Little White Lies

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “Is that your way of calling me a glutton for punishment?” Walker leaned over his cart, his elbows on the handlebars.

  “I’ve called you worse.” I glanced at the display behind him. “Do you think I could use Monopoly boxes to extend the sides of my cart and fit more in?”

  He grabbed a couple and tossed them to me. “Dream big, ­Sawyer Taft.”

  I set about experimenting with the boxes. “Interesting advice from someone who dropped out of college, broke up with his girlfriend, and started hard-core training for the future-squandering Olympics.”

  Walker and I had an unspoken agreement. I gave him crap, and he seemed to enjoy it. Mainly, I thought he enjoyed the fact that I hadn’t known the old Walker. I had no expectations whatsoever of him—and in exchange, he’d stopped trying to charm me.

  “That’s cold, Sawyer Taft. Really cold.” Walker picked up a teddy bear and tossed it to me. I tested the structural integrity of my cart extenders and placed the bear on top of the mound of goods already in my cart.

  “As much as I enjoy these heart-to-hearts,” Walker continued, “if I may be so bold as to change the subject, I need a favor.”

  I kept stacking my cart. “I’m listening.”

  “Ease up on Campbell.”

  I turned to look at him, unable to believe that he’d meant to say those words in that order.

  “I know how my sister can be,” Walker said. “And I know that whatever has you, Lily, and Sadie-Grace avoiding her like the plague, she probably deserves it. But she’s had a rough few weeks.” He paused. “She could use some friends.”

  Campbell had been having a rough time?

  My expression must have said that exactly, because Walker elaborated. “She used to be involved with that guy Nick. The one who got arrested?”

  Your sister is the one who got him arrested.

  The only way I could keep from actually saying those words out loud was to give my cart a good push around the corner—and directly into another cart.

  It took two SUVs to get our haul back to the Ames house. When we arrived, it became apparent that we weren’t the only ones who’d dropped off donations. The foyer and formal living room were overflowing.

  “Lily.” Mrs. Ames greeted my cousin with a squeeze. “You look wonderful, sweetheart. Have you lost weight?”

  That question had thorns. The only saving grace was that Walker was too busy unloading the cars to hear it.

  Before I could issue a suitable—and possibly profane—reply on Lily’s behalf, the senator came ambling down the main staircase. “Gathering the troops?” he asked his wife, coming to stand beside her and wrapping an arm around her waist.

  “I’d say that we’re past that point and well on our way to mission accomplished,” Campbell mused.

  The senator barely spared a glance in his daughter’s direction before turning his attention to Lily and me. “It’s lovely to see you, ladies. Sawyer, Walker says you’ve settled in nicely at the campaign.”

  “What can I say?” I could feel Campbell bristling beside me. “I’m a patriot.”

  “Speaking of Walker…” Charlotte Ames laid a hand lightly on her husband’s arm. “I am just sure he could use some help unloading the car.”

  “That’s my cue,” the senator said gamely. “If you ladies will excuse me…”

  He strode past us toward the door. Campbell turned to follow. “I’ll help, Daddy.”

  “Don’t be silly, Campbell,” Charlotte Ames cut in. “I’m sure your father and brother can handle it.”

  Campbell forced a smile and met her mother’s gaze head-on. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “Hello, hello!” Aunt Olivia slipped in the front door as the senator made his exit. She glanced around the foyer at the mounds of donations. “How wonderful!” she gushed. “Whatever you need to get this chaos under control, Charlotte, the girls and I are at your service.”

  While I appreciated the emphasis Aunt Olivia put on the word chaos and the way Charlotte Ames gritted her teeth in response, I’d been under the impression that our servitude was limited to picking up the donations.

  So why was the senator’s wife suddenly chatting about “assembling baskets”?

  Faced with the prospect of being instructed on the finer points of tying “an appropriate bow,” I followed Campbell’s suit and offered to help the guys unpack the car.

  Neither my offer nor Campbell’s was accepted, and I spent the next few hours of my life in the circle of hell devoted to tying ribbons on baskets. Eventually, reinforcements showed up—first Sadie-Grace and her stepmother, then Boone and his dad.

  Walker and the senator had disappeared about the same time I’d wanted to start drinking.

  “Are we still tying bows?” Sadie-Grace sounded hopeful as she sat down beside me at the senator’s dining room table. “I only have three things in life that I am truly gifted at, and one of them is tying bows.”

  I shoved the basket I was currently working on in her direction. “Have at it.”

  Sadie-Grace studied my work and got very quiet for a moment. “Sawyer,” she said morosely, “what did this cellophane wrap ever do to you?”

  I took that as my cue to take a water break. In the kitchen, I was faced with a choice of lemonade and tea, sweet or unsweet. I would have given my right arm for a real sandwich, but instead, someone somewhere had decided that cucumber was a satisfactory sandwich filling.

  Dainty little sandwiches, I thought grimly. Bow tying. I deserve this.

  “I do hope I’m not interrupting.” Boone hopped up on the counter beside the cucumber sandwiches, stacked three of them on top of each other, and then bit in. “Close your eyes and open your hand.”

  Without waiting for me to do as I was told, he presented me with a bright pink envelope. One eye on Boone, I withdrew a card from inside.

  Congratulations, fancy script said. It’s a girl!

  Boone had handwritten the word NOT on the front of the card in fat red marker. When I opened the card, a single piece of paper fell out.

  A report, I realized.

  “As you’ll see…” Boone hopped off the counter, polishing off the sandwiches as he went. “You are decidedly not my sister!”

  It had been so long since Boone had taken my hair that I’d almost given up hope on getting the results back.

  “Given that you still haven’t obtained a sample of my uncle’s DNA,” Boone cautioned firmly, “I would recommend that we continue to resist the obvious animal attraction between us.”

  “I think I can manage.” I gave him a look, sure that the primary reason he was in the kitchen was that he was hiding from ­Sadie-Grace, who he still hadn’t managed to ask out. “And thank you.” I hesitated, just for an instant, remembering the words he’d spoken to me at the masquerade. “For the record, Boone? I wouldn’t have minded a brother.”

  “Brother?” A voice spoke behind us. Boone jumped. I managed to play it cool, right up until Greer Waters plucked the greeting card from my hand. The paternity test was still stuck inside. “Is your mother expecting, Sawyer?”

  I could practically see the gears in her mind turning.

  “Nope.” If I’d grown up in this world, I might have felt compelled to provide more of an answer than that, but instead, I followed up my no with what I believed to be the only proper response to someone snatching something out of my hands.

  I took it back.

  Greer clearly hadn’t been expecting me to reclaim my property. “Boone,” she said, pursing her lips, “may I have a word with Sawyer?”

  Boone looked at me, and I nodded. I could handle Greer Waters—and I had some questions to ask her.

  “As I’m sure you know,” Greer said after Boone had vacated the kitchen, “tonight, the Debs and Squires will deliver the baskets we’re currently assembling. Food, coats, and comfort are just a small piece of our work—company is only a few letters removed from compassion.”

  Dollars to donuts said that was part of
a speech she’d rehearsed. What followed, however, seemed a bit more off the cuff.

  “I’d like an assurance from you that we won’t have a repeat of last time.”

  “Last time?” I repeated.

  “The scavenger hunt,” Greer said, putting emphasis on each of the three words.

  If you knew what we were really up to that night… I thought, but what I said was, “We’ll stick to the plan.” I offered Greer what I hoped was a good imitation of Lily’s most simpering smile. “Scout’s honor.”

  “About… this.” Greer nodded to the card in my hand. “Would you care to explain?”

  I didn’t see how this was any of her business. “Not particularly.”

  “I told you that you could come to me, if you had… questions. I’d hate to see you drag poor Boone Mason into this. He’s a darling boy, but goodness knows he marches to the beat of his own drum. Navigating social expectations is difficult enough for him as it is.”

  This from the woman who’d told me that my mother was a dear, but that they hadn’t had much in common. Liar.

  “I went through some of my mom’s things the other day.” I openly assessed the set of Greer’s features. This was a lady who hid her tells—when she wanted to. “There were a lot of pictures of the two of you together.”

  Greer managed an elegant shrug. “I’m afraid I was the type to hop in the middle of every photo.”

  Were it not for the fact that saying the words Hey, what are the chances that your new husband is the one who knocked up my mom? would have made getting a sample of his DNA that much harder, I would have thrown it out there, just to see the look on her face. Instead, I opted for a different question, also guaranteed to provoke a reaction.

  “Speaking of those photos: Who was Ana?”

  emarkably, Greer realized at that exact moment that she just had to recount the baskets. Left alone in

  the kitchen, I turned my attention back to the card Boone had given me.

  Thomas Mason was not my father.

  How long was I going to let my mom’s ongoing silent treatment keep me from getting samples from the other three candidates on my list?

  As long as I’d been focused on the situation with Nick—and beating myself up about that—I hadn’t had to think about what pulling the trigger on the paternity tests might mean.

  She’ll forgive me for coming here, for finding out. I wanted to believe that. My mom wasn’t perfect, but she loved me. I had to do this.

  Now.

  Given that the alternative was tying bows, the decision to go in search of a sample of the senator’s DNA was surprisingly easy.

  It didn’t take long for me to locate the master bedroom. Finding the senator’s hairbrush was more of an ordeal. The bathroom was enormous, with an ungodly number of built-in drawers. I went through three of them before I found something definitively identifiable as makeup and concluded that I was on Campbell’s mother’s side of the bathroom. Quickly and silently, I moved on to the vanity on the opposite side of the double doors.

  The senator’s a neat freak. I came to that conclusion after opening one drawer. What are the chances that his brush doesn’t contain a single hair?

  “Do I even want to know what you’re doing in here?”

  I whirled to face Campbell. “Tampons,” I said. Plausible deniability, thy name is feminine hygiene. “I need one.” I paused. “Possibly two.”

  Campbell frowned. “Why would you need two?”

  “Just… does your mom have any lying around?” I tried to look somewhat urgent.

  “Come off it,” Campbell told me. “We both know what you’re really looking for.”

  A sample of your father’s DNA?

  “The pearls.” Campbell gave me a vexed look. “You just can’t leave well enough alone, can you?”

  Well enough? I could feel my hands curling into fists. “You’ve never needed a job, have you?” I said. “Never relied on the income that you’re bringing in, never had to stand on your own two feet. Did it even occur to you that Nick is unemployed now, thanks to you?”

  Thanks to us.

  “You don’t get to talk to me about Nick,” Campbell said, her voice low.

  “The charges were dropped,” I mimicked, letting the words bleed sarcasm. “All’s well that ends well, right?”

  “Nick is a survivor,” Campbell told me, looking down at her three-inch heels. “He’ll be fine.”

  “You used him.” I wasn’t sure why I expected that accusation to matter to her. “Were you ever even interested?”

  “He used me.” Campbell lifted her eyes back to mine. “I don’t blame him. I let him.” She paused. “I’d let him again. Believe me when I say that I did what I could for Nick.”

  “You could have left him alone,” I retorted.

  “No,” Campbell said quietly. “I couldn’t.”

  wo hours later, when the Debs and Squires were being assigned to groups for the evening’s deliveries, I still wasn’t sure why Campbell’s statement that she couldn’t have left Nick alone had the ring of truth.

  “Sawyer Taft.”

  I looked up to see Charlotte Ames standing at the front of the room holding a clipboard.

  “You’re in group five. You’ll be making deliveries to local nursing homes.” The senator’s wife didn’t pause before reading off the names of the rest of my group, which decidedly did not include Lily, ­Campbell, Sadie-Grace, or Boone. I could only assume the Symphony Ball Committee thought splitting us up might keep us out of trouble.

  By the time I was ensconced in a car with the four other members of my team—two Squires, two other Debs—I was reminded that outside of our immediate circle, prodigal granddaughter ­Sawyer Taft was still something of a legend. A deluge of questions and comments and not-compliments ensued. When we arrived at the first nursing home to deliver some good old-fashioned comfort, I was ready to fly the coop.

  By the third, I was thinking that total sensory deprivation sounded good.

  Unfortunately, instead of a nice, dark tank with no questions and no physical contact, I was somehow appointed as our group’s designated hugger.

  “This is so sweet.” An older woman squeezed the living daylights out of me. “I’m not supposed to have chocolate, you know.” She picked the book up out of her basket and lowered her voice. “Do you have anything with more kissing?”

  As much as I wasn’t into being the infamous Sawyer Taft, I was enjoying the rest of this assignment. Of the three homes we’d visited, this last one was by far the most upscale—and its inhabitants needed the most physical help.

  Half an hour later, I ducked into the last room on the hall, my arms wrapped wide around one final basket. I looked for the room’s resident and found him on the bed. My brain fired rapidly, three overlapping realizations fighting for my attention at once.

  The room’s occupant was in the bed, unconscious.

  The room’s occupant was hooked up to a whole host of machines.

  The room’s occupant wasn’t much older than I was.

  I walked slowly to his bedside, my grip on the gift basket tightening. He was, what? Twenty-one? Twenty-two? His dark hair looked like it had been recently cut, but something about the constant beep, beep, beep in the background made me wonder if he’d been awake when that happened.

  “Hi.” I’d read once that people could hear you, even if they weren’t conscious. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I continued, “but you’re either a really deep sleeper or comatose.”

  There was no answer. I probably should have just left the basket for the patient’s relatives or else taken it and given it to someone else altogether, but instead, I found myself sitting beside the bed and undoing the carefully wrapped cellophane myself.

  Given the elaborate bow, I was pretty sure that Sadie-Grace had packaged this one.

  “If it’s all the same to you,” I told the dark-haired guy on the bed, “I could use a few minutes away from the grind.”

  No repl
y.

  I made the executive decision to read to him from the book in the basket. It didn’t take me long to realize that it was one the old woman who’d asked for more kissing would have appreciated.

  Coma Guy and I were having a grand old time, when I heard the door open behind me. I assumed that it was either the nurse or one of the other Symphony Ballers.

  I assumed wrong.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I turned toward the door and sucked in a breath. “Nick.” Seeing him standing there, I couldn’t manage more than that.

  “What are you doing here?” he repeated.

  “Food, Coats, Comfort, and Company.” I felt like an idiot even saying the words, but managed to nod toward the basket I’d set on the side table. “It’s a thing.”

  “Is asking you to leave also a thing?” This wasn’t the collared-shirt guy I’d met at the club, or the one who’d tended bar at the masquerade. There was nothing aggressive in his voice or posture, but nothing conciliatory, either. No polite mask.

  “I’m sorry you lost your job.” I felt like I didn’t have the right to say the words, but I said them anyway. “I know you didn’t steal anything.”

  “I’d ask how you know that, but as it turns out, I don’t actually care.”

  He wasn’t smiling, and neither was I. It felt good to drop the act.

  “Is there anything I can do?” I asked. “For you?”

  “Wow.” Nick’s voice reverberated off the walls. “It really didn’t take them long to convert you, did it?” He snorted. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

  Until he repeated my words back to me, I didn’t realize how much I sounded like Lillian—or Aunt Olivia or Lily. Like I could just wave a magic wand and fix whatever it was that needed fixing.

  “I should have said something.” I forced the words out between clenched teeth. This wasn’t smart, and it wouldn’t make a difference at this point, but he was here, and so was I, and he looked enough like the comatose guy on the bed that it was a safe bet they were related. “I know who set you up, and—”

  “Stop.” He walked toward me, step by hypercontrolled step, stopping at the foot of the bed. “Whatever you’re about to say, don’t.” He didn’t sound angry anymore. His voice was almost gentle. “Whatever you know, whoever you know it about—I don’t want you to tell me.” He paused. “I don’t want you to tell anyone.”