Little White Lies

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

  “Are you speaking from personal experience?” I asked. I didn’t expect my grandmother to answer. Lillian Taft could dodge questions as expertly as she could use them as weapons.

  Just this once, however, she surprised me.

  “Davis Ames and I grew up together.” There was a long pause, and then she clarified. “Not here.”

  She didn’t mean here as in this geographical location. She meant this world. This social stratosphere.

  This twisted, sparkling place.

  “Davis was always ambitious,” my grandmother mused. “He would say that we had that in common.” Another pause, another discreet lift of the coffee mug to her lips. “The place we came from… it was the kind of place I was terrified that Ellie would end up.”

  Lillian so rarely referred to my mother by name. It was your mama, your mother, my daughter.

  “I didn’t do enough to keep this family together.” Lillian stared out at the street. I wondered if she even realized she’d changed the subject, or if in her mind, it was all connected: her past with Davis Ames, the way she’d turned my mother out, the scandal, the fact that I was here, sitting on this porch with her, now.

  You did what you could. That was what I was supposed to say, but there was still enough of the old Sawyer in me that I didn’t. I wouldn’t lie to her.

  Or, at least, I wouldn’t lie to her about this.

  “Did you kiss him?” Lillian asked suddenly. “Walker Ames?”

  “I wouldn’t do that to Lily.” It occurred to me then that what Campbell had told me—what she’d done to Walker—would hit my cousin a thousand times harder than it had hit me. Campbell’s lie had torn Lily’s life apart at the seams.

  “I do not recommend kissing Ames boys.” Lillian’s voice brought me back to the present. “If you can help it.”

  hen Lily got home, I meant to tell her everything. The truth was right there on the tip of my tongue, but instead, I told her what had happened after Campbell had locked me out of the sauna.

  “Greer Waters was the one who caught me.” I shuddered.

  “In your birthday suit,” Lily clarified. “Sadie-Grace’s stepmother caught you scampering down the halls of the spa buck naked.”

  “That is an accurate assessment of the situation, yes.”

  Lily pressed her lips together. I thought she was scowling, but then her shoulders shook, and I realized that she was trying very hard not to laugh.

  “What did you say?” she asked, a giggle escaping.

  I didn’t particularly want to rehash this, but I did want Lily to keep smiling. I wanted to figure out what to do about Walker before I brought the world as my cousin knew it crashing down.

  “I covered my crotch with my right hand and my boobs with my left forearm.” I shrugged. “And then I looked at her stomach and said, ‘You’re starting to show.’ ”

  • • •

  It took Lily several minutes to recover. She laughed so hard she cried, and when she asked me if I’d managed to get any information out of Campbell, I told her that I hadn’t.

  I didn’t want to be the one to tell her what had broken Walker. I wanted to fix it.

  Late that night, I saw a familiar SUV driving down the cul-de-sac. It pulled into Davis Ames’s drive and waited outside the gate. From a distance, I couldn’t tell who was driving or if there were any passengers, but the last time I’d seen this particular vehicle had been at the basket-wrapping marathon for Food, Coats, Comfort, and Company.

  The two most likely drivers were Walker and Campbell.

  As I watched, the gates to the Ames estate opened, and the SUV disappeared past them.

  The decision to add breaking and entering to my list of recent ­felonies—­kidnapping, accessory to grand theft, indecent exposure—­was surprisingly easy. If Walker was the one visiting their grandfather—my grandfather—he deserved to know the truth, and if it was Campbell, I had a roll of duct tape with her name on it.

  Duct-taping my conniving half-sister to a chair might not prove practically advantageous at this point, but I was positive it would feel really, really good.

  Scaling the gate wasn’t a problem. Proceeding past the “skulking outside the house” portion of this endeavor proved significantly harder. I was weighing the benefits of sneaking around back when I felt something—or someone—brush against my leg.

  Or, more specifically, my thigh.

  I skittered backward and whirled. In the darkness, I couldn’t make anything out right away, but I could hear the sound of heavy breathing.

  The closest thing I have to a weapon is duct tape. That thought formed in my mind an instant before I managed to locate my assailant.

  “William Faulkner!” I scolded in a whisper.

  The dog stared up at me with what, in the dark, I could only assume was an adoring expression.

  “How the hell did you get past the gate?” I asked.

  William Faulkner was not forthcoming with answers. Of the 199 breeds eligible to compete in the Westminster Dog Show, there were a handful that I would have classified as capable of both stealth and getting past that gate.

  The hundred-plus-pound Bernese mountain dog was not one of them.

  As if sensing this evening was not going my way, William Faulkner attempted to comfort me—and by that, I mean that she bumped my body with hers, nearly sending me sprawling to the ground, and then threw her head back and started barking.

  I tried to convince her to stop, but it was like she’d waited her entire life for the chance to perform the lead in a doggy opera.

  I barely heard the front door to the Ames house open. I made an attempt at retreating even farther into the shadows, but Davis Ames scanned his lawn with military precision and his gaze landed first on the mammoth dog and then on me.

  “Sawyer?”

  “You must have impressive night vision,” I called back. Realizing that I should probably make at least an attempt to explain, I racked my brain.

  “William Faulkner get out again?” he asked.

  I latched on to that explanation like a lifesaver. “I have no idea how she got past the gate.”

  That gave him a moment’s pause. “How did you get past the gate?”

  “I’m going to plead the Fifth on that one.”

  With the scant light from the house, I couldn’t see his expression, but I had the distinct feeling that response had gotten me either a smile or a smirk.

  “Your grandmother always was one for climbing trees,” he commented.

  “Is Walker here?” I asked. Now that stealth was out the window, the direct approach seemed to be my best bet.

  “You are aware that it is past midnight.”

  “Sure am,” I replied.

  I actually heard him snort this time.

  “I hate to disappoint you, young lady, but Walker isn’t here. The boy hasn’t been by in weeks.”

  Davis Ames had to have noticed the dramatic transformation his grandson had gone through in the wake of the accident. Allowing myself one second to grit my teeth and another to hide the roll of duct tape behind my back, I took a few steps toward the front door.

  “Walker isn’t here,” I repeated. “Is Campbell?”

  Davis Ames jingled the change in his pocket, then nodded toward the house. “Why don’t you come inside?”

  I wondered, suddenly, if he knew that his son was my father. Was that why he’d stepped in when Lucas had bid on me at Pearls of Wisdom? To prevent people from assuming that I was a bastard Ames?

  Lucas doesn’t care about appearances, but his brother does. Their father does.

  “I should stay out here,” I said. “With William Faulkner.”

  My companion barked again. I allowed one hand to rest on her collar.

  Davis Ames didn’t reply—not at first. “All right, then, young lady.” When he did speak, it didn’t feel like he was capitulating. “I’ll send Campbell out.”

  ampbell was wearing pajamas. Fuzzy ones. To say

  that
she wasn’t pleased to see me would have been an understatement.

  “What do you want?” Campbell turned the porch light on. She looked younger than she had earlier in the day—and more likely to bite.

  “I want,” I said, emphasizing the word, “to tell your brother the truth.”

  “And you think I don’t?”

  I stared holes in her. “If you wanted to, you could have.”

  “Right.” Campbell offered me a biting smile. “Because it’s that simple.”

  “Hi, Walker,” I said, by way of suggestion, “you’re not the one responsible for that hit and run, and also, I’m a horrible person. Seems simple enough.”

  Campbell stared right back at me. “You’ve got everything figured out.”

  I shrugged. “You’re not exactly an enigma.”

  “And you’re not a member of this family.” The words left her mouth like the crack of a whip. “So you can stop pretending you know anything about what it’s like to be an Ames.”

  I hadn’t been expecting a family reunion. I’d come into the search for my biological father knowing that I wasn’t likely to be welcomed with open arms. Campbell’s statement about being an Ames shouldn’t have stung.

  “How could you do that to Walker?” I didn’t let myself dwell on her attack. “How could you—”

  “He’s my brother.” Campbell stared daggers at me, daring me to even think about claiming that he was mine, too. “Walker is the one person in this world who loves me, no matter what.”

  “So that gives you the right to screw with him like this?” I asked sharply. “Lucky him. And what about Nick?” I took a step toward her. “Did you know who he was when he started working at the club? Did you pursue him on purpose?”

  Campbell’s response lagged, just by a breath. “I’m a coldhearted bitch,” she said flatly. “What else would I have done, right?”

  For the first time, I could hear in her voice a shade of the self-loathing that sometimes colored Walker’s.

  “You don’t get to feel sorry for yourself,” I said. “You framed Nick—”

  “Keep your voice down.” Campbell lowered her own.

  I refused to do the same. If someone overheard us, so be it. “You framed Nick for stealing the necklace, and you let Walker think—”

  “I’m not framing Nick.” Campbell stepped off the porch, toward me. She stopped when she hit the grass, but only for a moment.

  I was about to argue that she clearly had framed Nick when I processed exactly what she’d said. “Framing,” I repeated. “Present tense.”

  She hadn’t denied that she’d framed Nick. She’d very clearly said framing. As in ongoing.

  As in, whatever game she was playing—it wasn’t over.

  “Haven’t you done enough?” I said incredulously.

  Campbell stopped walking once she’d stepped clearly into my personal space. Her face was just inches from mine. “Nick,” she said, enunciating the name, “is not the one I’m framing.”

  What was that supposed to mean?

  “Go home, Sawyer.”

  A muscle in my jaw clenched. “You made me a part of this the night of the scavenger hunt.”

  Campbell closed her eyes. “Why can’t anyone just trust me?”

  I let out a single bark of laughter, which William Faulkner seemed to find fairly exciting.

  “Did that question seriously just leave your mouth?” In true Taft woman fashion, I rendered my own question almost immediately rhetorical. “You let Walker tear himself up over something you did. And Nick—”

  “I’m doing this for Nick,” Campbell said vehemently. “For Walker.”

  I nodded. “Right. And you blackmailed Lily for her own good.”

  William Faulkner padded forward, just enough to nudge ­Campbell’s hand with her massive head. I expected Campbell to jerk her hand back or ignore the dog, but instead, she knelt and stroked William Faulkner’s head. “I just need a few more weeks,” Campbell said quietly. “After that, you can do whatever you want.”

  Kneeling, the formidable, heartless Campbell Ames was smaller than the dog.

  “A few more weeks for what?” I didn’t want to be asking. For all I knew, I was playing right into her hand, but nothing about this confrontation had gone the way I thought it would.

  I still hadn’t broken out the duct tape.

  “You want me to trust you?” I told Campbell. “Give me a reason.”

  She stood, but she kept her gaze focused on the dog as she said, “I wasn’t the one driving the car.”

  I had to strain to hear her, and when I worked out the words, my first instinct was to lash back. I was tired of playing her games. Right before she’d locked me out of the sauna and left me to prance around in the altogether, she’d insisted that this was her fault—not Walker’s.

  “If you weren’t driving,” I said pointedly, “and Walker wasn’t, who was?”

  She waited so long to reply that I wasn’t sure a response was coming. And then it did. “Our father.”

  ackie wasn’t sure what to make of the blank record he’d pulled up for Walker Ames. The fact that there was no arrest record for the girls, however, was completely unsurprising.

  Rodriguez and O’Connell must not have entered it into the system before they’d thrown him to the glove-clad wolves.

  And speaking of… Mackie turned to head back to the holding area. By now, the girls had probably jimmied the lock open. For all Mackie knew, he’d come back to find fine, upstanding young men and women dancing a waltz.

  Or enacting a conspiracy the likes of which this station had never seen.

  He was halfway back to the cell, when he heard the door to the station creak open. Mackie figured there were two options: either Rodriguez and O’Connell had finally taken pity on him and returned…

  Or the Ames family lawyer had arrived.

  Steeling himself, Mackie turned toward the door. The figure standing there straightened his tie. Or, more specifically, his bow tie. He wasn’t any older than the lot in the back—and there was a crescent-shaped cut above his eye.

  “Boone Mason,” the boy said. “No relation to Perry. Do not be deceived by my boyish looks.”

  Mackie closed his eyes and slowly counted to ten.

  “I am not a teenager,” the tuxedoed boy declared in the single most cheerful lie Mackie had ever heard. “I am a lawyer. Take me to my clients.”

  ith T-minus one month to go before our official presentation to society, I caught Lily curled up on the window seat on the second-floor landing, her tablet in her lap. After Campbell had revealed the truth—the real truth—about who had hit Colt Ryan, I’d come clean to my cousin about the events that had sent her ex into a downward spiral.

  A month and a half later, Lily was still reeling. This wasn’t the first time I’d caught her staring furtively at one of her old Secrets entries. It was, however, the first time I’d caught her fixated on the final post—the lone photo of Campbell.

  “ ‘He made me hurt you.’ ” Lily looked up from the tablet, her brown eyes searching mine. “He as in the senator, you as in Walker.”

  “I’m not proud of what I did to my brother.” The conversation I’d had with Campbell the night I’d climbed the gate at the Ames estate came back to me. It had been the first of many, and they all boiled down to a single, crystal-clear point: “But I will take a lot of pride in bringing my father down.”

  “He as in the senator,” I echoed Lily. “You as in Walker. That’s one interpretation.”

  “Maybe I was talking about Walker when I wrote those words.” I could still see the subtle, serpentine smile working its way first to one side then to the other of Campbell’s lips. “But to a jury? It’s going to look like I was talking about Nick.”

  Campbell had said, that night on the lawn, that she wasn’t framing Nick. Slowly, I’d pieced together the real plan: framing daddy dearest for framing Nick. Piece by piece and move by move, she was laying a trap, one that would result i
n the truth coming out about the hit and run in a way that not even a powerful senator could counteract.

  “I’m doing this for Walker,” Campbell had told me. “I’m doing this because Daddy would never expect it of me.”

  Campbell didn’t know who our father had called to handle the police that night, or what the person on the other end of the line had done to take care of the “problem.” She did know that if she went to the authorities now, she could easily be dismissed as a spoiled teenager making up lies—a silly little girl, desperate for Daddy’s attention.

  But if Campbell could make it look like the senator had stolen the pearls for the purpose of framing Nick, because Nick was asking questions and getting too close to the truth? If she waited until the evidence against our father was ironclad, and then admitted that he was the one who’d hit Nick’s brother?

  Suddenly, the senator’s scandalous daughter might start looking more credible than her father.

  “I want in.” That was what I’d told Campbell. She’d replied—more than once—that she neither needed nor wanted my help.

  But here we were.

  “Girls!” Aunt Olivia called from downstairs.

  Lily closed the cover of the tablet. “Coming!” She turned to me, and I knew what she was going to say before she said it. “I still think we should tell Walker the truth.”

  So did I.

  So did Campbell.

  “Not yet.”

  Campbell was in the back seat that night. The newly minted Mrs. Waters had spared no expense on her wedding—and that meant an open bar. They weren’t checking IDs, so Campbell had made use of it. So had Walker.

  So had almost everyone in attendance.

  As Lily and I sat in the back of Aunt Olivia’s car, I turned the story over in my mind, the way I had countless times, working in new details as I’d pulled them from Campbell. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to imagine it—repeatedly, visually imagine it.

  Maybe because, in a different life, with one key change eighteen years earlier, it might have been me in the back of that car—or it might have been both of us.