Chapter 33
THIRTY-THREE
As I finished my second coffee, Aunt DeeDee hustled over, throwing her arms around me. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, Dakota Green.”
I let myself sink into her embrace, and my eyes began to fill. I blinked back the tears, and Aunt DeeDee released me. “Let me get a good look at you, sweetheart.” She wiped a thumb under one of my eyes. “Now, none of that. Pull yourself together. We don’t want your face puffy for the grand finale.”
I laughed at the words. “I see prison didn’t change you.”
“It was just jail, darling,” she said with a grin.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t be… they wouldn’t let you…
” I didn’t know how to finish the statement, so I kept it simple, looking her directly in the eye, trying to communicate how sorry I was for the years spent overlooking her efforts, years of forgetting the importance of her presence in my life.
I didn’t have my mother, but I had a close second: the woman who’d been there in the background, making cookies and chauffeuring me around town and bringing me forgotten homework. “I missed you.”
Aunt DeeDee seemed to understand the depth of my feeling because she pulled me back into a long hug.
“I have so much to ask you… and tell you,” I said, surprising myself at how badly I wanted to recount the past forty-eight hours. “I made friends, and the people here… there’s more to them than I thought.”
I’m not sure why this was the thing that felt most important to communicate. Maybe it was because I wanted to validate my aunt’s life’s work, or maybe because I wanted her to know I saw her and appreciated her.
“And I cannot wait to hear all about it,” Aunt DeeDee told me. “But now that they have the perpetrator behind bars where he belongs, all that can wait. You’ve got a job to do.”
She nodded toward the 1950s tent, where Summer and Jemma and my other fellow contestants were waiting for me to rehearse.
Even from where I stood I could tell that Jemma’s arms were crossed, and she wore impatience like a mantel.
Summer had an anxious look on her face as she darted back and forth trying to be of help.
Aunt DeeDee nudged me toward them. “I’ll be here when you perform, I promise. In the meantime, Savilla’s acting as our substitute judge. What do you think?”
“She’ll be great,” I said. “Just don’t let her give any speeches with big words.”
By noon guests had parked in downtown Aubergine and were shuttled to the front steps of the Rose Palace. Soon after, they began streaming through the gates, eyeing the ornate architecture and making their way to the decades tents, for which Lacy had outdone herself.
“Don’t be nervous,” Jemma said. I could tell she was trying to be helpful, but her entire vibe was a bit left of bossy. She must’ve realized it because she took a deep breath and tried again. “You know your lines, so you’ll be fine—great, even.”
“Thanks,” I said, sending her a soft smile. “I appreciate that.”
She patted me twice on the arm as we took our places.
An hour after the gates had opened, there I stood in the kitchen in my polka-dotted red dress, proudly proclaiming, “Robert will tan my hide if I can’t learn how to cook. And fast.” I turned to Jemma and asked with my inquisitive tone, “How did you catch your cool cat?”
While she answered, I caught Aunt DeeDee and Lacy on the fringes of the crowd crammed beneath the white canvas.
In front of them was Mrs. Glenda Finch, seated but present, and I almost broke character as I did a double take when Savilla strolled to her side.
I wasn’t surprised to see her there—at least no more surprised than I was to see her stepmother—but the look of utter ease on Savilla’s face, the genuine smile she gave as she watched us perform, did catch me off guard.
After all the chaos, she seemed fine. Better than fine.
Jemma held up a cookbook from the era, facing the audience as she proudly announced her lines. I was so distracted by Savilla and her stepmother looking so normal, I nearly forgot my cue.
Jemma said her line again, prompting me gently, and Summer stared at me, mouthing the words.
“Geez. That cookbook sounds like it’s full of swell recipes,” I said, coming back to myself and the moment at hand. “The pageant judges and Robert are gonna love the new and improved me.”
Thankfully, that was my last line, so my eyes trailed back to the audience, where Miss 1962 stood on the fringes, her arms crossed at the content of our ridiculous little tableau. But when I saw her gaze dart to Savilla, her frown deepened as if she too thought her manner a bit casual.
A memory pulled me back. Years ago, Aunt DeeDee told me and Momma one night over dinner, almost casually, that the pageant had almost been canceled that year because of in-fighting.
I hadn’t paid enough attention to her stories back then to know who was fighting or why, but I do remember Momma asking her about it.
We were seated at the café downtown, me and Momma side by side eating burgers and slurping milkshakes while facing Aunt DeeDee, who ate grilled chicken and drank unsweetened tea.
“You know,” Aunt DeeDee said. “They’re arguing over what fights are always about: love or money.”
Love or money.
As I took the cookbook from Jemma’s hands and held it up for the audience to see, I thought about these two motives, so familiar that Aunt DeeDee would toss them out as a blanket for most troubles.
I’d seen the insurance policy that Savilla had taken out on her father, and I’d seen the kind of attention that Dr. Bellingham had paid to her as soon as her parents were out of the way.
My eyes traveled back to Savilla, who cheered and applauded our efforts on the makeshift stage of the 1950s kitchen. Jemma grabbed one of my hands, and Summer held the other, and everyone in the scene took one final bow.
Dr. Bellingham was behind bars. I wanted that to be enough, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away from Savilla.
She hadn’t returned his admiration last night at the Gilded Age dinner, but perhaps that was only because Katie, in her role as former nanny, had lured him away from her.
As thoughts crowded my mind and I attempted to put them in some kind of cohesive order, the crowd dispersed to see the next show.
A line formed to greet Mrs. Finch and Savilla, who handed out hugs and quick pecks on cheeks like a trained politician, like she’d been born for this kind of spotlight.
Aunt DeeDee approached to congratulate me on the performance while Lacy was waiting, no doubt to poke fun at the ridiculous show I’d just put on, but before either of them could say a word, they saw the look on my face.
“Are you okay, dear? Are you feeling ill?” Aunt DeeDee asked, instantly reaching to feel my forehead.
“You need me to grab a water?” Lacy echoed.
I shook my head and swallowed back tears, unable to speak the questions swirling in my mind. What if Dr. Bellingham’s accomplice was still on the loose, shaking hands and having a grand old time? What if the sheriff and I had gotten this—or at least a big part of this—very, very wrong?