Chapter 4
FOUR
You can do this.
You will do this.
You were made to do this.
Okay, the last line wasn’t at all true, but those were the words I thought to myself as I stood at the massive door of the Rose Palace and looked around for my aunt.
Behind me was a manicured landscape of rainbow-colored flowers that could rival the finest European lawns, and in front of me, through this giant, wood-paneled door, was quite possibly my future.
Aunt DeeDee had told me she would be at the front steps to greet me and to calm my nerves, but here I waited and she was nowhere in sight. I checked my phone. No missed calls or texts. I dialed her number, but it went straight to voicemail.
Fantastic. The one person who knew this place from floor to ceiling, hidden passageways and all, had abandoned me.
But… that wasn’t like Aunt DeeDee, the rule-following, always-early-just-in-case woman who’d helped raise me.
I steeled myself with a long inhale and gripped my pitiful overnight bag as I pressed my fingers into the brass door handle and stepped onto a white marbled floor.
My hand went to my chest in fright as I took in the rows of women—or rather life-size, cardboard cutouts of women—lining the long entryway.
I’d known this event would be strange, but I hadn’t expected greeting-by-cardboard-cutout strange. Only in Aubergine.
The cathedral ceiling towered above me, and I had to pull my eyes away from the crisscrossing beams as I stepped forward, passing a five-foot-tall black-and-white image of a woman wearing a long strand of pearls and a sleeveless dress that hit her mid-calf.
The spindly crown on her head was tall and ostentatious, and the girl’s smile proved she was thrilled to have won.
At her feet was written in large numbers the very first year of the pageant.
My fingers trailed along the whitewashed stone walls before I began weaving through the other women.
I was both impressed by the attention to detail and appalled at how these women had been captured forever in the glare of a camera flash.
I marveled at the idea that with my now soft curls and newly buffed skin, I could actually join their ranks.
As I neared the end of the long hall that would take me to the center of activity, I spotted Miss 1999, Miss 2000, Miss 2002… I paused and backed up, sure I must’ve missed one.
But no. I retraced my steps.
Miss 1999.
Miss 2000.
Miss 2002.
Miss 2003… and on the years continued. Just like the story of the actual missing beauty queen, Miss 2001’s cutout had vanished or been ignored—and only those who cared were likely to notice.
A shiver ran up my spine and goosebumps sprang up on my forearms. For a fleeting second, I considered leaving. I could recross that threshold, step back outside into the late-afternoon sunshine, and let the pageant do its thing without my involvement.
But then the call I’d received from the mortgage company that morning came to mind. The man, though real, sounded robotic as he informed me of my situation and options, which basically amounted to catching up on seven months of payments on two different notes or being evicted in twenty-seven days.
If I left the pageant, then I’d have no chance to save Momma’s house, to pay back Aunt DeeDee, or to restart my life. I felt strangely guilty that my aunt had taken on debt when it was my mother who’d been ill.
I propelled myself forward and into the open lobby, where modern circular chandeliers belied hundred-year-old rose patterns carved into textured limestone.
A two-sided fireplace stood giant and unlit, and beveled windowpanes looked out on a lush lawn.
A garden with a hedge maze stretched back to a fountain.
A man in uniform almost bumped into me as he spoke into a walkie-talkie.
Women in fantastic hats of every shade—but particularly blues, reds, and yellows—occasionally stopped to give air-kisses or a quick hug.
My heart palpitated. The uniformed officer wouldn’t have bumped into these ladies.
He would have seen them—or at least their hats—coming from a mile away.
I knew about the hat tradition, mainly because every year my aunt bought what seemed gaudier and more outlandish headwear.
“Every contestant—current and former—wears them on the first night,” Aunt DeeDee had once explained.
“At the end of that night we symbolically remove them to make room for the crown.”
I squared my shoulders, stretched my neck as far as it would reach and reminded myself of Aunt DeeDee’s words as she’d plucked, powdered, and painted me.
“You’ll be a breath of fresh air,” Aunt DeeDee had said to our reflections in the mirror when she’d finished transforming me.
After her work, we looked more alike than I’d ever noticed with our long eyelashes and high cheekbones.
The worry lines hadn’t vanished, but she had brought out the green in my eyes.
It was nothing short of miraculous, I’d had to admit.
“It’s been almost a hundred years of the same kind of winner. Time for something new.”
I could do this, hat or no hat, tradition be damned.
The front desk looked like one I would imagine at a five-star hotel, the granite countertops gleaming and glistening.
Even the floors sparkled in the afternoon sunlight streaming through tall windows that showcased the majestic blue mountains watching over all of the nonsense.
Staff members came and went, many of whom I recognized.
It was as bustling as the hotel might’ve been almost three decades ago before Mr. Finch had shuttered it to all guests, with the exception of pageant week.
As I surveyed the open space, I couldn’t help but admire the jewels that shone from behind polished glass cases.
Lacy was right. Notwithstanding the creepy cutouts in the front hall, this place gave off definite museum vibes.
Dozens of crowns, each gleaming underneath track lighting, broke into prisms of rainbow refractions sparkling against the walls.
I walked over to read the typed labels in front of the crowns.
1931, Bonny Brock
1932, Kathleen Daugette
1933, Sarah Applegate
Even with my hesitancy to step foot onto this estate, I had to admit that those shimmering objects were quite a sight.
I must’ve looked out of place because two guards—one of whom I recognized as the son of Aubergine’s mayor, and the other a deacon at First Methodist—checked the badge hanging from the lanyard Lacy had strung around my neck.
“Good to see you, Dakota,” the mayor’s son said, tipping his head.
“My condolences,” said the deacon.
I gave them a half-smile, surprisingly grateful that the town remembered. Maybe I could get pity votes if nothing else.
Half a dozen women, their eyes shaded and their lips pouty, passed me without a word, click-clacking their way across the marble floors of the lobby.
I didn’t recognize these ladies, which was to be expected.
One or two women from Aubergine might compete any given year, but for the most part the contestants were from moderate-to-obscenely wealthy families up and down the East Coast.
Women who don’t need the money half as much as I do, I thought, before a pang of guilt bit at me.
How was I to know who needed the money or why?
Perhaps one of these ladies was a daughter competing to earn money for a parent’s medical treatment.
Or maybe another gal was in this thing to bring home enough money to pay off a mountain of student loan debt.
There had to be other people here in need, I tried to tell myself as a woman dressed to the nines strode up to me.
What Aunt DeeDee would call a “tasteful” navy fascinator sat across her forehead, and she rolled a Louis Vuitton case behind her. The badge around her neck read Jemma Jenkins.
“Where’s the nearest restroom?” Jemma asked.
I looked behind me, wondering if she was addressing someone over my shoulder.
“The restroom?” she asked again. A nervous energy exuded from her. The woman’s fingers and wrists were laced with jewels, and her outfit was modest but fashionable, her heels making her legs appear ever more slender.
“Oh… uh… I don’t know. I just got here.”
“You don’t work here?” Jemma frowned as if this were some kind of prank, and I might be the prankster.
“Perhaps someday, but only if I’m lucky.” If every contestant was as intense and condescending as Jemma Jenkins, this was bound to be a delight.
“Oh, well, you look like the help,” she said, dismissing me as quickly as she’d demanded information.
I was fairly confident that wasn’t true, but if it was, I needed Aunt DeeDee more than ever. As I spun in a half circle, desperate to find her, a flash clicked only a couple of feet from my face.