I keep my face neutral, but a cool trickle slides down my spine. I look to the glittering backdrop, to the lattice of steel pipes holding it up, the heavy stage lights. That isn’t lipstick gone missing. The weight of that scaffolding would kill a girl.
Yet one more mother-daughter pair forces the doors open, and a gust of icy wind barrels through the room like it’s hunting something, rattling the balloon display and flipping tablecloths.
I scan the crowd and spot Kennedy Claire across the room, embracing another mother, her hug a performance, her smile polished to a blinding gleam, her laugh dropping on cue like she’s hitting her mark. I raise my camera and fix her in my lens, but the longer I stare, the less I see my old friend. Instead, I see a woman who knows exactly what she wants you to see. And nothing else.
She has always been in control of the script, always onstage, never breaking character. The crown, the spotlight, the audience—she lives for it. She’s built her whole life around it.
And my mind begins to flip through the years like photographs developing in a darkroom, each image surfacing in stark relief: her pout the night of the pageant when I wouldn’t celebrate, oblivious that Izzy was missing. Her tears in my bed the next morning, after the news spread. All those years of listening, of knowing exactly what to say, as if she were memorizing lines from a script.
Has she been acting all along? Has she known, this whole time, exactly where Izzy was—and how she got there?
I steady my finger on the button, lining up the shot. The overhead lights stutter once, a sharp blink. Heads turn. Someone gasps. Then the power cuts completely—the music, the voices, the hum of the vents—and we are all swallowed in darkness.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONEMELANIE
The girls’ dressing room is windowless. So when the power goes out, we are plunged into a black so absolute, it feels heavy on the eyes. Girls shriek. Compacts clatter to the floor. Hannah’s “Mom?” finds me in the dark, a thin plea that tugs on a cord tied directly around my heart. I grope for her hand, but find nothing.
Then the lights blink back on, hum above the mirror like nothing happened. I feel the collective exhale in the room before the girls scramble twice as fast, laying out makeup kits and plugging in curling irons, as if hurrying can hold the power steady.
I don’t say it out loud, but I know better. Lights don’t just flicker once. Not in weather like this.
I check my phone to find another text from Waylon, checking on us, making sure we made it safely. He says the drizzle out there has started freezing on the roads, and even sent a picture of a car that slid right through the intersection by the H-E-B. He’s already been called out—downed lines somewhere south of town.You and the kids just stay up there until this blows over, he wrote.Or I’ll come get you in the truck. The van can’t handle this kind of ice.
Olivia is getting wound up, in that way she does sometimes, not mean or snappy. She just sort of nudges the panic up in notches like she’s slowly turning up the burners on a stove.
“I can get your hair started, sweetheart, until she gets here,” Emily says, picking up a brush.
“No, she has all my stuff,” Olivia whines. “Mom’s supposed to do it. We practiced. She knows how I like it now.”
Emily turns, setting the brush back down, but I can see the hurt in her face. She’s been mother to that girl since she was eight years old. Every ballet recital, every competition, every rehearsal—it’s been Emily with the brush and bobby pins, buns tight enough to hold through hours onstage. It’s been Emily in the school pickup lines and at parent-teacher conferences, Emily packing lunches and cheering from the audience.
Now she’s expected to step aside, to let Cat swoop back in and claim the spotlight. And I can’t help but feel for her—how hard it must be to love a child like your own, only to be reminded she isn’t.
Silence hangs a beat between us, and I clear my throat to break it. “I’ll go get Cat,” I say.
Dad wants to come with me. Today was supposed to be his day off, but he’s been sheriff of Anhalt for thirty-one years, elected eight times because this town trusts him. It isn’t a switch he flips on and off. He’s been on the radio all morning with his deputies, watching the weather, people’s safety always his first concern. And right now, he’s not too happy with Kennedy Claire. Pushing this pageant forward goes against his code of being responsible and doing the right thing even when it’s hard. Forcing families to brave icy roads? Putting people in jeopardy like this? He doesn’t like it one bit.
When we open the Amenity Center doors, we’re both misted with a freezing sleet. It’s already colder than when we arrived, the kind of cold that cuts to the bone, and sunset is just a few hours away. As we walk down to the model home, Dad rubs his toe against the concrete, frowning at the slick shine.
We don’t get ice or snow often, but Dad knows these roads, knows how they can go from safe to sheet glass in minutes. He’s seen families trapped in their homes when rescue vehicles had to turn back. “This ain’t good,” he mutters, and I zip my jacket tighter.
We march ahead to the model home. I see the flags outside whipping wild in the wind, hear the ropes clanking their warnings.
Then we hear Emily’s voice behind us in the distance. “I told you not to come out here. It’s freezing.”
We turn to see Olivia rushing to catch up with us. She’s wearing nothing but a tank top and leggings. “Come back inside, young lady. I don’t want you out there.”
“I want to see Mom,” Olivia yells without looking back or heeding her warnings of the cold.
Just as Emily catches up, snow begins to fall. “Just what has gotten into you?” She throws an oversized zip-up hoodie over Olivia’s shoulders, masking her bare arms from the cold.
At first it’s just a few flakes floating down, but by the time we make it to the yard, large clumps of snow land on my eyelashes and blur my vision.
Through the white, I see lights are on inside the model home, glowing warm behind the blinds, but when Dad knocks on the door, there’s no response. He tries again. Nothing. The four of us shiver in sweaters and jackets too thin for this weather.
He tries the handle, but the door is locked.
“Have you heard from Cat?” he asks me.