The only answer he—or those of us watching—got were the same words, repeated. “You should go.”
his is me crouching. This is me standing. This is me realizing how deep this hole is.”
“Do you have to narrate everything you’re doing?”
“This is me trying to give myself a boost…Oof!”
“Sadie-Grace.”
“I’m sorry! It’s just really hard to give yourself a boost.”
ou haven’t talked about Ana in a while. Or her baby.” Nick trailed his thumb across my jawline. “Or the Lady of the Lake.”
We were at his place—an aging, single-bedroom houseboat he’d acquired alongside The Big Bang. This was my third time here in two and a half weeks.
I was starting to get comfortable.
“I didn’t think we were the kind of friends who talked.” To drive home the point—to myself as much as to him—I brought my lips to his. Kissing Nick wasn’t comfortable. It wasn’t nice or easy.
Each moment of contact was rough and raw and real in a way that should have sent me running. It hurt in all the right ways—more, even, when his touch was light and gentle.
“Right,” Nick said, pulling back from the kiss just far enough to speak, his lips still brushing featherlight over my own. “We don’t talk. You escort me where I need to go, and we…”
“Count to seven?” I suggested.
Thinking, flirting, getting physical—as long as I could sound as sardonic as he did every time he opened his mouth, I knew I’d manage to stay on the right side of the line.
He bared his teeth in a shark’s smile, then brushed his lips against my neck, right where he could have placed his fingers to feel my pulse. “You could,” he murmured. “Talk to me, the way you did on Fourth of July.” His teeth nipped lightly at my skin.
I thought back to Fourth of July. The way he’d stayed with Lily and me after that ugly business with Ana and J.D. The way he and I had snuck back to the dock that night. The fireworks.
One in particular, courtesy of Campbell’s challenge, had exploded in the twin shapes of a snake and a rose, just as Nick had buried his hands in my hair, tightened his grip.
And counted to seven.
I’d spent my birthday this past week much the same way—minus the literal fireworks and plus a few figurative ones.
“Since when do you want to hear about the lives of the rich and scandalous?” I asked him. I forced myself to roll onto my back and sat up. After a moment, I stood. It was better this way. Safer, even if my body objected every time I pulled back. “Besides,” I said, unable to keep my eyes from drinking in the sight of his bare chest, my fingers from itching to touch him, “there’s not much to tell.”
Lily and I hadn’t heard anything from Uncle J.D. or Ana. There’d been no more impromptu visits from my mom. No blowups between her and Aunt Olivia. Nothing from Campbell’s “friend” at the sheriff’s department.
Not a word from Victoria and the White Gloves.
Even Greer seemed to be just biding her time as her “due date” approached.
“Am I allowed to ask how Lily is doing?” Nick asked me, getting out of bed himself. I knew him well enough to know that his tone when he said allowed was meant to needle me, but I also knew that he had a soft spot—an inexplicable one—for Lily.
Don’t stare at him. Don’t get back in that bed. Knowing he’d follow, I walked up the stairs from the cabin out onto the boat’s deck. “Lily is…” I was debating the answer to his question when I saw someone sunbathing on the front of Nick’s boat. “Here.”
Since the Fourth of July, Lily’s behavior hadn’t raised any red flags. She hadn’t punched any walls. She hadn’t complained of any more headaches. But I had been unable to shake the feeling that she was a time bomb, ready to explode.
“Everything okay?” I asked her, deciding that the What are you doing here? was probably implied.
Lily flipped onto her stomach. “Everything’s fine,” she said. “I just wanted to catch some sun.” She turned her face to the side and closed her eyes. “And,” she added, as if it was of no particular import, “I just broke up with Walker.”
When it became clear that I wasn’t going to get anything else out of Lily—and that she had no intention of leaving Nick’s boat and didn’t need me hovering, thank you very much—I called Campbell. Trying to have a conversation with her was made somewhat more complicated by the voices I could hear in the background.
One was Walker’s.
One sounded like Boone’s.
It took me almost a minute to realize that the third was female. I asked Campbell who was there, and she didn’t lie to me.
“Don’t overreact, but Walker invited a friend over.”
He and Lily had just broken up. “What friend?”
showed up on the front porch of the Ames family’s lake house, because some things needed to be said in person. “I didn’t realize that Walker and Victoria were friends” was one of those things.
“Join the club.” Campbell stepped out onto the front porch and closed the door behind her. “Apparently, they’ve been talking.”
I thought of Lily. I’d left her in good hands—Nick’s—but I didn’t trust the lack of emotion she’d displayed. I could buy Lily deciding that she didn’t want to be in a relationship right now, or reaching the conclusion that she and Walker had grown apart, or even that a large part of their relationship had always been based on other people’s expectations.
But I couldn’t buy any of those conclusions not hurting.
“How long has Walker been talking to Victoria?” I asked Campbell. “And what do they have to be talking about?”
“Right now?” Campbell arched an eyebrow at me. “They’re talking about Ana’s baby.”
“I want to meet with Ana.” Victoria’s voice was audible as Campbell and I rounded the side of the house to the back deck. “But she won’t see me unless my father sees her.”
I didn’t wait for them to see me to chime in. “And your father won’t see her?”
Walker, Victoria, and Boone turned toward me, their conversation grinding to a halt.
“You’re looking lovely, devious, and/or vengeful today,” Boone commented. “Whichever you’re most likely to perceive as a compliment.”
Walker recovered his voice before Victoria did. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Sawyer…” He softened the words with a trademark smile. “But this really doesn’t concern you.”
I got the feeling that he wasn’t just talking about this conversation. He was talking about his relationship with Lily.
“Irritated in an aesthetically pleasing manner!” Boone tried another compliment on for size.
“To be fair,” Campbell said, “Sawyer’s been ineffectually trying to locate Ana’s baby for weeks.”
Considering that Campbell hadn’t been any more effective than I was, I could have replied to that in any number of ways, but instead, I decided to reply to Walker’s assertion that I had no place here.
“I may be the only person on this deck who’s not related to Ana’s baby,” I said, “but that baby and I have an awful lot in common.”
I thought back to my conversation in the cemetery with Lillian—and everything I hadn’t been able to put into words. I wasn’t sure how many of my secrets Campbell had let slip to Walker, let alone Victoria, but at the moment, I wasn’t sure I cared.
“Right now, the ‘I Owe My Entire Existence to a Stupid Teenage Pregnancy Pact’ Club has a membership of one,” I continued, like I was ripping off a bandage. “If any of you know what it’s like to be the result of a planned, adulterous, underage pregnancy that’s done a total number on your sense of self, parental relationships, and understanding of the universe, I’d be happy to chat. But otherwise…” I crossed the deck and took a seat at the table. “I think I have at least as much reason to be here as someone looking for their great-niece or long-lost cousin.”
Victoria didn’t say anything about the gre
at-niece comment, but Boone did try for another compliment, which didn’t bear repeating.
I ignored him in favor of Victoria. “You were saying that Ana wants to see your father?”
“My father has…” Victoria considered her words. “…favorites. Favorite sons, favorite grandchildren. Back in the day, I’ve gathered that was Ana. Her mother’s a Swedish socialite who’s very good at playing to my father’s ego. I guess Ana was, too.”
“And then she got pregnant,” I said flatly.
“She didn’t come to him for help.” Victoria gave a little shrug. “And she didn’t ask for his forgiveness.”
Why would she? Delving into Gutierrez family dynamics wasn’t my top priority at the moment, but still, the question lingered.
“I might be able to get my father to talk to her,” Victoria said. “But we can’t count on it. It might be easier to find someone else Ana would talk to.”
“Like who?” Campbell asked, coming to sit on top of the wrought-iron table, right between Victoria and her brother.
Walker was the one who replied. “Lily,” he said softly.
I stared at him. “Are you kidding me? You’re actually sitting there considering asking Lily to talk to her father’s mistress?” That was the single worst plan I’d ever heard. “What the hell is wrong with you, Walker?”
Do you not care about her at all?
“She’s the one who broke up with me,” Walker told me quietly. “I’m not the bad guy here.”
Victoria laid her hand on the table, close enough to his that they almost touched. “Neither is she.” She allowed her eyes to meet mine. “Asking Lily to talk to Ana is out. What does that leave us with?”
Not much. That was where we’d been—where I had been—for months. There were questions I wanted answers to—more than I should have, probably—but there was no straight line to answers. This wasn’t the kind of problem that could be solved with determination, elbow grease, and sheer force of will.
We couldn’t make Ana tell us the truth.
“What about,” Boone interjected, “and I’m just throwing this out there: a party.”
“How is a party going to help us find Ana’s baby?” Campbell asked him.
“I don’t know,” Boone replied. “That’s just how things work around here. Fancy shindig, scandalous happenings, murmur murmur, and voilà.”
Walker turned to Victoria. “You did say your mother wanted to host something. Do you think you could talk her into inviting Ana?”
“If my mother gets irritated enough with my father and brothers,” Victoria said, “anything is possible. I can work on a party—that’ll be White Glove convenient anyway—but Ana’s attendance is about as far from guaranteed as something can get.”
The mention of the White Gloves had me flashing back to that night on King’s Island. You’re here because we believe that there’s more to you than meets the eye, we’d been told. You’re here because you have secrets.
I turned that over in my head. “How do the White Gloves identify Candidates?” I asked Victoria.
She clearly wasn’t expecting the question.
“I imagine it involves a lot of research.” Campbell caught my drift with impressive speed. “How exactly does one go about putting together in-depth dossiers on Debutante types in three states?”
I remembered Hope rattling off my bio. Do I want to know how you know that I used to be a mechanic? I’d asked her.
“Do you do your own research?” I asked Victoria. “Or do you hire it out?”
“Does it matter?” Victoria asked pointedly.
“Ana’s baby would be our age. My age, within a couple of months. And if Ana thought that the people who adopted her baby could give her child every advantage…”
“Then the baby probably went to a certain kind of family,” Campbell finished.
The kind of family that the White Gloves tended to recruit from.
“I can’t show you those files,” Victoria said, “even if I could get ahold of them without the others noticing. That information is private.”
Walker leaned toward her. “Vee.”
Vee? I was glad Lily wasn’t here. No matter how okay she claimed to be, no matter whose idea breaking up had been—hearing that nickname on Walker’s lips wouldn’t have felt good.
And I wasn’t sure how much more bad Lily could take.
“I’ll look through the dossiers we had our investigator put together when we were looking for Candidates,” Victoria told Walker, “if you and Campbell will double back and ask your grandfather what else he knows.”
The fact that Victoria had brought Davis Ames into this triggered a faint alarm in the back of my head, but I didn’t have time to probe that feeling further, because an instant later, Boone jumped to his feet.
“Sawyer!” he said. “We’ve been summoned. To the Batmobile!”
I stared at him.
“Sadie-Grace just texted me,” he clarified. “She’s parked out front. She needs us.”
“Why?” I asked.
Boone didn’t answer. He started trotting for the side of the house, and then glanced back at me. “Your reluctance to follow my lead is a dagger in my heart! But sadly, we don’t have time to stand around here talking about your obvious cruel streak. Time is of the essence.”
“Why?” I asked again. He didn’t answer. I followed him. “What’s going on?”
He waited until we were out of earshot to reply. “Sadie-Grace’s stepmother just went into labor.”
reer can’t be in labor.” I stated the obvious as Boone and I climbed into Sadie-Grace’s car. “She’s not pregnant.”
“Her water broke an hour ago,” Sadie-Grace said from the driver’s seat. “She asked me to clean it up.”
That was some next-level deception—and possibly self-deception, given that Greer knew that Sadie-Grace knew the pregnancy was fake.
“I activated the GPS app on her phone a few days ago,” Sadie-Grace confessed in a hushed tone, like that was the real scandal here. “You know, Find Your Friend? She’s not exactly my friend…but I found her.”
She handed the phone to Boone. “Shockingly,” he said, “she’s not at a hospital.”
Sadie-Grace frowned. “She told my dad she wanted a midwife. She told him everything was arranged. He’s in Buenos Aires on business, but as soon as she told him the baby was coming, he chartered a plane to fly him back.”
“You have to tell him,” I said.
Sadie-Grace couldn’t argue with that statement, so she ignored it. “Can you read me off the directions?” she asked Boone. “To find my friend?”
Boone did as she asked.
“Where are we going?” I said as Sadie-Grace put her car in drive.
Boone held out Sadie-Grace’s phone, with the Find Your Friend app open for me to see. “A town called Two Arrows.”
Based on its size, Two Arrows should have reminded me of the town I’d grown up in, but it didn’t. I’d grown up in a part of the state where half the people I’d known had family farms. Things here were dustier. Less green. There were stray dogs in the streets. I didn’t have to look too closely at the red dirt beneath our feet to suspect that it was at least a third clay.
“There,” Sadie-Grace said, pointing. We’d parked the car a block or so back. The Find Your Friend app, apparently, wasn’t that accurate. But we’d chosen the right direction to walk in, because there, parked in front of a metal garage that appeared to be full to the brim with lawn chairs and boxes and clothes, was Greer’s car.
“Very stealthy,” I commented. “A Porsche doesn’t stick out around here at all.”
Any reply the others might have made was cut off by a bloodcurdling, heartrending scream.
Summertime meant open windows—which almost certainly meant these houses didn’t have air-conditioning. Either way, there was nothing to block the sound of the scream, which just kept coming.
“It’s okay,” I heard a familiar voice say. “I’m here.”
Greer.
“Am I the only person thinking that Greer isn’t the one whose water broke?” Boone asked.
He wasn’t. I thought back to Aunt Olivia shutting me down when I’d tried to tell her the truth about Greer. She’d insisted that no woman would fake a pregnancy. I wondered what her stance would be if I told her that Greer had somehow secretly—and, given that her husband didn’t know and hadn’t signed any papers, almost certainly illegally—found herself a baby.
“You have to talk to your dad,” I told Sadie-Grace as another round of gritty, voice-breaking screams started up.
“I know,” Sadie Grace said, rising up to the tips of her toes in a relevé. “It’s just—eep!”
I was about to ask her what that was supposed to mean when I felt something hard and round press into the small of my back.
As a child, I’d been obsessed with many things—lock-picking and medieval torture and mixing the perfect martini. But one thing I’d never educated myself on was guns.
ur new friends weren’t exactly chatty. So far, all we’d gotten out of them was a single word.
“Move.”
Apparently, we stuck out here about as much as Greer’s Porsche.
“She’ll want to talk to you.”
That was six more words, said as we were herded around the back of the house. Sitting on the porch was an old woman. She had her back to us, so I couldn’t see anything other than her bun—wiry, brown hair, streaked at least three-quarters gray. As we drew closer to the front of the chair, I took in her outfit: an oversize T-shirt, knee-length shorts that revealed legs with a farmer’s tan. She was barefoot now, but based on the tan lines, I assumed that was out of the norm.
Her skin was wrinkled and cracked, but it didn’t have that paper-thin look I’d seen on other people later in life. I hadn’t even seen her face yet, and I was already pretty sure that nothing about this woman was fragile.
There was a dog lying at her feet, a mix, by the look of it—part pit bull, part Lab. The dog lifted his head as we were shoved forward.
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