Little White Lies

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  Everyone had seen us duck out into the hall.

  I could have told Lily that nothing happened. I could have had some sympathy for the fact that she’d offered me an olive branch, and I’d turned it down. I could have concentrated on how she must have felt, having just told me that she’d had a moment with Walker and then watching the two of us duck out for a cozy, dimly lit, mistletoe-adjacent tête-à-tête.

  But every ounce of my emotional capital had already been spent. I’d managed exactly two words. The first was screw, and the second was you.

  “Why don’t you ask Lily?” I turned my grandmother’s habit of answering a question with a question back on her.

  “I’m asking you, Sawyer Ann.” Lillian was just as good at using silence to her advantage as I was.

  “This is me, not answering,” I clarified.

  “You seem…” My grandmother chose her words carefully. ­

  “… on edge. Your mama—”

  “I don’t want to talk about my mom.”

  “You don’t want to talk about your mama. You don’t want to talk about Lily. I can only assume that you don’t want to talk about whatever other bees you’ve gotten in your bonnet.” Lillian opened a nearby box and gently settled one of the nutcrackers inside. “Unfortunately for you, I’m a nosy old woman, and I learned my lesson a long time ago about not asking.”

  I got the distinct sense that was a reference to my mother.

  “Sawyer,” my grandmother said gently. “Are you unhappy here?”

  The question took me off guard. I’d come to Lillian’s world to find out who my father was. I’d found out. By all rights, I should have been ready to leave.

  But…

  But there was nothing for me back home. If I returned, I’d fall right back into old habits. I might never leave, and someday, I’d find myself resenting it—resenting my mom for keeping me there.

  “I said I would stay for nine months.” That wasn’t an answer to my grandmother’s question, but it was all she was going to get. “So I’m staying.”

  After the Symphony Ball, I’d have options. Money. A future.

  “About the contract…” my grandmother started to say, but before she could get further along than that, the doorbell rang. “That must be Davis,” Lillian said.

  “Davis,” I repeated. As in Davis Ames.

  Lillian went to answer the door, and I followed. The past two weeks had been so crammed full of holidays and traditions that I hadn’t come face-to-face with a single member of the Ames family. Aunt Olivia had mentioned offhandedly that they typically spent winter break in the mountains. I’d very conveniently not had to think about what my paternity meant.

  Until now.

  “Lil.” My paternal grandfather greeted my maternal grandmother with a nod the moment she opened the door.

  “Davis,” Lillian replied. “I’d ask you in, but the house is just a mess. You understand.”

  “How could I not?”

  In any other circumstances, I might have been impressed that they could turn such a mundane conversation into a subtle power play, but that barely even registered as I found myself searching my grandfather’s face for any resemblance, however fleeting, to my own.

  “I’ll get the papers for you,” Lillian was saying. By the time I’d processed that statement, she was gone, leaving me alone with the Ames patriarch in the foyer.

  “Papers?” I managed. That seemed like a nice, neutral thing for me to say. As a bonus, it wasn’t Your son knocked up my seventeen-year-old mother.

  “Appraisal papers,” Davis clarified. “For those blasted pearls. Insurance has been kicking up a fuss about my numbers.”

  “So you asked Lillian for hers?” I was impressed despite myself. He’d bought a precious family heirloom out from underneath her, lost it, and didn’t bat an eye at calling her up and asking her to provide proof of how much they’d been worth.

  The man had balls of steel.

  “You have a party tonight, don’t you?” Davis asked abruptly. “One of those Symphony Ball whatsits. Campbell has been nattering on about it all week.”

  His word choice might not have sounded affectionate, but his tone when he talked about Campbell was. I couldn’t help wondering if he knew—or even suspected—that I was his granddaughter, too.

  “You’re not the type to natter, are you?” Davis Ames said in response to my silence.

  I said the first thing that came to mind. “Kind of a sexist way to describe someone talking.”

  He blinked.

  “You wouldn’t describe your grandsons as nattering,” I elaborated.

  If anything, Davis Ames seemed to find that amusing. “Walker hasn’t spoken more than a word or two to me in months,” he said. “Boone natters on about Star Wars all the time.”

  The affection wasn’t as raw in his voice when he talked about the boys, but it hit me all the same. Campbell. Walker. Boone.

  And me.

  “Here you are.” Lillian reappeared and held a folder out to Davis. “I made copies, but these are the originals. Do try not to misplace them.”

  The way he’d misplaced her pearls.

  “Sawyer,” Lillian said, clearly pleased with her dig, “why don’t you run along and get ready for tonight? Your… outfit is hanging in the closet.”

  Davis Ames let his gaze linger on her for a moment longer, then turned back to me. “Planning to wear an eyebrow raiser tonight, are you?” he asked.

  I’m your granddaughter. Your son is my father.

  Out loud, I stuck to answering his question. “You could say that.”

  ou cannot be serious.”

  I turned to face Lily. She was standing in the doorway to my room. The expression on her face could not have been more horrified if I’d declared my allegiance to a religious sect that didn’t believe in wearing clothes, only snakes.

  “You like?” I asked her, knowing quite well that she didn’t.

  “You cannot wear that to Casino Night.”

  This was the longest continuous conversation I’d had with her since the night of the Christmas party. I honestly wasn’t sure if she was giving me the silent treatment or the other way around.

  “Are you trying to make a scene?” Lily asked, still thoroughly aghast.

  “It’s a tuxedo, not a declaration of war,” I said, knowing quite well that to my cousin, it might as well have been. “And besides, Lillian signed off on it.”

  “Mim would never…”

  “She had it tailored for me.” That shut Lily up—temporarily. Under normal circumstances, our grandmother probably would have been as horrified as Lily, but Lillian had loosened the reins in the wake of my mom’s visit.

  She wanted me to be happy here.

  “Sadie-Grace told me that you asked for a sample of her father’s hair.” Lily recovered her voice, but didn’t return to the topic of my outfit. Our grandmother was the ultimate trump card, and Lily knew it. “Is there anyone in our immediate social circle you don’t intend to drag through the mud?”

  I hadn’t told Lily about my conversation with the senator’s wife. I hadn’t told her that my mom had confirmed what Charlotte Ames had implied. As far as my cousin knew, I was still looking into the men I’d circled in the photograph, ready and willing to tear their lives apart at the seams.

  Just like I’m ready and willing to come between you and your one true love, right, Lil?

  “Nothing happened between Walker and me.” I knew that Lily would take the very mention of his name like a slap, but I’d never exactly been a “turn the other cheek” kind of person. “Whatever people say they saw, whatever you heard—nothing happened.”

  “We are not talking about this.” Lily spoke admirably calmly for someone whose deep brown eyes were promising bloody, bloody murder.

  Doubtful that she’d believe me, I tried one last time. “I have exactly no interest—zero—in your ex-boyfriend, Lily.”

  “I find that about as unlikely as the chances that yo
u’ve suddenly developed a well-honed sense of decorum.”

  The fact that my cousin could turn a sentence about decorum into an insult was just about the most Lily thing I’d ever heard. It was also the last—very last—straw.

  “Walker’s my brother.” I figured that would take the wind out of her sails.

  She opened her mouth to shoot back, then blinked. And blinked. And used the most unladylike language I’d ever heard. It was downright descriptive—and far more creatively arranged (not to mention anatomically impossible) than I would have predicted.

  “You can curse like a sailor,” I said, impressed. “Who knew?”

  “Sawyer Ann Taft.” Lily channeled our grandmother and her mother and a full generation or two of Southern women before them. “Would you care to repeat what you just said?”

  I couldn’t help myself. “About your language choices?”

  “Sawyer!”

  I felt a tug in my stomach, like the muscles were twisting around each other, fibers being wound into rope. I’d missed her. I didn’t want to admit that, even to myself.

  But I had.

  “I found out the night of the Christmas party.” I wasn’t usually a person who talked or stepped softly, but somehow, my voice refused to rise above a whisper. “The senator’s wife let it slip when she caught Walker with me under the mistletoe. Nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen, but she didn’t believe that.”

  Neither did you, I added silently, but that wasn’t the point.

  “I asked my mom, and she confirmed it.” I swallowed, surprised at the size of the lumps in my throat. “Sterling Ames is the one who knocked her up.”

  “The senator is your father.” Lily seemed to be having a hard time processing. She’d told herself a story about that night—about me. If she’d had a childhood obsession with telenovelas, that story might have taken a few more bizarre turns, but as it was, she hadn’t seen this coming.

  “The senator is my father,” I repeated, “and since I’m not a big fan of incest—”

  “Stop.” Lily actually placed her hands over her ears. “Just… you can stop there.”

  I waited until she’d let her hands float back to her sides before responding. “I was never a threat, Lily. I was never your competition. For Walker, it’s always been you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Walker.” She tilted her chin upward.

  Far be it from me to fight the chin tilt. “Are we good?” I asked.

  “Good?” Lily repeated incredulously. “You can’t just tell me something like this, and…”

  “And expect you to go on like life is normal?” So far, that was what I’d been trying to do. I’d succeeded, more or less, until I’d seen Davis Ames downstairs.

  “Have you said anything to the senator?” Lily asked. “Are you going to say anything to him?”

  I don’t know. I didn’t know if I was going to confront the man responsible for half of my DNA. I didn’t know if I was going to say anything to Walker or…

  “Campbell will be there tonight.” Lily tried to catch my eyes. “You could tell her.”

  Because that would go over well.

  “Sawyer,” Lily said.

  “I could tell her,” I repeated. “Or…” I straightened and smoothed one hand over the lapel of my tuxedo, lifting my own chin. “I could go to Casino Night, ignore Campbell Ames, and beat the pants off of everyone there at poker.”

  y tuxedo went over about as well as I had expected. At my grandmother’s insistence, the shirt underneath was black silk, the square of fabric in my pocket a fiery red. I was wearing three-inch heels—another concession to Lillian—and, around my neck, a borrowed diamond choker.

  “I love your outfit. It’s just so offbeat!” The girl beside me was better at bluffing than any of the boys at our table. If she’d wanted her fake compliment to sound like a real one, it would have.

  It didn’t.

  Relieving her of her remaining poker chips felt good. Given that this was a Symphony Ball event, the chips held no actual monetary value. The poker tables, roulette wheels, and blackjack dealers were just here to add to the ambiance. All the glamour of Monte Carlo, none of the vice.

  Or at least, that was what the Symphony Ball mamas were aiming for. To my fellow Debs and Squires, however, this was a second New Year’s Eve—all of the glamour, all of the vice.

  I’d counted twelve flasks since I walked through the door.

  “Don’t look now,” a voice stage-whispered beside me. “But I’m a little loopy.”

  I turned to find Sadie-Grace smiling adoringly at me. Her hair was pulled back to the nape of her neck, but part of it had already come loose—probably because she seemed unable to refrain from the occasional pirouette.

  “Everything okay?” I asked. I’d never seen her pirouette-level anxious before.

  “Lily says you’re not my sister.” Sadie-Grace stuck out her bottom lip. By the grace of God, she’d somehow managed a whisper that time instead of a stage whisper. “No sisters for Sadie-Grace,” she continued morosely. “Only fake babies for a fake-beautiful girl…”

  I didn’t even try to follow what she was saying. I deeply suspected there had been an alcoholic beverage of some sort—or four—involved. She needed fresh air—and probably some water.

  Standing up, I laid my cards down: a flush. Several groans, a half dozen dirty looks, and an impressive bounty of chips later, I escorted Sadie-Grace to the side of the room.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked her again.

  Sadie-Grace let out a lovely, delicate sigh. She stared out the window. After the debacle with the masquerade, the Symphony Ball committee had made the executive decision to look past the local country clubs for venues. Tonight, we had the top floor of Eton-Crane Tower, the tallest building in the city. It was shaped like an octagon, with panoramic windows overlooking the lights of downtown and everything that stretched off into the distance.

  “I know something I shouldn’t know,” Sadie-Grace stated.

  I peered at her. “Please tell me that this doesn’t end with the revelation that you’ve got someone tied up in your guesthouse.”

  “We don’t have a guesthouse anymore,” Sadie-Grace replied automatically. “It’s a mother-in-law suite now. Greer redid it for her parents so they can come from Dubai and stay when the baby is born.”

  “Okay,” I said, waiting. I figured it wouldn’t take much silence to prod her to keep going.

  I was right.

  Sadie-Grace pressed her cheek against the cool window, her hair even more lopsided than it had been a moment before. “There is no baby.”

  I waited for her to make that statement make sense.

  “I found a pregnancy test Greer took—it’s negative.”

  “She could still be…”

  “I saw her trying on bellies.” Sadie-Grace poked her own belly button through her dress.

  “Who fakes a pregnancy?” I asked, but then I remembered the circumstances in which Greer had announced her delicate condition.

  My mom was there—and Greer wasn’t happy about it.

  Charles Waters was not my father. What threat was my mother to his newly wedded bride?

  “Do you think Boone’s cute?” Sadie-Grace asked suddenly, lifting her cheek off the glass and smiling. “I think he’s cute.”

  Oh, boy…

  “Let’s get you some water.”

  Sadie-Grace was nothing if not obliging. After I’d deposited her at Lily’s side, I decided that I needed some fresh air. I paused at the roulette table just long enough to bet every chip I had on a long shot. I was walking away from the table when the winning color and number were called out.

  A collective gasp informed me that my long shot had paid off.

  “I… er… I don’t have enough chips to pay you.” The man behind the wheel was wearing a tuxedo that looked nearly as expensive as my own. I wondered how often he worked parties just like this one. “If we were actually playing for money, I’d
cash you out, but… well…”

  We weren’t playing for money. There were no stakes here.

  “Not a problem,” I said. It was pretty much a law of nature that winning was easiest when you wanted to lose.

  By the time I finally made it out a side door, I found myself cycling back to the questions Lily had brought up earlier. Am I going to tell Walker? Or Campbell? I’d almost succeeded at pushing the possibility out of my mind when I stepped into the stairwell and realized that I wasn’t alone.

  Speak—or think—of the devil, and she appears.

  Campbell Ames was standing on the landing below me. I was on the forty-ninth floor. She was on the forty-eighth—and she wasn’t alone.

  “I shouldn’t have come.”

  I recognized Nick’s voice, even though I couldn’t see his face. Campbell’s auburn hair was piled high on her head. Her dress was red, tight and fitted. It came to the floor, but there was a slit up the side.

  All the way up the side.

  She was standing with one leg thrust forward, her hand lying on the back of Nick’s neck. “I just need you to trust me a little while longer.”

  “Trust you?” Nick jerked back from her touch. “Even when we were having our fun, I never trusted you, Campbell.”

  “They’re reinvestigating the theft, Nick. My father is putting pressure on the DA to make another arrest—and make it stick this time.”

  I counted the length of the silence between them with the beats of my own heart: one, two…

  “I don’t care what your father is doing,” Nick said coldly.

  “You don’t know my father,” Campbell insisted. “I don’t know why he wants this case in the news again. I don’t know what he’s trying to redirect attention from, but Senator Sterling Ames always gets what he wants.”

  I swallowed, my throat suddenly dry. I had a theory—a good one—about why the senator might want to control the news cycle now.

  His wife had confronted me. Had she confronted him? If he knew that I knew that he was my father, then he might have spent the past two weeks waiting to see what my next move would be.