Chapter 1
ONE
One of the best things about working with animals is that they aren’t people.
I don’t care who you are, deep down you know people are overrated and not worth all that emotional energy.
I bet if you’d asked Mother Teresa—basically the best person ever—whether she’d rather spend a day with a mare or one of those ladies from Real Housewives, she would’ve chosen the horse.
That’s what I was telling Bella, a brown and white American Paint, before almost turning her around and taking her back out to ride.
I’d noticed a pair of arms resting on the side of the corral, and even though I didn’t feel like chatting with another human, those brown arms and that dark head of spiraling curls were as familiar as my own reflection.
If any person can be tolerated, I suppose it’s Lacy.
We’d bonded in kindergarten when I got my first pet, a cat that had belonged to one of Momma’s hospice patients.
When I’d told the other kids its morbid origins, half my classmates made faces and the other half stopped talking to me.
Except for Lacy. She asked what the kitty looked like and how old did I think it was and what had I named it.
Bucket, as in “kicked the—” I’d said with a grin.
Lacy and I had been best friends ever since, and on this particular day, I knew she had something for me.
“Hey, I brought your next letter,” Lacy called, as I hopped down and closed the gate. Because it was a sunny day with only the slightest breeze, dust and dirt floated up, threatening to coat us both.
I gave her a curt nod, acting like I wasn’t craving the words inside the envelope in her hand. “I’ve still got another hour here.”
Lacy tried to stomp off her Jimmy Choos—I only know the brand because she refers to her shoes like they’re people. We are very different.
“You can spare five minutes,” Lacy drawled, as she examined her heels. “They barely pay you a living wage.”
Circling the paddock, I began Bella’s cool-down and ignored the comment. “What’s the letter say this time?” I called over my shoulder.
Lacy’s mouth hung in faux appall. “How dare you insinuate that I would open something addressed to you.”
I circled back, and she handed over the parcel. My mother’s distinctive scrawl brought a fresh wave of grief, but I blinked against tears and attempted levity. “I’m not insinuating. I’m saying that I know you read them.”
Lacy’s eyes were playful. “Just because the letters from your dead mother have already been opened and retaped when you get them, doesn’t mean I’m a snoop.”
“Uh-huh.” I leaned against the galvanized bars of the corral. Bella nuzzled my shoulder as if she wanted to read the contents.
It was the eleventh such letter I’d received in as many months. Momma knew that if she’d given me all twelve—one for each month after her death—I would’ve read them in one sitting and then stayed in bed for weeks. This way, I could wean myself off her voice.
“You know I only read them because she told me to,” Lacy said, as I slid my sun-kissed finger underneath the lip of the envelope.
“She said at least one person needed to know what she was asking you to do, to make sure you didn’t become a complete hermit.
I think you should read this one sitting down. ”
So I did. I plopped my butt onto the hard earth as Bella huffed out a breath, blowing my long brown ponytail.
“Not what I meant.” Lacy squatted next to me.
My eyes scanned the contents like someone dying of thirst after a day in three-digit heat seeing an oasis.
Dakota,
Huh. Momma usually called me “Honeybee” because I’d overcome my fear of them—and because from the time I could walk, I loved helping her in our back garden, filled with vegetables, peach trees, blueberry bushes, and wildflowers. Dakota meant that this one must be serious.
It’s been eleven months since you buried me. Grab a pint of butter pecan and curl up on the sofa with Bucket.
The corner of my mouth lifted. I could almost see the look on Momma’s face—the pert nose, the dimple in her left cheek that I’d inherited, the thin lips turned into a nearly constant smile—as she wrote the words.
After I finished reading, I gave back the letter to Lacy and stood, reaching out a hand to stroke the white on the bridge of Bella’s nose, acting as if Momma hadn’t just asked me to do something utterly ridiculous.
Lacy watched me with a practiced eye. Like most people in our tiny hamlet she viewed the Rose Palace Pageant as a harmless pastime.
She’d never competed, said she refused to be the token Black girl in the show’s PR pics, but this year she’d been contracted to be the event coordinator.
She suddenly cared about the show because she was kind of in charge of it.
In similar fashion, Momma had raised me to view the pageant as a necessary evil for our small town’s economy. She would explain away Aunt DeeDee’s involvement every year with a wave of her hand: It’s just a job. We both knew that wasn’t true. My aunt lived and breathed all things pageant.
“You okay?” Lacy asked.
“Fine,” I answered, even though my heart beat against my ribcage like a hummingbird flapping its wings. I think I sensed even then how all of this would end, how I’d be forced to do something that would upend my predictable existence.
“No, you’re not,” Lacy insisted, folding her arms across her chest as she studied me.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, guiding Bella into the stable. “Because I won’t do it. I will never compete in that awful show.”
Lacy knew that I’d already humored Momma when she’d asked me to have a picnic at her graveside behind First Baptist at month four, and I’d reluctantly agreed when she’d encouraged me to try a couple of blind dates at the Spoonful Diner, which Lacy had arranged in month nine.
But this? Compete in the Rose Palace Pageant?
I hadn’t thought that the chemo had damaged my mother’s brain cells, but maybe I was wrong.
Either way, she could haunt me all she wanted.
I’d actually prefer that. I could tell her little orb what I thought of her absurd request.
“There is no way I’m dressing up and prancing around in high heels for money,” I said, hoping Momma could hear me from the Great Beyond as I led Bella into her stall.
“Even third place comes with cash,” Lacy said. “We both know you need money.”
I unbuckled the saddle and raised an eyebrow. “I’m not going to win any place because I’m not competing. The Rose Palace is a”—I tried to find the words—“danger to thinking women everywhere.”
“It’s a pageant,” Lacy said, rolling her eyes. “Not the annual Hunger Games.”
“What about that winner who disappeared when we were kids?” I hated my condescending tone but couldn’t keep it out of my voice.
Lacy’s mouth screwed up in thought. “Do you remember when we were in high school, and we did that big project about the town’s history for Mrs. Ember’s class?”
My brow furrowed at the change of subject, but I answered anyway. “Sure. I wrote about the first hospital.”
“Right. And I tried to write about the missing pageant winner. True crime before true crime was a thing.”
I listened, not actually recalling much of this.
“I had to change topics,” Lacy said. “Couldn’t even find the woman’s name in the newspaper archives. Like it had been scrubbed clean.”
“This isn’t helping your argument that I should compete.”
“What I’m saying is that we can’t base what we do on things that happened more than two decades ago.
If we did that, no one would drive down Hickory Lane after that terrible car accident.
Or attend the Peach Festival because of those out-of-towners who threw fruit at the mayor a few years ago.
” Lacy gave a shrug and her face relaxed back into a smile.
“Anyway, the pageant’s not like that now—women, including your aunt, mostly run everything. We gotta let the past lie.”
Famous last words, I wanted to say. Instead, I pulled off Bella’s saddle, hung it on the wall, and tried a different tactic.
“You’ve heard Aunt DeeDee’s stories about other pageants.
You remember that one lady who slept with every judge in the state of California in order to secure her win?
Or the mother who threatened to ‘cut’ the coordinator at Florida’s Little Miss Pageant if her daughter didn’t win? That world is vicious.”
“For the kind of money they’re offering this year, I’d think about competing myself if I wasn’t helping run the show.
” Lacy looked up at the fluffy white clouds and reframed her argument as I started brushing Bella.
“Look, I get it, I really do. I mean, it’s not like your mother had the forethought to sign you up for an event that might help you earn the money you desperately need and force you to leave your house for more than”—she looked at her feet and wrinkled her nose—“for more than literal horse shit.”
“I can get money other ways.”
“Oh yeah?” Lacy raised her eyebrows. “Have you started turning tricks instead of just teaching them to Bella?”
“Ha-ha.” I put a hand on Bella’s rump to let her know I was behind her before moving to the other side as I batted my eyes at my oldest friend. “Lacy, dearest, I’m not a slut like you.”
“More like a cloistered nun.” Lacy glanced at my lady regions with a look of pity. “How long has it been for the old girl?”
I gave her a bland smile. “I’m saving myself for marriage.”
“Right. Just don’t let her dry up. It’s easy to get parched in this summer sun.
Seriously though…” She tilted her head and gave me a half-smile as she gestured to the mountains in the distance.
“You used to hike those ridges from dawn to dusk. You were the one taking names and getting shit done. By the time you were thirty, you were going to open your own practice and heal all the animals within a hundred-mile radius, remember?”
Once upon a time, sure, I’d been salutatorian of my high school, class president of my undergrad, a top pick with a full ride in the veterinary program at Cornell. But I was no longer those things.
“This could be a chance for you to get back out there. To reconnect with… you know, actual people… to start acting like yourself again.” Lacy knew where my mind was at. “You’ve grieved for almost a year, and it’s been a long one. Will you at least try?”
I didn’t answer, busying myself with Bella’s final preparations for the evening.
I might not have been a beauty queen, but I was a fab stable hand. Bella’s stall was pristine enough for a human to sleep inside each night. Thankfully, I hadn’t yet had to stoop that low, but with the late notices coming from the mortgage company every month, the clock was ticking.
“I’ll pick you up Wednesday,” Lacy said matter-of-factly, as if the question was settled. “Oh… and your aunt will be at your house tonight to start preparations.”
“Preparations?” It sounded like Aunt DeeDee would be readying me for sacrifice.
Lacy turned to leave, calling back over her shoulder, “You’re about to find out the kind of work it takes to look this good.”