Why did your family, after making so much money, decide to build a permanent residence in Aubergine?Brett was playing the inquisitive type as soft music sounded beneath what I guessed was supposed to be an intimate get-to-know-you.
My family earned their wealth in the diamond business in the late 1800s, Mr. Finch answered.My grandfather came from Scotland in steerage, just him and a few coins to his name. After he saw the crowded New York tenements, he decided to go west. He wanted to find a place that looked more like the Highlands he loved, so he went out to the Dakotas to see if he could make his way in the world. Through a shrewd game of poker, he ended up with the deed to a mine near Spearfish, and it just happened to be filled with diamonds.
I could imagine the commercials that must’ve run when this episode aired:Finch diamonds for that special someone who may someday murder you.Okay, maybe that wasn’t their slogan, but it did seem to be the theme of this family.
I pushed aside those musings as I suddenly realized that I was not only listening to Mr. Finch talk about his ancestor – I was also hearing part of my family history, the half I’d never known.
Mr. Finch was detailing the life story of Savilla’s—and my—great-grandfather in Spearfish, South Dakota. Was that why Iwas named Dakota? A feeling of faintness washed over me, and the room tilted ever so slightly.
The disparity between the two branches of my family tree couldn’t be more different: one had owned a diamond mine and founded a well-known jewelry company that provided the crowns for the oldest pageant in the U.S., and the other had worked in a Virginia coal mine for a pittance.
“Are you okay?” Savilla asked this time, catching my eye as she reached across me and pressed pause.
She had no idea that I was learning about a branch of my family tree for the first time, and I wasn’t ready to tell her.
“They’re just talking about Grandfather Gordon,” Savilla said easily, misreading my fraught emotions as mere curiosity. “He died in 1953 at ninety-two years old, and was apparently quite a character. Wore only navy blue and red to show his American allegiance, and he proposed to his wife after he spent some time with her in a house of ill-repute in the Dakotas. A bit eccentric.”
A great-grandmother prostitute? Wow.My origins were becoming more and more interesting.
“Gotcha,” I said, trying to sound uninterested as I pressed play again.
On-screen, Mr. Finch and Brett walked past the hedge maze that I now knew housed an underground tunnel that might still be marked with Mr. Finch’s blood. It was the place that had led me and a couple other pageant contestants toward unraveling the mystery of his death this past summer. The camera panned out to show the two men walking up the white stone portico to the back of the house.
A second later, the camera cut to a space that I didn’t recognize, but with the grand piano, I could guess.
“Is that the Music Room?” I asked.
“Yep, second floor. Did you see it in the dollhouse?”
I nodded distractedly, realizing that this was where Brett had asked—or demanded—that Lacy meet him at midnight.
Savilla’s phone lit up with multiple texts and she frowned as she read them. “Shoot. Looks like they can’t find the keys to the residential wing of the house.” She glanced at the computer and at me, explaining, “The original rooms use the old-fashioned brass keys rather than the scannable key cards. Will you be okay if I run back to the front and show them where to find them?”
“I’m good,” I reassured her, even though I wasn’t thrilled about being in this darkened area of the house by myself after midnight. Still, I wasn’t one to believe in things that go bump in the night.
Savilla scurried away, and I turned back to the computer to finish watching whatever was on this CD, speculating about whether Joe or someone else had burned it.
I dragged the mouse across the screen to the CD menu, and I spent the next thirty minutes clicking through highlight reels fromSmall Town, Big Romance.
I stopped on the final episode in which Presley was being interviewed by an off-screen woman.
Interviewer: How are you feeling about tonight?
Presley: Good. Nervous. Excited.
Interviewer: Can you unpack that a bit for us?
Presley: Sure. I mean, Brettcouldpropose, right? But he probably won’t. Imagine, a proposal on live TV. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
Interviewer: Are you feeling conflicted about how you might respond?
Presley: I know I want to be with him. We would be a fabulous power couple. Can you imagine?
Interviewer: I can. So, is that why you’re still in it? To be a power couple?
Presley: No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just… I think we’re good together, you know? We have the same aspirations, ambitions. But there’s also… love.
Interviewer: Is there?
