Little White Lies

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“Yes, well, imagining me with a son would have required spending some modicum of time devoted to thinking about someone other than yourself.” If smiles were deadly, Aunt Olivia’s would have downed my mother where she stood.

  “Sawyer.” Lillian stepped in before my mother could reply. “Perhaps you could show your mama the main dining room. It’s changed quite a bit since she was last here.”

  My mom wove her right arm through my left. She didn’t spare her mother so much as a glance, but when she spoke to me, Lillian was obviously the subject of her oh-so-pleasant statement. “She’s the boss.”

  Hello, land mines. My name is Sawyer, and I’ll be skipping through a field of you this evening. I steered my mother away from the rest of the family. As we made our way through the great room, into Ash Hall, and through to the dining room, I could feel a dozen sets of eyes—or more—pulled our way, like metal shavings to a magnet.

  “That dress can’t be comfortable.” My mom leaned close to talk in my ear, as if the two of us were sharing delightful secrets. “Are you wearing a strapless bra?”

  I managed to wait until we’d made it to the dining room before replying. “Mom.”

  “All I’m saying is that the Sawyer that I know would rather wear electrical tape than—”

  “Can we please stop talking about my bra?” I gritted out.

  At some point in our walk, I’d stopped leading her, and she’d started directing me. We ended up on the far side of the dining room, standing near one of the twenty-foot-tall windows, overlooking the pool. The thick plaid curtains—a Christmas special—had been drawn back just enough that we could see the night sky. The pool was covered and not much to look at, but the stars were a sight to behold.

  “They don’t shine as brightly here.” My mom nudged me gently in the side. “You can’t have forgotten that already.”

  I felt like she’d hit me. “I haven’t forgotten anything.”

  “Look at you,” my mom said softly. The words didn’t sound as critical as I would have expected them to, but they packed a punch all the same.

  “Look at you,” I replied. “You’re not exactly dressed for tending bar.”

  “Smile,” my mother murmured. “We have an audience.”

  A quick glance told me we were drawing even more stares than we had a moment before, but I didn’t give a damn about our audience.

  “You’ve been here for a few months,” my mom told me. “I spent almost eighteen years here. You’re like a foreign exchange student, baby. I’m a native speaker, so smile.”

  I bared my teeth. To call it a smile would have been a bit of a stretch.

  “That’s my girl.” That sounded more like my mom than anything else she’d said since she arrived, and it hurt.

  If you didn’t expect things of people, they couldn’t disappoint you. I knew that, but a part of me would never stop expecting her to…

  To what? I asked myself.

  “You should have called me,” I said. “You should have answered when I called.”

  “I know.” She looked down at the floor. “I just kept hoping you’d come to your senses. That you’d come home.”

  “Home is forty-five minutes away,” I pointed out. “It doesn’t have to be an either/or proposition. Even if I’m living with Lillian—you can still see me.”

  My mom gazed out at the pool. “You’re the one who left, Sawyer.”

  “I had a right to come here.” That ended up sounding more like a question than I would have liked. “They’re your family—but they’re my family, too, and they’re not all bad.”

  “If they were,” my mother replied after a moment, “your coming here wouldn’t have been so hard to swallow. If they were all bad—if living like this was all bad—I wouldn’t have to worry that you’d like it.” She looked down, her lashes casting shadows on the cheekbones Aunt Olivia envied so much. “I was never happy here after Daddy died. They probably haven’t told you this, but your aunt ran away, left a note and took off in the dead of night for eight months, close to nine. The police were called. Mama, of course, asked them to keep the investigation discreet. And when my sister finally deigned to return? Your grandmother never said a word about it. We just had to pretend that Liv had been on a vacation or at boarding school or that we knew where she’d been at all times.” She shook her head ever so slightly. “Except she wasn’t Liv anymore. She was Olivia, and she was perfect. It was like all that grief, all that anger, all that everything… it just evaporated, and there I was, twelve years old and awkward as all get-out and angry at her in ways that no one would let me say. And it just… stayed that way.” Her voice was muted now. “I didn’t belong here.” She turned slightly toward me. “I still don’t.”

  “You had friends here,” I said, thinking back to the photographs I’d seen in the attic. “And you obviously had a… connection… with someone.”

  “Sex,” my mom corrected. “The word you’re looking for is sex.”

  I opened my mouth, but didn’t get a word out before a voice spoke up behind us.

  “Ellie?”

  For an instant, my mom looked a decade younger. Her eyes widened. Her lips parted slightly. She turned toward the person who’d approached us. “Lucas.”

  For someone who’d just been insisting she didn’t belong here, my mom looked awfully happy to see Lucas Ames.

  “As I live and breathe,” he drawled. “It’s the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

  “You grew,” my mom commented.

  He grinned. “You didn’t.”

  “Sawyer.” My mom seemed to remember that I was standing there. “This is…”

  “Sawyer and I go way back,” Lucas said smoothly. “I did what I could to save her from boredom at Pearls of Wisdom, but am sad to report that neither of our families much appreciated the gesture.”

  “Imagine that,” my mother snorted.

  “My father bought your mother’s pearls.” Lucas waited for that to register before he dropped the bomb. “And then they were stolen.”

  “Someone stole Lillian’s pearls?” Ellie’s eyebrows skyrocketed.

  “Can we not talk about the pearls?” I asked. My mom and Lucas both turned to me, like they’d only just remembered I was there. I wondered if they realized nearly the entire room was watching this little reunion with interest.

  How many of these people remembered that the two of them had been friends? How many suspected Lucas of being my father?

  Before I could suss out the answer to that question, Davis Ames approached with Boone’s mother on one side and Campbell’s on the other.

  “Hello, Eleanor,” Davis said smoothly.

  Lucas replied before my mother could. “I was just catching Ellie up on local gossip. Who’s married who, who’s inherited what, all grand larcenies that have been committed in the past few months…”

  “Lucas.” The senator’s wife gave him a look. “Please.”

  “You look good, Ellie.” That was from Boone’s mother. “And, of course, your daughter is charming.”

  There were at least a dozen benign replies my mom could have made without blinking an eye. Why, thank you. Of course she is. I’m so proud of her. But instead, what my mom said was…

  “She takes after her father.”

  ountry clubs and debutante balls may have been my mom’s native language, but she was also fluent in shut-that-down, in-your-face bartender. What she’d just said about my father definitely qualified.

  Charlotte Ames suggested that I might want to run along and find the other young folks. I ignored her. If my mother was going to say something—anything—about my father, I was damn well going to be there to hear it.

  With a slight smile, my mom snagged a glass of champagne off a nearby tray and lifted it to her lips.

  “I think Walker and Campbell went in search of eggnog,” Lucas commented, nudging me toward the edge of the group. “But you didn’t hear it from me.”

  “Go on,” my mom said lightly. “Have fun.”

>   I wondered again why she had come tonight. Had she given up on silent treatment–ing me into coming home? Was she missing me, because it was Christmastime?

  Or was she here for something—or someone—else?

  “Go on, baby.”

  I wanted to stay. I wanted to make her tell me the truth. But I also knew her. I knew that while she might take great pleasure in throwing her scandal in their faces, she wouldn’t say another word with me present.

  So I went. I made it about a quarter of a way around the perimeter of the room before I was accosted.

  “Hide me.” Sadie-Grace stepped out from behind one of the oversized curtains and grabbed my wrist.

  “Hide you from what?”

  Sadie-Grace lowered her voice, even though the buzz of a hundred or more people chitchatting meant that I had to strain to hear her. “Greer.”

  I was about to ask why Sadie-Grace needed to be hidden from her stepmother, when out of the corner of my eye, I saw Greer step into the room and scan it with military-like precision.

  Sadie-Grace edged back toward the curtains. “I’m on the verge of an arabesque,” she whispered urgently.

  I pivoted and stepped sideways to block her from view. Unfortunately, Sadie-Grace was several inches taller than I was. Greer spotted her. She’d made it halfway toward us, beaming at ­Sadie-Grace with near-lethal determination in her eyes, when help came from an unexpected source. My mom approached her from the side and laid a hand lightly on her elbow. Greer turned, clearly intending to “enthusiastically” greet whoever had stopped her and then slip away.

  But when she saw my mother?

  Even from across the room, I could see her go ashen.

  “Greer has been redecorating our house,” Sadie-Grace said beside me, oblivious to anything but the fact that she’d received a reprieve. “She keeps saying that she’s going to get all the pictures of my mom reframed.”

  I thought back to what Lillian had told me about Sadie-Grace’s mother.

  “Let me guess,” I said, watching my mom and Greer. “Your dear stepmother hasn’t found a set of frames she likes yet.”

  “Greer says she wants them to be perfect,” Sadie-Grace replied quietly. Her hand was beginning to flit gracefully back and forth by her side. I stilled it for her, and she let out a long, labored breath. “There’s only one picture my dad hasn’t let her touch.”

  Across the room, Greer appeared to be trying to extract herself from conversation with my mother, but as I watched, my mom leaned forward and whispered something directly into her ear.

  Greer let out a light peal of laughter in response. I couldn’t hear it from this distance, but I knew exactly what it would have sounded like, just like I knew that it was 100 percent and without doubt fake.

  “What’s the picture your dad won’t let her take down?” I asked Sadie-Grace, forcing my eyes away from the understated melee playing out between my mom and her dear old friend.

  “It’s a photo of the three of us.” Sadie-Grace nibbled on her bottom lip. “My mom, my dad, and me—in front of the Christmas tree.”

  I knew without asking that she was talking about the tree at this party, just like I knew that Greer was probably determined to take a family Christmas picture of her own.

  There’s trying, Aunt Olivia had said the first time she’d mentioned Greer, and then there’s trying too hard.

  Across the room, Sadie-Grace’s father ambled into the conversation his wife was currently having with my mom. My mom’s eyes met his. Greer’s hand snaked out and took up a possessive perch on her husband’s chest.

  I wanted to stay there. I wanted to keep watching.

  Instead, I turned back to Sadie-Grace, who was practically trembling. “Got any ideas about where to hide?”

  We ended up in the room where the staff had set up a few dozen gingerbread houses for kids to decorate. Cloth-covered tables ran the length of the room. There were literally hundreds of dishes full of every kind of candy imaginable on the tables.

  It was chaos.

  “Gingerbread?” A waiter approached us from behind with a plate that smelled of nuts and cinnamon.

  “Yes, please.” Sadie-Grace helped herself to a piece, then turned to tell me, in exactly the same tone that John David had used, “It’s the food of the gods.”

  Four pieces of gingerbread later, I’d almost managed to forget the way that Greer had reacted to seeing my mother. She may as well have slapped a PROPERTY OF GREER sticker on her husband’s forehead. I thought back to the memory book in the attic, to all of the pictures of Greer and my mother together.

  What were the chances that Greer knew who my father was?

  “Are you okay?” Sadie-Grace asked me. The two of us had taken up position at the end of one of the long tables. There hadn’t been many gingerbread houses left to claim, so we were sharing. Her half looked like something out of Candy Land. My half looked like it had been made by a four-year-old.

  Probably because I kept eating my building materials.

  “I’m fine,” I told Sadie-Grace, popping a lemon candy into my mouth. “It’s just been a while since I’ve seen my mom.”

  That was just the tip of the iceberg. My mom’s reappearance had cemented in my mind the realization that if she’d wanted to come back before now, she could have. She’d always said she’d hated it here, but she didn’t seem upset to see Lucas Ames—or Charles Waters.

  Swallowing the sour-sweet remains of the candy, I glanced at Sadie-Grace. “If I asked you for a weird favor, would you do it?”

  “Does it involve tying bows?” Sadie-Grace asked seriously.

  “No.”

  “Duct tape?”

  “No,” I told her. “It involves hair.”

  “I can’t French-braid.” Sadie-Grace made that admission as if it were her greatest secret shame.

  “Not my hair,” I clarified. “Your father’s. If I asked you to bring me a piece of it, would you?”

  Sadie-Grace wrinkled her forehead, clearly perplexed. I’d told her this was a weird favor. I could see the exact moment that clarity hit her. “Are you making voodoo dolls?” she asked suspiciously.

  “No,” I said. “I’m running paternity tests.”

  Given how Lily had responded to the fact that I’d circled Uncle J.D.’s picture, I knew that this could go badly. Sadie-Grace’s father had married her mother before I was conceived. If I were in her position, I would have wanted to believe that they’d been happy.

  “Do you think my father might not be my father?” Sadie-Grace was horrified at the prospect.

  “No.” I put her out of her misery. “I think he might be mine.”

  Cue blowup, I thought, in three… two…

  Sadie-Grace launched herself at me and nearly bowled me over. This wasn’t a tackle—it was a hug.

  “Far be it from me to interrupt a moment…” Walker Ames dropped down into the open seat beside us. “But Sadie-Grace should probably get back to the main dining room.”

  Sadie-Grace, eyes sparkling, whisper-babbled something incomprehensible in my right ear. The only word I could make out was sister.

  I extracted myself from her steely, aggressively affectionate grip. “Why is Sadie-Grace’s presence needed in the dining room?” I asked.

  I expected a flippant response, but Walker’s expression was measured. “Because,” he said gently, aiming the words more at Sadie-Grace than at me, “her stepmother just announced to the whole room that she’s pregnant.”

  he timing of Greer’s announcement did not seem accidental. She runs into my mom. My mom exchanges pleasantries with her husband, and suddenly, Greer Waters is making a grand and public pregnancy announcement.

  Maybe that was just me being paranoid. Either way, Sadie-Grace reacted markedly less well to Greer’s news than she had to the bombshell I’d dropped a moment before. Then again, if I’d been watching my stepmother slowly replace any and all pictures of my mother, I probably would have taken a pregnancy announcement as an
indication that she was trying to replace me, too.

  “I can’t do this.” Sadie-Grace looked like she was on the verge of prettily vomiting all over a nearby floral arrangement.

  I steered her toward Lily. My cousin might not have taken the revelation of my Who’s-Your-Daddy list well—and I might have avoided saying a single word to her since my mom had shown up on our doorstep—but Lily was Sadie-Grace’s best friend. She could handle this far better than I could.

  “Breathe,” Lily ordered the moment she saw Sadie-Grace’s face. “You just have to make it through tonight, and then you and I will go out and buy picture frames. Tasteful, elegant, approved-by-Lillian-Taft sterling silver frames that we’ll have sent to your house as a late wedding present. I’m over often enough that it would be just terrible manners not to put them to good use. You’ll get your mama’s pictures back.”

  Sadie-Grace nodded.

  “Sawyer…” Lily dragged her attention away from her friend long enough to glance over at me. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, clipping the words.

  Lily looked down at her hands for a moment. “Maybe you are,” she said. “But I’m not. Your mother is here.” When that didn’t get a response, my cousin changed tactics. “Worrying gives you wrinkles, so I have been trying my best to keep calm, but I can only conclude that I have been less than successful.” She paused. “Walker took one look at me and knew that I was upset.”

  Upset on my behalf? Or upset about that picture and my ­mother’s sudden reappareance?

  “He talked to me, Sawyer.” Lily looked over at Sadie-Grace and then continued. “Really talked to me, like he used to.”

  Confiding that to me was an olive branch, Lily’s way of trying to go back to the moment when she’d been zipping up my dress, right after I’d zipped up hers.

  But I couldn’t.

  I knew, objectively, that my cousin’s reaction to finding out her father was on my list hadn’t been entirely unreasonable. I knew that it didn’t make sense to be mad at her and give my mom a free pass, but there was a reason I’d never made friends easily. Letting people in was a risk.