queen?she’d written,To be a good role model to young women by letting them know they can be themselves.
I smiled faintly at the answer. That was actually pretty good, and not something I’d thought a place like this would aspire to do. Makeup tips, sure. How to lose ten pounds in ten days, that too. But maybe Aunt DeeDee’s goals here had been more grounded and altruistic than I’d considered.
I handed Lacy the stack, and Summer opened the bottom drawer to pull out Miss 1938. She laughed and held the folder out to me. “Look at this swimsuit.”
Miss 1938’s get-up was essentially a sundress, complete with a matching swim cap that covered every inch of her scalp and ears.
“I’m sure Dakota would much rather wear that than whatever Aunt DeeDee ordered for her,” Lacy told Summer, as I combed through the files until I found the date I was actually searching for.
Miss 2001, a suspiciously light folder. I opened it, and only two items fell out, facedown on the floor. I stooped to pick them up and flipped them over.
A wedding announcement fromAubergine Weekly, dated December 15, 2001, read, “Mr. Frederick Finch married his blushing bride in an intimate candlelit ceremony at The Rose, the same place where she was declared the official winner of this year’s pageant only a few months earlier. Those in attendance included Mr. Finch’s daughter and the staff at the estate. Frederick and Glenda Finch will honeymoon in Venice.”
