or that I’m better off without her. I don’t want to think about it at all.
The line disconnects, and I flip over to my email app.
—
From: [email protected] …
To: [email protected] …
Subject: Meeting with Valerie Ingram
Rhodes,
Mrs. Prudhomme agreed that 4pm would be fine. Please inform your mother of the change in meeting time.
Best Wishes,
Everly Eames
Executive Assistant, Prudhomme Estate
—
I take a breath.
Dusk told me to take what happened with her and apply it to every other area of my life, and I’m going to start here.
It’s eleven forty now. In four hours, I’ll make my way to the Conservatory conference rooms, and Bootsie will be waiting for me.
Except I don’t call my mother.
I want to have this conversation by myself, without her throwing wads of cash at someone to get what she wants.
I pocket my phone and prepare to face down Bootsie Prudhomme alone.
* * *
Bootsie is early.
She must have left her house as soon as she got the email. She might have even been here waiting on me when I was emailing her assistant, or even when I was talking to Dusk on the gallery roof. Her tall, thin shape is easy to make out through the frosted-glass conference walls. Her ever-present fire-engine-red heels are visible, too, even if the rest of her is just a darkened blur.
This will be the first time anyone from Ocoee has ever seen me like this: with my hair up in a snarled knot and dark rings under my eyes. My leggings have a hole in one knee, and my hoodie will probably horrify her most of all: a silhouette of the white house, framed by the Alice in Wonderland quote that started it all—“Curiouser & Curiouser”—in oversize, whimsical lettering.
I could have made Bootsie wait another fifteen minutes and run upstairs to change my clothes and throw on a little makeup—but no.
I’m tired of playing dress up.
I don’t want to be a version of myself I don’t recognize in order to make everyone else happy.
Instead, I straighten my spine and pull the door to the conference room open.
Sure enough, Bootsie is in full-blown Southern Grandma Costume: pearls, and red lipstick, and curled hair, and giant door-knocker earrings that hearken back to the nineties, and a chunky white sweater bearing three different antique brooches, and two-hundred-dollar jeans in an unflattering cut.
She takes one look at me, from head to toe, and sniffs behind two fingers as if she can smell me. “Miss Ingram.”
A self-conscious sniff-check tells me I showered and applied deodorant this morning.
“Ms. Prudhomme.” I hide my nose behind my fingers, too.
I can definitely smell her—Chanel No. 5, and entirely too much of it.
We frown across the room at each other.
“I suppose you heard about June,” she says. “Unfortunate.”
“I did.” I drop my bag onto the floor and take a seat. “I heard my mother played a role in it.”
“Well, er—” Bootsie adjusts her glasses. “To put it indelicately, yes. ‘A role’ would be an understatement.”
“I’d like you to know that I didn’t know money changed hands.” My pulse rings in my ears. There’s a part of me that still wants this. But there’s a bigger part that knows this is no longer my path. That part of me knows that my mother’s way of fixing problems would only make this worse.
Another long pause hangs in the air.
“Even if that’s the case, honey, we have the integrity of the scholarship—the entire art festival—to consider. We can’t do this with dirty hands, you understand.” Bootsie is careful to stare into the massive diamond on her left hand rather than look at me. “We have to disqualify you.”
My pride pops and withers like a deflated balloon.
Bootsie did not come to negotiate.
“I appreciate you meeting me here today,” Bootsie says. “I did not look forward to the dilemma of turning away your mother’s checkbook.”
“My mother is exhausting when she isn’t getting what she wants,” I say.
“I see no reason to dawdle.” Bootsie stands. “I hate that this happened, sweetheart. I always enjoyed your work.”
I stand too. Bootsie crosses the table, and she presses her fingertips to her nose again.
Bootsie’s tall, but so am I. I stand a little straighter and meet her eye-to-eye.
“Tell me one thing,” I say. “A finalist told you, didn’t they?”
Bootsie brushes past me.
She throws the strap of her pocketbook over her shoulder and grabs for the door. “Yes.”
“Who was it?”
“You know I’m not gonna tell you that,” she says. “I don’t want somebody finding that poor girl in a ditch.”
“Nobody’s killing anybody,” I say.
Bootsie doesn’t