“I already tried to hack in. It didn’t work, but I did get this.” Lacy held up her phone to show the password hint to the account:diamond numbers, hashtag, lowercase, name of the one that got away.
“That is nonsensical,” I said, before taking a beat to reconsider. “Except, Brett did tell you that the only one who could stop him was the one that got away. Maybe this is what he meant?”
“That’s what I was thinking.” Lacy nodded. “Earlier tonight I asked Presley if she had any idea what it meant. She looked at me with these big eyes and asked if Brett had threatened me.”
I thought of how I’d spoken to Presley in the kitchen earlier that evening. She’d also claimed to have no idea about the identity of the person who’d inspired Brett’s hit single or his email password.
“I didn’t feel comfortable explaining everything to her, but I think she, like, somehow knew about Brett’s threat, but then we got interrupted by the police needing to question her again.” Lacy’s expression was pained. “I know he stayed at the estate occasionally, even recorded some music here, so I was looking for something by him or about him. This is all I found.” She held up a piece of paper with typed lyrics.
“Ugh. ‘The One That Got Away’ again?”
“Yep.” Lacy handed it over to me. At the bottom was scribbled Brett’s signature, a date, and a message.
“What’s that say?To my…” I was struggling to read his handwriting.
“I’m pretty sure it says,To my dark lady: a rose for the rose that got away.”
“My dark lady?” I asked, recoiling. “He doesn’t mean…”
“It’s not me,” Lacy insisted. “I’m sure of that. I think he meant it as a reference to Shakespeare’s Dark Lady.”
“Which is?” I tried to recall a detail I was pretty sure I’d never paid attention to in the first place.
Lacy had always been the more literary of the two of us. “It’s the mistress who inspired a bunch of his sonnets. We don’t know who she was.”
I studied the words and date right after the dedication:To us & June 2021. “That would’ve been during one of the pageants, right?”
“Probably. Number ninety-six?”
“Do you remember if Brett came back to Aubergine for that one?”
“God, who knows? Maybe. He and Mr. Finch seemed weirdly close, so I guess he could’ve been at any of them.”
I gave it some thought. “And he released his song almost two years later, in early 2023.”
Lacy tapped at her phone to look it up. “It hit the charts and stayed there for a few weeks.”
“Did you see him in between that time at all?”
Lacy shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
I stood and walked to the piano, quietly beginning to play the melody line on the sheet music. Aunt DeeDee had forced me to take piano from fifth to eighth grade, and while I remembered only the most basic musical terms, I could still pluck out the notes from a score. I played through the chorus before speaking again.
“So, he came to the 2021 pageant, he recorded the song in early 2023. Then, he made his TV debut onSmall Town, Big Romancein fall 2023.”
Lacy narrowed her eyes at me. “What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that if we can find the person he calledhis rose, the person he would’ve known in June 2021, then maybe we can figure out his password—and perhaps better understand who might’ve had something to do with his death.”
“Who else would’ve been here at the pageantandhere this evening?” Lacy asked.
And as soon as she said the words, we both knew the answer.
SEVENTEEN
I remember Savilla clearly on that first day of school. She was the smallest one in the class and terribly shy, with no indication of the boisterous, outgoing person she would become.
“Why don’t you say hello?” Momma had said as she nudged me forward to meet Savilla.
