She stopped.
“And I also … well, I also … really like you,” Arden said, finally saying the words she had longed to get out.
Jake grabbed Arden’s face and kissed her, inhaled her, held her, and didn’t stop even after the crowd began to catcall. Jake removed a hand from behind Arden’s neck and began to encourage the crowd with it.
“And I really like you, too, Arden,” Jake said, pulling Arden into his big body.
“Da judges have da decision!” the emcee announced over the loudspeaker.
Arden jerked upright. “Here we go!”
“I didn’t think you wanted to be here,” Jake razzed her.
“Ssshhhh!”
“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s now time to announce da first runner-up and new Tulip Queen. Are you ladies ready?”
The twenty girls clutched hands and clamped their eyes shut. “The first runner-up is … Tara Milligan!”
A pretty blonde in an eggplant-colored gown claimed her tulips and a new sash, and stepped to the side.
“And, now, da moment we’ve all been waiting for … the Seventy-Fifth Annual Tulip Queen is … Lauren Lindsey!”
The crowd screamed its approval, and Arden didn’t realize she was crying until she could taste her mascara.
The emcee placed a Tulip Queen sash across Lauren’s shoulder while the outgoing queen placed a crown atop Lauren’s blond head and handed her a huge bouquet of colorful tulips and a little box wrapped in a bright ribbon.
“Introducing your 2014 queen, Lauren Lindsey! Lauren, you may take your coronation walk!”
Lauren raised her arms and waved to the crowd as she made her way across the platform. At the end of the platform, she held out her arms, and her grandmother came running into them. The two then walked—hand in hand—back across the stage. Lolly raised her left arm, and cupped her hand, waving it like a true queen.
She’s waited her whole life for this moment, Arden thought, and smiled.
She stopped, watching her mother and daughter, and then amended that thought: Lauren has waited her whole life for this moment, too.
Lauren stopped in the middle of the platform, removed the crown, and bent over and placed it on her grandmother’s head, securing it to her wig. Lolly touched it, ran her hands over the points and rhinestones, as if it were magical, and then hugged her granddaughter tightly.
Both returned to the coronation area, where the contestants mobbed them. Arden grabbed Jake’s hand and began dragging him down the bleachers.
“Congratulations!” Arden screamed when she reached her daughter and mother. “What a surprise! How did you two manage to pull this off?”
“Teamwork,” they both said in unison, laughing.
“And Spanx,” Lauren added.
Arden smiled and took the hands of her mother and daughter in hers.
“Seriously,” she asked, giving their arms a gentle shake. “How did this happen?”
“I was painting this morning—I was painting us, all of us—and I could see everything so clearly for once,” Lauren said. “Everything seemed—oh, I don’t know—possible and exciting. I thought of all the stories Grandma has been telling us. I thought of all she had done for us, and I thought, there has to be something I can do for her. And there was.”
Lauren dropped her mother’s hand, repositioning the tulips to her other arm, and handed her grandmother the gift box she had been given after her win.
“I think this is for you, Grandma,” Lauren said.
Lolly opened the little box with shaking hands. Inside sat a silver charm of a tiara. “Oh, I can’t, Lauren,” Lolly protested.
“I insist, Grandma,” Lauren said, handing her mother the tulips and carefully adding the charm to her grandmother’s bracelet, which she took off her own wrist and placed back on Lolly’s slender wrist.
Lolly held up the bracelet to her face. “Every woman deserves to feel like a queen, even for a day,” she said quietly. “You know, this is the one charm I always wanted. It’s the one I never thought I’d get, and one day it will be yours, my dear.”
She hesitated.
“It’s the one I’ll never forget.”
Lolly gave her bracelet a robust shake and then pulled her granddaughter close.
“I love you, more than anything,” she whispered.
“Me, too, Grandma.”
“I’ve had the best time this past week,” Lolly smiled, surveying her girls’ faces. “It’s nice to have my family back for a little while.”
“I’ve had the best time, too, Mom,” Arden said. “It’s nice to have my mother back. I’m just so sorry … for … well … everything.”
“Can’t change the past,” Lolly said. “But you can change the future.”
“Speaking of which,” Lauren said, “can I talk to you for a minute, Mom?”
Jake picked up on Lauren’s need for some privacy. “You look like a real beauty queen with that crown, Lolly. Mind showing me how you do that pageant wave so well?”