“You’re practically the belle of the ball,” my aunt continued, and even though there was nothing pointed in her tone, I got the sense that in her perfect world, that honorific would have gone to Lily.
“We’re lucky I haven’t flashed anyone.” I tugged at the top of my dress, and Aunt Olivia shooed my hands down.
“They are beautiful,” she sighed.
“My boobs?”
She treated the question with absolute seriousness. “The pearls. I remember wearing them, of course. And then, at Ellie’s Pearls of Wisdom…” She trailed off.
If there was one thing I’d learned growing up bar-adjacent, it was that sometimes, the best way to keep someone talking was to say nothing at all.
Sure enough, only a few seconds passed before my aunt picked up the conversational slack. “Your mama was beautiful in that necklace, Sawyer. Quiet, of course, a bit awkward, and Lord knows she was angry at the world. But beautiful.”
“Angry?” I asked. My mom was many things, but quiet, angry, and awkward wouldn’t have made my list.
“I swear, sometimes it seemed like Ellie liked being angry.” As if she’d caught herself saying a curse word, Aunt Olivia immediately amended her statement. “Not that she didn’t have her reasons, poor thing. Our father died shortly after he purchased that necklace at my Pearls of Wisdom. I felt just awful that he wasn’t there to bid on it for Ellie.”
My grandmother had said, very clearly, that her husband had purchased the pearls both times. I said as much out loud, and Aunt Olivia shook her head.
“Oh, no,” she reiterated. “Your uncle J.D.—we’d just gotten married that summer—he bought them on Ellie’s auction night, just like he’ll buy them for Lily tonight. You don’t mind, do you, Sawyer? Some days it seems like your cousin has been in love with those pearls since the day she was born. I always thought…”
You always thought Lily would be the one wearing them tonight.
This time, I didn’t use silence as a means of making her put that into words. Instead, I decided to get her chatting on a different—and more useful—topic. “Is there anyone here who was a Deb with my mom?”
“Ellie and I were six years apart.” Aunt Olivia fanned her face with her right hand. “I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t exactly tuned in to the particulars of her social situation. Maybe if I had been…” Almost immediately, she redirected herself. “Water under the bridge! Now, let me think, who here was Ellie’s age? Charlotte Ames—used to be Bancroft—had a little sister in that year. I believe she’s a Farrow now.” My aunt snapped her fingers. “And Greer!” she said triumphantly. “Greer Richards. I’m not one to talk badly about anyone, but she was a real piece of work, and your mother was just glued to her side.”
Greer Richards, I thought, rifling through my memory banks. Recently married, chairing the Symphony Ball, and her new last name is…
“Waters,” my aunt corrected herself.
“Yes?”
The two of us turned to see an inordinately handsome man looking vaguely confused, as if he’d just woken from a deep and consuming sleep.
“Charles,” my aunt said. “How are you? Have you met my niece, Sawyer? She and your Sadie have just hit it off already.”
The man momentarily focused when he heard my aunt say Sadie. As in, Sadie-Grace—his daughter.
“Yes. Well.” He smiled at me, affable, if a bit distant. “Pleasure to meet you.”
Aunt Olivia melted into the crowd, and I found myself trying to gauge how old Charles Waters was.
Too old. He’s too old to have been a Squire with my mother.
His gaze caught on the necklace. “Beautiful specimen,” he mumbled. “Just beautiful.”
I was about to reply with my thanks—as I had dozens of times already this evening—when he lifted a finger to my shoulder. I was on the verge of introducing him to the “top ten reasons you don’t touch Sawyer’s bare skin without permission” list when I realized that he hadn’t been reaching for me.
He’d been reaching for the ladybug on my shoulder.
“Beautiful,” he said again, as it crawled onto his fingertip. “Coccinella septempunctata,” he told me. “The seven-spotted lady beetle.” Almost belatedly, he seemed to realize that this was a formal affair and not an entomology conference. The ladybug took flight and he sighed. “I suppose that was horribly rude of me,” he said sadly.
“Just between us,” I replied, “I’m rather partial to the horribly rude. I could belch the alphabet if it would make you feel better.”
He scrutinized me for a long moment and then smiled. It was pretty damn easy to see where Sadie-Grace had gotten her looks.
“Charles!” A woman appeared beside him, hooking her arm through his. She wore her dark red hair long and straight, and I could tell just by the way she held herself that the unusual color was her natural hue. “You haven’t been talking our newest Deb’s ear off, have you, sweetheart?”
I would have put a thousand dollars on this being the infamous Greer Waters. Sadie-Grace’s stepmother was dressed similarly to Aunt Olivia, but her dress was just a smidgen shorter. Her heels were just a smidgen taller.
I would have gone double or nothing that neither of those things was an accident.
“We’re ready for you backstage,” Greer told me. “And look at that necklace! Gorgeous.”
I let myself be shepherded to the curtained area behind the catwalk.
“I’m guessing you’ve seen the necklace before,” I said. “My aunt mentioned that you and my mother were friends.”
Greer Waters didn’t hesitate. She didn’t pause. But I saw something shift behind her green eyes.
“Your mother was a dear. An absolute dear, but I’m afraid we didn’t have much in common.”
Silence proved only slightly less effective on her than on Aunt Olivia.
“I was…” She laughed. “I suppose you could say I was horrible back then. Always in the middle of things. Just plagued with attention and admirers and secretly loving it—you know the kind of girl.”
She didn’t quite seem to have the hang of self-deprecation.
“Ellie Taft was a sweet little thing. But she was a bit more… alternative, I guess you would say? She had the world at her fingertips, and I would have sworn she didn’t even want it. We were just very different people.” She bared her teeth at me in a pageant-perfect smile. “Now, let’s get you into position.”
She clamped a manicured hand onto my shoulder and physically guided me into a line that had formed backstage, right behind Lily and Sadie-Grace.
“Stand up straight, sweetheart,” she told the latter. “And remember: there is absolutely nothing to be nervous about.”
Sadie-Grace seemed to find that statement nerve-racking in the extreme.
I stepped out of line and in front of Greer as she attempted to pass. “Greer,” I said, then corrected myself. “Mrs. Waters.” That bought me a few bonus points. With every intention of cashing them in, I continued. “You at least knew my mother. Do you remember who her friends were? Who she spent time with?”
Greer studied me for several seconds with an intensity I suspected she typically reserved for floral arrangements and choosing the perfect shade of pink polish. “I suppose she was close to Lucas.”
“Lucas?” I repeated, my heart thudding in my chest.
“Lucas Ames.”
s the Squires lined up in front of the Debs—wisdom before pearls—I found myself scanning the line for Walker Ames, my brain in overdrive. Lucas Ames. Walker’s uncle?
A cousin?
“He’s not here,” Lily murmured beside me. “Walker, I mean. That’s who you’re looking for, isn’t it? He has that way about him. Mama always called it his helping and a half of charm.”
“Lily,” Sadie-Grace cut in softly.
“I’m just saying that Walker isn’t here,” Lily replied, her dark eyes boring into mine. “He was a Squire last year. He graduated in the spring, top of his class. He’
s supposed to be at college on a football scholarship. But. Well.”
That was meant as a conversation ender. Walker didn’t go to college, I filled in. And he broke up with you.
There was probably a diplomatic way of responding, but I wasn’t exactly known for my light touch. “I have no interest in your ex, Lily, except insofar as he might—or might not—be related to the unidentified dude who impregnated my mother.”
“Could you lower your voice?” Lily lowered her own. “What happened with your mother isn’t exactly…”
“Cocktail-appropriate?” I suggested.
Lily allowed herself a split second of vexation, then gathered her composure, turned back toward the front of the line, and didn’t say another word to me as the auction began.
First the Squires and then the Debs were ushered down the catwalk, one by one, until there were only a handful of us left.
“They’re saving you for last,” Sadie-Grace whispered. “On account of your grandmother’s pearls. And don’t mind Lily. She’s just…”
“A normal human being who experiences the full range of human emotions and sometimes acts upon them?” I suggested. “Don’t worry, Sadie-Grace. I don’t have any tender feelings for Lily to hurt.”
If you don’t expect people to surprise you…
Soon, I was the only one left backstage.
“Fancy meeting you here.” Walker Ames appeared seemingly out of nowhere. He trod a straight line toward me, but I’d spent enough time at The Holler to recognize the glazed look in his eyes. If he hadn’t been drunk earlier, he was well on his way now.
“Save your breath,” I told him.
“Excuse me?” He had the kind of Southern manners that even alcohol couldn’t dull.
“I have a rule.” I paused. “Three rules, actually, but one of them is that no one interested in flirting with a teenage girl is even remotely worth flirting with, including and especially teenage boys.”
I’d seen my mother go through too many breakups. I’d kissed too many boys who hadn’t the faintest idea how to really kiss a girl back. I knew what came of putting your faith in the opposite sex, and I had no intention of letting some smooth talker leave me high and dry—now or ever.
“You’re something else, Sawyer Taft.” Walker’s blue eyes were more focused than they’d been a moment before. His voice was softer.
“I’m a person,” I corrected. “But to you?” A few feet away, Greer signaled that it was my turn to ascend the stage. “To you, I’m just another bad idea.”
Hiking my dress up, I decided to hell with it and kicked off the heels Lily had purchased for me. I took the stairs barefoot and two at a time.
Let people stare. Let them judge me.
“Item forty-eight,” the auctioneer announced. “Worn by Miss Sawyer Taft.” He offered me an elbow to escort me down the catwalk. If I’d still been wearing the heels, I might have taken it. Instead, I made the walk myself, the exact same way I would have walked from one car at Big Jim’s Garage to another.
The spotlight was painfully bright—so much so that I couldn’t make out the details of the audience as the auctioneer spoke. I could, however, hear the murmurs.
“The bidding will open at ten thousand dollars.”
I choked audibly on my own spit.
“Do I hear ten thousand dollars?”
My eyes adjusted in time to see my uncle raise his numbered paddle. Several other bidders got in on the action, but their conspiratorial smiles told me that my grandmother wasn’t the only one who’d gone into this assuming her necklace would stay in the family.
This is all for show, I realized, wishing someone would just put me out of my misery.
Then a new bidder entered the fray. “Twenty thousand dollars.”
A momentary hush fell over the crowd. People turned to look at the bidder, but his attention was focused 100 percent on me.
“Do I hear twenty-one?” the auctioneer asked Uncle J.D.
Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Senator Ames begin to make his way through the crowd toward the bidder: a man in his mid-thirties who looked a bit like Walker.
Lucas? I wondered, and when the man promptly one-upped my uncle’s bid a second time, I was suddenly sure of it. I tried to picture this man with my mother.
“Twenty-five.” I could hear the tension in Uncle J.D.’s voice as he raised the stakes again.
The senator whispered emphatically in Lucas’s ear. Lucas gave every impression of thinking his brother’s disapproval was an absolute lark. “Thirty thous—”
Before he could finish the bid, a man around my grandmother’s age stepped forward. He had an understated manner and a booming voice. “Fifty thousand dollars, final bid.”
The auctioneer’s gaze flicked briefly to Uncle J.D., whose whole body had gone rigid. Aunt Olivia whispered—or possibly hissed—something into his ear, but J.D. was frozen.
“Final bid,” the old man reiterated.
The auctioneer didn’t need to be told a third time. “Sold!”
ackie’s white-gloved teenaged perps were incapable of speaking one at a time, and it was making him dizzy.
Bless your heart, he thought grimly. I’ll bless your heart, Rodriguez. I’ll bless it real good.
“Girls!” He hadn’t meant to shout, but his head was pounding, and they wouldn’t stop talking, and, damn it, he was an officer of the law!
All four of them shut their mouths and stared at him, owl-eyed.
Quick, he thought. Say something… official.
“Now, what’s this about accomplices? And fifty-thousand-dollar pearls?”
There was a moment of utter silence, and then:
“They’re not worth fifty thousand dollars.”
“You’re not worth fifty thousand dollars!”
“I hardly think you’re in a position to—”
“Enough!” Mackie tried his luck a second time. He could do this. He could take control of the situation.
Unfortunately, that was the exact moment that the lock picker seemed to come to the same conclusion. “Tell me, Officer,” she said shrewdly, “do you even know what we were arrested for?”
f hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, then a whole legion of scorned women had no more impressive rage than a Southern lady robbed of her pearls. My grandmother was fit to be tied as she escorted me between two tables to the man who’d outbidden my uncle and Lucas Ames.
“Davis.” She fixed him with a stare. “This was unexpected, even from you.”
“Even from me?” the gentleman repeated. “If I recall, you once took great pleasure in telling me exactly how predictable I am.” He turned to me and extended a hand. “Since Lillian seems to have forgotten her manners, I suppose it’s up to the two of us to introduce ourselves. I’m Davis Ames. And you are, young lady?”
If my grandmother could have incinerated him with the power of her mind, I think she would have.
“Right now,” I replied, “I’m someone who is very concerned for your longevity.”
He chuckled, and it utterly changed his face. “Got a bit of you in her, does she, Lill?”
My grandmother’s expression almost faltered. She was still furious, but there was a layer to that emotion that hadn’t been present a moment before.
“We go way back, your grandmother and I,” Davis Ames told me. “In fact…” His gaze went to the pearls around my neck. “I was there the day your grandfather first purchased that necklace for her.” His gaze flickered back to Lillian. “If I remember correctly, I was waiting tables.”
“And look at you now.” My grandmother recovered her voice. The words sounded like a compliment, but I was pretty darn sure she meant for him to hear them otherwise.
“Look at us both,” he replied.
Appropriately enough, that was what just about everyone at this little shindig was doing. They didn’t stare, of course. Staring would have been rude, but every cluster of partygoers scattered around the lawn angled ever-so-subtly t
oward us.
I somehow doubted they were that interested in my lack of footwear.
“The pearls are beautiful,” Davis Ames said decisively, “but I find I’m more interested in the young lady. You’re Eleanor’s girl.”
I was so used to hearing my mother referred to as Ellie that the words caught me off guard—as did the sudden realization that if Lucas Ames was my father, this man was probably…
My grandfather?
“Davis, I am sure that Sawyer has better things to do than to natter away the evening with us old folks.” Lillian motioned for me to turn around. She unclasped the necklace. As bitter a pill as handing them over was, Lillian Taft was not one to show
weakness.
“I’ve heard rumors about your son-in-law’s latest business venture,” Davis Ames told her quietly. “Given that J.D. didn’t close the door on bidding the second my idiot son opened his mouth, you might consider looking into those rumors.”
Lillian held the pearls out, arching an eyebrow. There was a moment of elongated silence between the two of them.
Gingerly, he took the pearls. “Lill—”
“If you so much as try to give me those pearls, Davis Ames,” my grandmother murmured, sugar and spice and steel, as she slapped the pearls’ box into his hand, “I will end you.”
I was absorbed enough in watching the interplay between them that I didn’t hear a third party approaching until he stepped into my peripheral vision and spoke. “There’s a bit of a rivalry between your family and mine.”
I turned to see the man who had first bid against Uncle J.D.—Davis Ames’s “idiot son.”
“Lucas?” I inferred.
His father and my grandmother were caught up enough in their back-and-forth that they didn’t notice as I took a step away from them, willing the man beside me to do the same.
He obliged. “I see my reputation precedes me.”
I shrugged. “Probably proceeds you, too.”
Lucas Ames snorted. “I take it you’ve met my nephew Boone?”
I’d spent years wondering who my father was. I’d wondered if he had a family. But there was a difference between wondering, in the abstract, if I had aunts and uncles and cousins, and trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I might well have met those people tonight.
Little White Lies Page 5