’d made it nine-tenths of the way to the catastrophe-in-waiting that was my mom and Greer when I bumped into Sadie-Grace.
“This heat, I swear,” Greer was complaining to a group of women nearby. “Never have an August baby.”
As tempting as it was to call out Greer’s performance for exactly what it was, years of being my mom’s wingman, confidante, backup, and babysitter told me that her doing the same thing—in public—had the potential to blow up in all of our
faces.
“Excuse me,” I told Sadie-Grace. I went to move past her, but she sidestepped and blocked me.
“No.”
I tried to make sense of that. “What?”
“I said no,” Sadie-Grace said apologetically. “I have to say no. Not just to you. To everything. I have to say no to everything anyone asks from me, all day. Because.”
She put so much emphasis on that last word that I finally connected the dots. “Because that’s your White Glove challenge?”
“I can neither confirm nor deny that.” Sadie-Grace was serious as a funeral. “But maybe, if you want me to get out of your way, you should ask me not to step aside?”
“Whatever you do, don’t step aside.”
Once she’d cleared the way, I made my way to where Greer had been standing a moment before. Neither she nor my mother was immediately visible. Eventually, I spotted them just outside the tent, back and away from the foot traffic.
“I don’t hate you, Greer.” I was wired to hear my mom’s voice above others, to be able to pick it out of a crowd. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have Sawyer. So rest assured, I’m not going to burst your little bubble with respect to your current deception.”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about, Ellie.” Before my mom could respond, Greer caught sight of me and nodded in my direction.
My mom turned. She saw me, then let her gaze travel farther into the tent, to Sadie-Grace. “All I’m saying, friend, is that maybe you’re so set on making life go your way that you’re missing out on the ways that it already has.”
I’d wondered how hungover my mom was. The answer was apparently philosophically hungover, which generally hovered around the midpoint of the scale.
Without responding to my mom’s advice, Greer went to make her exit. I watched her go. Do you know that your husband lost a child when he lost his first wife? I thought. Would it make any kind of difference to you if you did?
Given that she was eight months into this deception, I doubted it.
“She’s a piece of work,” my mom declared, coming to stand beside me. “Happy Fourth of July, baby.”
She hesitated when she called me baby, like she wasn’t sure she was still allowed to call me that. The hesitation hit me harder than any attempt she’d made to mend things between us.
“Happy Fourth of July,” I returned. I might have left it there, but I realized, suddenly, that I knew something that she didn’t know.
Something that she probably should know.
“Mom,” I started. “Don’t do anything rash or stupid when I tell you what I’m about to tell you. Aunt Olivia? She knows.”
on’t worry,” Liv whispered in Charlotte’s ear. “You’re prettier.”
Charlotte wanted to say that she hadn’t been worried, but that was a lie. Down below, the boat was anchored. Sterling and the other boys—and the interloper—were making the climb up. The girl might have been wearing a bathing suit, but she was also wearing an oversized T-shirt that made it hard to tell. She should have looked hideous in it, but she didn’t.
She shouldn’t have been touching Sterling, but she was.
“Hello, hello!” Charlotte forced a smile onto her face, sweet as sugar. She waved, letting her eyes lock onto Sterling’s as he helped Miss T-shirt up the incline.
“Who’s she?” Julia asked, coming up behind Charlotte and Liv. Charlotte would have liked Julia significantly better if she’d sounded the least bit upset about the unexpected addition.
At least she’d asked the question loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Her name is Trina,” Sterling called back. “She’s a local. We met her when we went to gas up the boat and decided to invite her along for the ride.”
Charlotte could feel Julia assessing the situation. The local girl was getting touchy-feely with Sterling, not Thomas—and certainly not J.D.
Charlotte wouldn’t let that be a big deal. She could be gracious. She could be beautiful.
She could be fun.
“Don’t worry,” Liv murmured beside her. “If she gives you any trouble, I’ll happily push her off the cliff.”
gainst all odds, my mom didn’t do anything rash or stupid when I broke the news that her sister knew exactly who my father was. I could only conclude that she was saving that for after the pie-eating contest.
“The rules are simple.” A woman with a microphone was standing in front of a stage that had been erected near the tennis courts. “The first person to finish their pie wins. Of course”—she winked at the crowd—“there is one other tiny detail.” She held up what appeared to be a bunch of silk scarves. “Our contestants’ hands will be tied behind their backs!”
With quite a bit of further ado, the would-be pie-eaters had their hands bound. Pies were ceremoniously placed on the table in front of each of them. There were nine contestants total, eight of them male. The pies, from what I could see, appeared to be heavy on the whipped cream and/or meringue.
Lily was seated at the very end of the stage. Her posture was impeccable. Her hair had been pulled into a low ponytail at the nape of her neck.
“On your mark…” the woman with the microphone said. “Get set…”
Lily bowed her head slightly, as if in prayer.
“Go!”
I expected Lily to hesitate, but she didn’t. She buried her face in that pie at a high enough velocity that pieces of meringue went flying. As she started chomping away, I realized that was the point. Her competitors were eating the pie with their mouths. Lily was quickly turning this into a whole face endeavor. She was eating the pie, but she was also demolishing it.
The important thing about a pie-eating contest, it turned out, was not so much eating the pie as it was making sure that your tin was empty first.
“Done!” Lily yelled, lifting her head. To her left, eight men ranging in age from their teens to their forties turned to stare at her. The judge walked over and examined Lily’s pie tin, which contained only faint traces of pie.
“It appears,” the woman said, casting a mildly horrified look at Lily, whose face, hair, and clothing were covered in pie bits, “that we have a winner.”
“Are you sure she’s Olivia’s?” my mom asked beside me. “Because that was really something.”
Up onstage, someone was handing Lily a towel. It took me a second to realize that the person in question was Walker.
He was laughing.
“Sawyer.” My mom nudged me. “Your phone.”
I made a concerted effort to stop watching Walker and Lily and turned my attention to my own text messages. In quick succession, I received three.
@) - -‘ - , - - -
~ ~ ~ ~ ~8<
Look to your left.
That didn’t seem like much of a challenge to me. Then I looked to my left. Through the slight crowd that the pie-eating contest had attracted, I saw someone milling on the outskirts.
Nick.
My phone buzzed again: a fourth text. Your challenge, should you choose to accept it: spend the afternoon with him.
Nick was wearing a navy swimsuit with a ratty red T-shirt. As I approached, he crossed his arms, the shirt pulling against his biceps and shoulders.
Not that I noticed.
“Hi,” I said. He didn’t say hello back, so I filled the silence. “I always wondered what a grudge personified would look like.”
That almost got a smile out of him. “You the reason I got invited to this thing?”
&nb
sp; “That would be the secret society that’s trying to torture me with your presence.”
It felt good to be too honest with someone.
“You’re really not great with apologies,” Nick commented.
“I already apologized,” I replied. When he didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, I elaborated. “Via text.”
Texts that he hadn’t returned.
“I don’t text,” Nick said.
“You make phone calls,” I said, reading between the lines. “Like a civilized person.”
This time, the edges of his lips did tilt up, ever so slightly. “I didn’t come here to do this with you,” he said.
“And yet,” I replied, casting a look at the Fourth of July Wonderland all around us, “you still need the connections. And the reputation.”
He grimaced. “Damned debutante ball.”
I said what he hadn’t. “Damned debutantes.”
That seemed to penetrate, in a way that nothing else I’d said had. “I really did think you were different,” he told me quietly.
That hurt, but I didn’t let it sting for long. “What kind of person would I be if I prided myself on being different from other girls?”
He studied me for a moment—blatantly, intently. “I wasn’t talking about girls. I was talking about…” He looked around at the pockets of people all around us. The tennis and sand volleyball courts. The immaculate, sprawling lawn. “All of this.”
“It’s weird, isn’t it?” I asked him. “Being one of them?”
“I’m not.” His reply was immediate. The elaboration took longer. “And neither are you.”
And just like that, I was forgiven.
“Last time I saw you,” Nick said, “you were making noises about that body. What do they call her?”
“The Lady of the Lake,” I replied. “And FYI: referring to someone talking as ‘making noises’ doesn’t exactly endear you to the speaker.”
Nick tilted his head to the side. “Noted.”
I decided not to hold the word choice against him. “The body wasn’t who we thought it was. Whoever she was, we have no reason to believe that she was killed by an Ames.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Nick said dryly. Then he took in the look on my face. “Isn’t it?”
We ended up down on a nearby dock. I told him everything Lily and I had heard on John David’s recording. I waited for him to decide that I was more trouble and more drama than I was worth, that I was one of them in the worst possible way.
“Is there a reason,” he asked after a long silence, “that you tell me all of your secrets?”
I heard no judgment in his tone, but there was something in the way he was looking at me that I couldn’t put into words.
“Who are you going to tell?” I brushed off his question and looked out at the lake. The water in our cove was choppier than I’d ever seen it. Every once in a while, as we sat in silence, the waves hitting the dock sprayed the two of us.
“Did you ever come to the lake?” Nick was the one who broke the silence. “Before?”
“No,” I replied, thankful for the change in subject. “Did you?”
Nick let his feet dangle over the side of the dock. “When I was younger. One of Colt’s friends would borrow a car. There’s a camping area, close to the Macon Bridge. Even when it’s not a holiday weekend, the place is too crowded. Loud. Muddy as hell, if there’s been rain.”
The smile on his face made it clear. “You loved it.”
He looked down at the backs of his hands. “Colt did.”
That was the second time he’d said his name. “I’m sorry,” I told him. “About your brother.”
Nick locked his eyes on the horizon. “He’d be a hell of a lot better at this than me. The parties. Playing nice. Jessi.” I assumed that was his younger sister’s name, but didn’t get the chance to ask before he continued. “You.”
I should go. I felt that, like a warning siren going off in my brain. I wanted to say those words to him, but I couldn’t.
“You’re not doing so bad,” I said instead.
Nick turned his head toward mine. I tried to remind myself that he’d had weeks to get back in touch with me and hadn’t. That he hated the world I lived in and the people in it. That he’d been involved with Campbell before he ever met me.
That I didn’t want to want anything like this.
But all I could think about was my hands in his hair.
“Promise me,” Nick said, his voice rumbling and low, “that for the next ten seconds, you’re not going to say anything about dead bodies or fake pregnancies or anyone with the last name Ames.”
I felt my body listing toward his. My hands moved to his chest of their own volition. “I’ll give you seven,” I countered.
He brought his hands up to my fingertips, touching them lightly. He leaned forward, his lips stopping a fraction of an inch from mine, then moved his hands to the sides of my face. His fingers were rough and callused.
And warm.
“I can make seven work.” He grinned and closed his lips over mine.
I should have pulled back, but I didn’t. I shouldn’t have lost myself to it—to him—but I did. On some level, I was aware that I suddenly had his shirt fisted in my hands, that I wasn’t sitting next to him anymore, but on top of him.
His hands trailed down to my waist as he pulled back from the kiss. “Seven.”
My phone buzzed. I ignored the text, but it was followed by another and another. I looked down at my phone. Lily.
“Trouble in paradise?” Nick asked me.
I was on my feet before I’d even finished reading the message. “You don’t even know.”
here is he?” I asked.
Lily led me through the crowd, then stopped when we got close to the long line of grills that they’d finished setting up since Nick and I had disappeared. “There.”
J.D. Easterling had some nerve, showing up here. When I finally saw him, however, I realized that was an understatement. Lily had omitted one key fact from her text.
“He didn’t,” I said.
Lily swallowed hard. There were still some noticeable pie bits in her hair. “He did.”
The fact that Lily’s father had decided to attend the festivities was surprising enough, the kind of move meant to communicate to everyone, but especially to Aunt Olivia, that he was still the same man—Lily’s father, John David’s father, a prominent member of the circles in which all of these people ran.
But J.D. hadn’t just come here. More specifically: he hadn’t come here alone.
“Why would he bring her?” Lily was practically shaking.
I grabbed her arm and held it. “I have no idea.”
Ana was wearing a blue sundress—white shrug with capped sleeves, sedate ponytail low on the nape of her neck. She looked all-American and wholesome.
I scanned the area for Aunt Olivia. She stood on the other side of the lawn flanked by Boone’s mother and Campbell’s. Julia Ames had a grip on Aunt Olivia’s arm, the way I held Lily’s, but I got the distinct feeling that she wasn’t so much holding her as holding her back. Charlotte was standing an extra step or two away. She and Aunt Olivia had a habit of exchanging sugary-sweet barbs, and yet, Charlotte was the one who stepped forward, to block Uncle J.D. from Aunt Olivia’s view.
“Sawyer.” Lily’s voice took on a sudden urgency as she dug her fingers into my arm. “Your mama.”
I’d expected a scene when my mom had confronted Greer, but hadn’t gotten one. A lifetime of experience had taught me I wouldn’t be so lucky twice.
“What can I do?” Nick asked beside me. I hadn’t expected him to come with me, but his physical presence—and the way I felt the weight of it in every inch of my own body—reminded me that I’d confided in him.
Nick was the only one here who knew everything that Lily and I knew.
“Everyone is watching.” My half-sister didn’t sound as upset as I would have predicted, like she’d disas
sociated and couldn’t feel anything other than numb.
“Seriously, Ana?”
I could hear my mom from ten feet away. Under any other circumstances, I would have been amused by the way everyone in the vicinity was not-staring. Staring was rude, but there wasn’t a person nearby who didn’t find themselves casually glancing a few feet away from the action.
“Ellie,” J.D. said, striking a balance between cajoling and a warning.
“How could you?” my mom asked. Most people probably thought she was talking to him, but I flashed back to the dozens of pictures I’d seen of my mom and Ana and Greer, wearing white ribbons on their wrists or woven through their hair.
Ana seemed to know the question my mom had just asked was for her. “You have no stones to throw here,” Ana told her—quietly, calmly, her tone not entirely unpleasant.
I was suddenly overwhelmed with a horrible premonition of my mom laying her—and my—whole sordid past out for everyone to hear. How could you sleep with my sister’s husband? How could you sleep with the father of my child?
By the grace of God, the question my mom asked out loud was a different one. “What happened to you, Ani?”
The nickname seemed to penetrate the other woman’s shields in a way that nothing else had. She wavered, then stepped closer to my mom.
“You have no idea what I’ve been through. None.”
I was so absorbed in their interplay that I didn’t notice until it was too late that Lily had pulled her arm away from mine. She walked like a sleepwalker into the fray.
“What you have been through?” Lily asked.
“Lily.” Uncle J.D. tried to cut in, but Lily shut him up when she swiveled her dark brown eyes to him.
“Hello, Daddy.”
The next second seemed to stretch into an eternity, and then a man appeared at Uncle J.D.’s side. I recognized him as Boone’s father—one of the four men I’d once thought might be mine.
“J.D.,” Thomas Mason said lowly. “You should go.”
Lily’s father looked past his old friend to where Aunt Olivia was standing, Julia Ames beside her, and Charlotte in front.
“So this is how it’s going to be?” J.D. asked.
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