Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
I made my way out of the kitchen, passing the vestibule and spotting Savilla, who stood behind a marble desk handing out keys to reluctant guests. She caught my eye and waved me over as Will Hurt took a key and went back in the direction of the ballroom, presumably to find his wife.
“Hey,” I said, “do you have an old computer? Something that would play this?” I pulled the CD case from the back of my jeans.
Savilla took a beat and then lifted a finger, calling over a staff member and giving them quick instructions to take over for her.
“Come with me.”
We headed to Aunt DeeDee’s old office in the library. With the pageant officially only on hiatus, her ancient computer would still be there—perfect for reading decades-old technology.
Savilla opened the office with one of the keys on her ring. “I think this will work,” she said with a wink.
I sat behind my aunt’s desk and Savilla hovered over my shoulder, her voice eager. “What are we looking for?”
I gave her a two-minute rundown of the past hour or so, realizing all the while that I was talking to her as easily and openly as I would’ve with Momma, Aunt DeeDee, or Lacy.
With each word, her face grew brighter. Even if she didn’t know about our connection, she was enjoying being part of my life.
That, at least, boded well for the will reading.
“Oooo… snooping,” Savilla said when I finished. “Love it!”
I turned on the computer, which didn’t require a login or password, and pressed a button to open the disc drive before sliding the CD out of its case and reading the cryptic handwritten message again: Our Big Romance.
Savilla spotted it over my shoulder. “Is that footage of the show?”
“We’re about to find out.”
After a couple of minutes of infuriatingly slow loading, the icon for the drive popped up and I clicked on it to find a list of video files that seemed to be in no particular order.
I pressed play on the top one, named “STbr_Episode 8,” and a clip from Small Town, Big Romance came alive on the computer screen.
Mr. Finch and Brett were wandering around the lawn at the back of the house, interview-style with a camera in front of them, though it wasn’t clear who was interviewing whom.
Mr. Finch wore khaki pants and a short-sleeved polo, and I watched him with renewed interest now that I could identify him as my biological father.
I studied his nose and eyes and chin, trying to see something of myself in him—or of him in me—but I came up short.
Momma’s genetics had thankfully been the overbearing kind.
Brett wore faded jeans and a T-shirt that sported the image, perhaps ironically, of the farmer mascot that was splashed across all Aubergine High paraphernalia.
What was your favorite thing about growing up in Aubergine? Mr. Finch asked, his voice calm and clear and interested.
Probably the family values, Brett replied.
Um, yeah, those had sure served Frederick Finch and the Rose Palace well—if you didn’t count philandering judges or missing pageant queens. I refrained from saying as much because Savilla’s face was a mixture of loss and longing.
“Is this the first time you’ve seen your dad on camera since…?” I didn’t finish the question, but Savilla nodded once, wiping away a tear. Compassion welled in me, and I reached to pause the footage.
“It’s okay.” Savilla touched my arm. “Let it play.”
We picked back up as Brett was asking Frederick Finch a question.
Why did your family, after making so much money, decide to build a permanent residence in Aubergine? Brett was playing the inquisitive type as soft music sounded beneath what I guessed was supposed to be an intimate get-to-know-you.
My family earned their wealth in the diamond business in the late 1800s, Mr. Finch answered.
My grandfather came from Scotland in steerage, just him and a few coins to his name.
After he saw the crowded New York tenements, he decided to go west. He wanted to find a place that looked more like the Highlands he loved, so he went out to the Dakotas to see if he could make his way in the world.
Through a shrewd game of poker, he ended up with the deed to a mine near Spearfish, and it just happened to be filled with diamonds.
I could imagine the commercials that must’ve run when this episode aired: Finch diamonds for that special someone who may someday murder you. Okay, maybe that wasn’t their slogan, but it did seem to be the theme of this family.
I pushed aside those musings as I suddenly realized that I was not only listening to Mr. Finch talk about his ancestor – I was also hearing part of my family history, the half I’d never known.
Mr. Finch was detailing the life story of Savilla’s—and my—great-grandfather in Spearfish, South Dakota. Was that why I was named Dakota? A feeling of faintness washed over me, and the room tilted ever so slightly.
The disparity between the two branches of my family tree couldn’t be more different: one had owned a diamond mine and founded a well-known jewelry company that provided the crowns for the oldest pageant in the U.S., and the other had worked in a Virginia coal mine for a pittance.
“Are you okay?” Savilla asked this time, catching my eye as she reached across me and pressed pause.
She had no idea that I was learning about a branch of my family tree for the first time, and I wasn’t ready to tell her.
“They’re just talking about Grandfather Gordon,” Savilla said easily, misreading my fraught emotions as mere curiosity.
“He died in 1953 at ninety-two years old, and was apparently quite a character. Wore only navy blue and red to show his American allegiance, and he proposed to his wife after he spent some time with her in a house of ill-repute in the Dakotas. A bit eccentric.”
A great-grandmother prostitute? Wow. My origins were becoming more and more interesting.
“Gotcha,” I said, trying to sound uninterested as I pressed play again.
On-screen, Mr. Finch and Brett walked past the hedge maze that I now knew housed an underground tunnel that might still be marked with Mr. Finch’s blood.
It was the place that had led me and a couple other pageant contestants toward unraveling the mystery of his death this past summer.
The camera panned out to show the two men walking up the white stone portico to the back of the house.
A second later, the camera cut to a space that I didn’t recognize, but with the grand piano, I could guess.
“Is that the Music Room?” I asked.
“Yep, second floor. Did you see it in the dollhouse?”
I nodded distractedly, realizing that this was where Brett had asked—or demanded—that Lacy meet him at midnight.
Savilla’s phone lit up with multiple texts and she frowned as she read them.
“Shoot. Looks like they can’t find the keys to the residential wing of the house.
” She glanced at the computer and at me, explaining, “The original rooms use the old-fashioned brass keys rather than the scannable key cards. Will you be okay if I run back to the front and show them where to find them?”
“I’m good,” I reassured her, even though I wasn’t thrilled about being in this darkened area of the house by myself after midnight. Still, I wasn’t one to believe in things that go bump in the night.
Savilla scurried away, and I turned back to the computer to finish watching whatever was on this CD, speculating about whether Joe or someone else had burned it.
I dragged the mouse across the screen to the CD menu, and I spent the next thirty minutes clicking through highlight reels from Small Town, Big Romance.
I stopped on the final episode in which Presley was being interviewed by an off-screen woman.
Interviewer: How are you feeling about tonight?
Presley: Good. Nervous. Excited.
Interviewer: Can you unpack that a bit for us?
Presley: Sure. I mean, Brett could propose, right? But he probably won’t. Imagine, a proposal on live TV. I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
Interviewer: Are you feeling conflicted about how you might respond?
Presley: I know I want to be with him. We would be a fabulous power couple. Can you imagine?
Interviewer: I can. So, is that why you’re still in it? To be a power couple?
Presley: No, that’s not what I meant. It’s just… I think we’re good together, you know? We have the same aspirations, ambitions. But there’s also… love.
Interviewer: Is there?
Presley: Is there what?
Interviewer: Love?
Presley: Of course.
Interviewer: What about the song he wrote? About the one that got away.
Presley: We all have that person, but obviously it didn’t work out. Maybe they weren’t compatible long term. Maybe they wanted to go different directions. Maybe they just couldn’t make it work, you know?
Interviewer: I do know. I really do.
Next, I started watching a deleted scene, this one back in the Music Room at the Rose Palace.
On-screen again, Mr. Finch pressed a button on the mantel and out of it slid a record collection ranging from Bach to the Beatles to Britney Spears.
He held one record after another out to Brett, who looked on admiringly, glancing up every now and then to point out a classic to the camera.
I had to give it to Brett, he was a natural.
Finally, after two full minutes of admiring records—I could see why this scene hadn’t made it into the show—Mr. Finch held one up to the camera and grinned broadly.
Do you recognize this one? Mr. Finch asked Brett.
He smiled sheepishly. That’s not what I think it is, is it?
But by his smile and the gleam in his eye, he obviously knew it was his single, “The One That Got Away.” He’d recorded it only months before, in early 2023, and the song’s popularity had likely been the thing to cement Brett’s place on the show later that fall.
And we just happen to have the writer and performer here. Mr. Finch winked at the camera. What a great coincidence.
I leaned closer to the screen, looking for something, anything, that might offer a clue about this song’s origins or inspiration.
All I saw was the two men’s cheesy grins as they preened for the camera, Brett grabbing a guitar that just happened to be behind him.
He sat on a stool and began to play, the words and chord progression as basic as always.
Mr. Finch stood behind Brett for the entire fifty-second verse and chorus of the song, an unabashed plug for whatever Brett was selling: charm, goodwill, or actual merchandise.
The entire scene was clearly staged for Brett to perform his runaway single because in the corner, a QR code had popped up.
I paused the clip, taking out my phone and holding it up to the code.
A website appeared for a company I’d never heard of, but in large letters visitors were encouraged to WATCH THE MUSIC VIDEO for “The One That Got Away.” I scanned the page for the fine print, reading aloud the name of the production company: Petal Productions.
The logo was a wreath of green leaves with a rosebud in the center. Petals, like on a rose. The Finches certainly remained on brand.
If Petal Productions had helped Brett, that meant that Mr. Finch had had a hand in pushing Brett into the limelight.
It would make sense for Mr. Finch to want to pull an up-and-comer under his wing.
He’d done it with Dr. Bellingham, the disgraced plastic surgeon and pageant judge who had then taken part in a plot to murder him.
Mr. Finch obviously hadn’t been a great judge of character, but it would stand to reason that he would see potential in a young Aubergine resident in his daughter’s class and try to bolster him, give him a head start in life.
It would also make sense in terms of Mr. Finch’s expansion into various streams of income from diamonds to pageants to plastic surgery.
A production company for pop-culture trash would fit right in.
I wondered if there might be clues to the identity of the one that got away, so I opened the chord chart for the music, which contained the lyrics to the now-infamous song.
I read all the way to the bridge when he referred to “the pretty face with all the frills and lace, my young rose, full of love and grace.” No wonder Lacy first thought the song was about her.
As I read, I pressed the link for the music video to follow along.
There was Brett standing with a guitar and full band in front of the rose hedge maze at night, the mountains barely visible in the distance.
I studied each of the band members, but I didn’t recognize a single person.
Maybe that wasn’t surprising since the group had disbanded as quickly as it had come together.
Brett had been the truest definition of a one-hit wonder.
I thought how strange it was that he—and apparently Mr. Finch—had put so much time and effort and money into this one song and then never recorded another note: according to the Internet and a quick search on Spotify.
But then, I supposed the timing didn’t make sense to pursue a music career when soon after he landed a spot on a show that became such a sensation.
Brett had obviously been far less passionate about music than he was about fame in any form.
The music video was straightforward—Brett wandering the estate, singing to camera.
But when he hit the bridge, a woman in white appeared in the peach orchard.
Ethereal in a gauzy dress, she kept her back to the camera.
Just as she turned, about to reveal her face, she vanished.
In her place, Brett’s hand opened to reveal a rose-pink stone before the camera pulled back to show him alone by the hedge maze.
Right before the camera screen went to black, though, there was a woman’s voice, low and sonorous, whispering the last line of the song: “The one that got away.”
Goosebumps rose on my arms. I recognized that voice. I rewound it and played it back. Then, I did it again.
I could swear that was the same voice in the interview clips, the same voice I’d heard echoing through the speakers in the Media Room earlier that evening when I’d stumbled on Anton and Lacy.
I played it again, even more certain this time that the voice of the woman in the music video was the same as the interviewer off-screen in Small Town, Big Romance.
But that timing didn’t make sense. This song had been produced before he’d been on the show.
I considered what this might mean. The date of the files confirmed the fact that the music video had been finished a few months before Small Town, Big Romance even started filming. But the voice unmistakably belonged to the same woman.
Did that mean that Brett had known the interviewer before he arrived at the show? Or had this person been a convenient actress for the recording of the video? Had she somehow also gotten the gig as the interviewer on Small Town, Big Romance?