Chapter Twenty-Six Elise
Chapter Twenty-Six
Elise
I was born to win.
At least, that was what my mother always told me. Ever since I could remember, she called me her little winner. Her manicured hands gripped my chin tightly as she wanted me to feel the impact of her words, her saccharine-sweet voice telling me, "You are my grand prize, Elise Cabot."
I wasn't a coincidence, I wasn't a happenstance, I was a calculation.
I was a manifestation of her success.
This face was made to stand on the highest pedestal, under the brightest lights, while listening to the roar of a crowd praising me, basking in the warmth of their adoration.
That's what I was made for.
My mother, Bella Cabot, was a textbook rags-to-riches story—that true American grit, pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and becoming successful all on your own.
She was born into a lower-middle-class family in Nowhere, Massachusetts.
What she lacked in money, she more than made up for in beauty with a face to kill for.
In this country, that was enough currency to get where you wanted to be.
So, she used what she had and stole what she needed.
During her Miss Massachusetts reign, she'd glide through children's hospitals and soup kitchens with a megawatt smile and that high-pitched, practiced voice.
"I'm so blessed," she'd chirp to the cameras, painting a perfectly executed modest-but-charming expression on her face, while inside she was reveling in the attention as if it were her lifeblood.
Before she was Bella Cabot, my mother was Bella Underwood, a beauty queen extraordinaire.
At twenty-six, she began to feel the grip of her youth fading.
You have an expiration date in the pageant world.
There will come a time when you're old and washed up.
Someone younger, more beautiful, who wants it more, will come up behind you.
If you're not careful, you'll end up with the tread of their heels on your back as they walk all over you to victory.
My mother was a great beauty queen. She had a good enough talent routine, said all the right words, and possessed a killer bikini body thanks to high-energy workouts and an almond a day diet. But she knew it was fading, that it would be over soon, and she needed to make a move for her future.
She was a realist and understood that the Miss America crown was not going to be placed upon her head. Not when Miss New Jersey—a childhood leukemia survivor with wide eyes and a grateful smile—was in the running. The writing on the wall was clear as day.
No one beats a survivor.
So, Bella Underwood did what she does best—she adapted.
She started planning, making friends in high places, cozying up to older men with fat pockets and fatter address books.
And that's how she met my father, Ellis Cabot.
He was a friend of a friend of a friend of the man who ran the pageants—some real estate mogul billionaire with eyes that lingered too long on the girls in the dressing rooms. Ellis was thirty, a real estate executive who came from family money, drove a brand-new custom Benz, and wore his wedding ring proudly.
He was blue-blood handsome. I saw that from their wedding pictures—he's where I got my natural blonde hair from, where my mother's came in a box.
I got his eyes, his height, but my face is all Bella's.
Other women would see the ring on his finger, the way he talked about his adoring, beautiful wife, Claire, and move on to cut their losses. But my mom saw a challenge, and she never backed down from one. Never.
He liked sweet, so she did sweet—aw shucks-ing her way to him, playing the part of the gracious and humble beauty pageant queen to him, snaring him into her trap.
Not that it took much effort; my mother was beautiful, seemed sweet, and cared deeply about babies, animals, and world peace.
When she had said the word baby, talking about how all she wanted in the world was to become a mother—even more than the Miss America title—it caused something to flicker across my father's expression. A longing.
Jackpot.
My mother gave an Oscar-winning performance for my father, arranging business lunches with my father and his friends to get closer to him, which gradually evolved into one-on-one lunches and dinners hidden from his wife.
At first, they just spoke about the pageant and her plans for the future. Then he started venting about his wife—her infertility, the treatments not working, the stress she felt to give him an heir.
My mother offered sympathetic eyes, sweet, caring words, and gentle, comforting brushes of her fingers. She was an artist, able to hit every single note on cue, turning it into a symphony that stroked his ego the exact way he wanted.
If you want to know how I know this, it's because my mother told me this in detail.
When I was fourteen, my mother sat me down in the way other mothers do when they give their daughters 'the talk'. I already knew about sex, so my mother had instead told me the really valuable lessons—the way of the world for women.
You consume, or you're consumed.
And people who are willing to be consumed are the most delicious.
While my mother thankfully spared me from the graphic detail of their consummation, I could read between the lines.
Two months later, my mother was pregnant with me, and Ellis had filed for divorce from his wife, who was broken into pieces seeing the newer, younger, upgraded model Ellis left her for.
My mother played the part, telling people it was true love and that she wouldn't let anything stand in the way.
Love didn't mean much to Bella—at best, it was a means to an end.
But power? That was immortal.
Consume or be consumed.
When I was born, Bella Cabot—fresh off just giving birth and still looking immaculate thanks to a full makeup and hair team—posed for pictures with me in the hospital room.
The photo later appeared in The Boston Globe's Sunday lifestyle spread.
The headline read: Miss Massachusetts Gives Birth to a Precious Baby Girl!
"This is my most cherished title—mommy," Bella cooed to me, making sure that I was covering her still protruding belly. Making sure that her head was tilted just so to catch her good angle.
When the reporters were gone, she promptly shoved me into one of the nurses' arms.
My father was too busy to notice at this point, smoking cigars with old friends who congratulated him on the birth of his girl, but then joked that the next time they hoped he would finally get his boy, a true heir.
Even on the day of my birth, I couldn't help but disappoint them.
Unfortunately, my mother underestimated how awful childbirth is. She swore she would never do it again. She had done her duty. She had tied herself irrevocably to my father and was done pretending she wanted to be with him. She was a success, and now she could focus on becoming immortal through me.
"You are my grand prize, Elise," my mother would coo to me when I was a child, and I would sit in it, basking in those tender, loving words, binging on them like I was starving. Well, I was.
The only warmth I would ever find in my life was through a series of revolving door au pairs—it's how I learned to speak Spanish, Italian, and German.
I received attention, gifts, and compliments about my looks and how sweet I was from my parents' circle, while they smiled proudly.
My father would lovingly brush my blonde curls with his hand.
My mother would drone on about how I was the light of their life.
I would smile on cue, and my mother would pinch my elbow when it would slip.
I had one perpetual bruise there for months at seven years old.
When I was two years old, that's when my mother's friends started asking her when she was going to put me in my first pageant.
That was the green light, and into the land of pageantry I went.
And I dominated.
From the time I was two to sixteen, I had accumulated fifty-four crowns from pageants.
Our house has a room just for them—glass cases, velvet shelves, spotlights trained on every rhinestone and trophy and winning gown.
I would find my mother in there, gazing at them sometimes, a particular look in her eye that always unsettled me.
It looked like jealousy, but the energy felt like a slow boil. Anger. Rage.
When I saw her like that, I'd back away silently and lock myself in the gym downstairs, sprinting on the treadmill until I threw up.
She demanded perfection from me and always gave me words of encouragement.
"Don't slouch, Elise, it shows the pooch in your stomach."
"For God's sake, smile, Elise, you look dead inside!"
"I could've gone all the way if I'd had half the chances you do."
"I made you into something worth looking at. Don't forget that."
She demanded perfection from me because she knew I could deliver.
I loved having her as my mother, and I was the envy of my classmates at my private school.
My friends were daughters of powerful men and women, but they would always comment on how elegant my mother was, how beautiful, how poised, and how they wanted to be just like her when they grew up.
I just sat there, smug, because she was my mother. I had her DNA.
If anyone would be like her when they grew up, it would be me.
So, I trained harder in the gym and in dance class. I ate less and less, I perfected my makeup and hair routine, I shaved my entire body every single day, I studied and studied so I could answer the judge's questions to perfection, telling them exactly what they wanted to hear.
I molded myself into dazzling perfection for my mother, surviving on a thousand calories and any free compliment my mother would throw me. I would be perfect, better than she had ever been. I would make her proud. She would tell me she was proud of me. She would.