“He likes me,” Boone declared beside me. “The dog,” he clarified, in case that was unclear to anyone. “Dogs always like me. They’re very good judges of character.”
“We found these three sniffing around up front,” the person behind me said, lowering her shotgun. I hadn’t processed until this moment, listening to her voice for a second time, that she was female.
“Beth don’t need this,” the other one commented—also female, also not particularly fond of the lot of us. “She’s having a hard enough time already.”
“Is that her name?” Sadie-Grace asked. “The girl having the baby? Beth?”
The woman in the chair stood. Given that I was in possession of every ounce of street smarts that the three of us had to share, I prepared myself to handle this and shot Sadie-Grace and Boone looks that I hoped they would interpret to mean that they should cease talking, full stop.
Then the woman in charge turned around, and I realized that I was completely unprepared to handle anything at all.
“You have the look of our family about you,” she said, assessing me.
I barely heard a single word, because all I could think was She has Lillian’s face.
ou’re sitting up, Sawyer! That’s good.”
“You propped me up.”
“And you didn’t fall over this time. Glass, full!”
“Did you hear that?”
“I would like to say that I didn’t, but…”
“You did.”
he woman with my grandmother’s face gestured for us to sit. Dumbly, I did, and Sadie-Grace and Boone followed suit.
All three of us stared at her.
“I take it my beloved sister never mentioned that she had a twin?”
Lillian and Davis Ames had both referenced the town they grew up in. I knew that Lillian had met my grandfather at a party at the Arcadia hotel, but I hadn’t connected the dots that the town where she’d grown up was probably close to Regal Lake.
I hadn’t spent much time, if any, thinking about my grandmother’s family.
“Lillian never shared that little tidbit,” I confirmed. She never mentioned any siblings at all.
“You didn’t grow up in the city,” came the reply. “Accent gives you away. You have to work to lose it, and you haven’t.”
Neither had she.
“I don’t mean to be forward,” Boone said politely, “but holy shizzballs, this was not how I pictured this conversation going.”
The doppelgänger across from us stared at him. Hard. Hard enough that the dog at her feet jumped up, ears back, and gave a token growl.
“Boone’s socially awkward,” Sadie-Grace said helpfully. “It’s part of his charm.”
The old woman snorted, and the dog’s ears came back up. With one glance back at his mistress, he took a few steps forward and flopped down at Boone’s feet, exposing his belly. Boone gave it a scratch.
“Don’t go getting a big head,” one of the gun-toting women told Boone. “He’s a softy. Loves everyone.”
“And very especially me,” Boone added.
“Last name,” the woman in charge barked. It took me a minute to realize that she was talking about Boone—asking about him.
“His last name is Mason,” I answered, but then I got a suspicion about what she was really asking. “His grandfather is Davis Ames.”
“Thought so,” came the reply. “Davey was always the same way—skinny as hell, always tripping over his tongue or his feet.”
“Are we talking about the same man?” Boone asked, suddenly serious. “The single scariest, most demanding individual to ever walk this planet?”
The woman let out a cackle of laughter. “I guess we all change.” She paused. “Davey changed more than most, after my sister left him high and dry to chase after that rich grandfather of yours.”
That part, clearly, was addressed to me.
“He wasn’t the only one she left high and dry,” Sadie-Grace said suddenly, her voice earnest and sympathetic. “Was he?”
It was hard, once you knew Sadie-Grace, to hold anything she said against her. Her intentions were always good, and she was the kind of empathetic that had her crying at coffee commercials.
But this woman didn’t know that, and despite the fact that she had Lillian’s face—give or take some wear and tear—the sound of another round of earsplitting screams reminded me that Boone, Sadie-Grace, and I were in a precarious position.
“Don’t you go feeling sorry for me, girlie,” my great-aunt ordered Sadie-Grace. “I’m the one who told my sister to stop coming around here. I’m nobody’s charity case, least of all hers.”
Another scream.
“We should go,” I said.
“You shouldn’t have come here in the first place,” the woman countered. “Now I have to deal with this.”
“This as in a trio of promising young people with an impeccable sense of discretion?” Boone asked hopefully.
“This as in us,” I corrected. I didn’t have time to consider my next move as carefully as I would have liked. “Sadie-Grace’s stepmother is the one in there with your Beth.” That, at the very least, complicated the calculation on their end. “We already knew that Greer wasn’t actually pregnant, and we’re not the only ones who know that.”
“And she insisted on secrecy from us,” one of the gun women muttered.
“Hush.” The doppelgänger’s tone was mild, but the way that one word sucked the oxygen out of the air told me that she was the kind of dangerous I’d once attributed to Davis Ames.
“What do you propose we do about all of this?” That question, just as mild, was addressed to me.
“Nothing,” I told her. “This is Greer’s problem, not yours. Let her deal with it.”
“It’s not that I don’t want a little brother,” Sadie-Grace blurted out, one of her feet starting to beat back and forth around her other ankle. “I do. I really, really do. I just want Greer to tell Daddy that the baby’s adopted, because if she doesn’t, I might have to, and if I’m the one who tells him, he might not ever forgive me, and he might not ever forgive her, and, worse, he might not go through with the adoption at all.”
It’s not an adoption, I thought. Adoptions—legal ones—went through the state. Adoptions didn’t inspire the parties peripherally involved to press a shotgun into the small of a potential witness’s back.
“It’s illegal for Greer to pay Beth for her baby,” I said, knowing the risk as I said it. “Paying you on a purportedly unrelated matter is more of a gray area.” I let that sink in. “Does Beth even want to give up her baby?”
I counted the silence that followed that question with the
beats of my heart. One. Two. Three. I made it to six before I got my answer, in equal parts because my heart was racing and because the woman across from me knew how to use silence as a weapon.
“Of course she does. You think living in a place like Two Arrows makes us monsters? Hell, girlie, I birthed six babies of my own and would give my life for every one. Beth’s one of my grandbabies. I’d put all three of you and that hoity-toity bitch inside in shallow graves before I’d let anyone force a decision like this on one of mine.”
The woman was, in her own way, as good at guilt-tripping as Lillian was.
“I’m sorry,” I said. Two Arrows felt different than the town I’d grown up in, but I was betting the unspoken code of honor was the same. If you insulted someone, you apologized, unless you wanted them to make you apologize.
“Seems to me,” I continued, “that all of us can get what we want here. You can get your money—Beth’s money,” I corrected myself, “from Greer. Beth can give her baby to people—including a big sister with not a lot of common sense but an absolutely oversize heart—who will love the tar out of him, and we can all make Greer tell Sadie-Grace’s dad the truth.”
“What kind of man could find out his wife had faked an entire pregnancy and just proceed on with an adoption?” one of the women asked.
Everyone stared at her, expressions ranging from puzzled to concerned.
“And,” Sadie-Grace continued emphatically, “he hates dating.”
“You can do it, honey.” Greer’s voice floated out to us. “I’m here with you. I’m right here.”
“Greer isn’t all bad,” Sadie-Grace went on optimistically. “She just needs help being good.”
My grandmother’s twin shifted her attention back to me. “She take after her daddy?” she asked, jerking her head toward Sadie-Grace.
A little bit clueless, a lot anxious, with a heart the size of Texas? I thought.
Out loud, I said, “Yes.”
That was the absolutely batty thing about this—there was a chance that if Greer told Charles Waters the truth, he would just stare at her for a minute and scratch his head and then start talking about insects.
“Fine, then,” the woman across from me said. “The girl calls her daddy—or has that piece of work inside do it—to tell him the full story, and we do this all legal-like, so long as you three can agree not to say a word about any money that might change hands on the side.”
What did it say about me that I didn’t hesitate to agree with something like that?
In the end, I only had one question for this gray-haired, sun-worn, life-hardened mirror of my grandmother.
“What’s your name?” I asked her right before we left.
“Ellen,” she replied, and then the set of her features softened, just for a second. “Lil used to call me Ellie.”
he has to know the drugs are wearing off, Sadie-Grace. You keep saying that she wouldn’t really hurt us, but you don’t know that. This whole situation is insane. You have to get out of this hole. Step on me if you have to. Just get out—and run.”
t’s not just that Audie’s the cutest baby to ever baby,” Sadie-Grace said on the other end of the phone line. “It’s that he’s objectively a better person than other two-week-olds.”
This was my fourth phone call today detailing the virtues of Audubon Charles Richard Waters, whose legal adoption was currently in process—with Sadie-Grace’s very forgiving father’s full consent.
“Also,” Sadie-Grace continued rapturously, “he’s getting really good at pooping.”
That was where I drew the line. “I’ll see you tonight.” I hung up and turned my attention to a bigger problem. As much as I would have preferred being at Nick’s—with Nick—I had other things on my plate.
Things I found myself wanting to talk to him about. We’ll talk tonight, I promised myself. I’ll see him tonight. But for now…
Lily was lying on one of the twin beds in the turret room, dressed in lake-formal clothing and listening to music on her phone. With her blond hair spread out on the pillow and her dark eyes focused on the ceiling, she looked like a doll, perfectly styled and perfectly still.
She’s not okay, Nick had told me when we’d spoken hours earlier and the topic of Lily had come up. But she will be someday. Lily’s tougher than anyone gives her credit for.
I wanted to believe that, believe him.
“Are you sure you want to go to this party tonight?” I asked Lily.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’d told her everything—about Two Arrows and the plans under way to find Ana’s baby. Her only, muted response had been to tell me that Lillian had never mentioned a sister, let alone a twin—no emotion, no real reaction. The fact that neither Our grandmother has a secret twin nor The boy you just broke up with is hatching plans with another girl had penetrated the fog of her emotions was, in a word, concerning.
Nick’s right, I told myself. Lily will be okay. She has to be.
Maybe I’d believe it when he told me in person.
“Ana might be there tonight,” I reminded Lily, since she hadn’t replied to my question about the party. “Are you sure you want to go?” When she didn’t respond, I came closer. “Lily?”
Still no response, so I pulled one of her earbuds out of her ear. “Will you just talk to me?”
For months, I’d been afraid of losing Lily. I’d imagined her shutting me out. I hadn’t imagined her shutting out the world.
Lily forced her eyes from the ceiling to me. “Tonight isn’t just a party, Sawyer. The White Glove text was very specific.” She closed her eyes again in a slow-motion blink, like opening them was harder than it should have been. “This is the last event before they decide who makes it and who’s out.”
Of everything Lily could have chosen to care about, why the White Gloves?
Everyone needs a place to belong, something inside me whispered. I wanted to tell Lily that she didn’t need a secret society. I was right here.
But instead, all I said was: “Okay.”
I sat down beside her. She went to put her earbuds back in, and as she did, I heard the music she’d been listening to.
Only, it wasn’t music.
It was the conversation where Aunt Olivia and Uncle J.D. had argued about the body, on a loop.
ily’s instructions from the White Gloves had indicated that she should arrive at the Gutierrez lake estate an hour early. Mine had specified two hours. If I’d thought it would have done any good to stay home with her and go later, I would have.
But nothing I said or did seemed to affect Lily at all, so I ended up driving through the gates of Rustic Mesa by myself, two hours before the social event of the lake season was set to begin. The fact that Victoria’s family didn’t just have a lake house, but an estate—and the fact that the estate had a name—should have merited some sarcastic mental commentary on my part, but all I could think as I approached the main house was that this night had the potential to go badly on so many levels.
Ana could show up. She could not show up. The White Gloves could cut Lily. She could—
Someone answered the front door before I could finish that thought. I’d been expecting Victoria, or possibly a housekeeper.
I hadn’t expected her father.
“A young lady such as yourself should never be made to wait.” Victor Gutierrez had salt-and-pepper hair, features that had aged well, and the type of charisma that didn’t age at all. “Especially in this heat,” he continued. “My apologies. Please, come in.”
I stepped over the threshold into a foyer with soaring ceilings. “Is Victoria…”
“My daughter will be down shortly.”
Before I knew what was happening, I was being escorted to what Lillian would have referred to as a Baptist bar—one that normally hid behind pocket doors. Today, in preparation for the party, they were open.
“Could I get you something cool to drink?” Victor Gutierrez made a study of my expression. “No? Ah, well. You won’t mind if I have a little something myself.”
He let go of my arm to walk back around the bar.
“I can wait in the foyer for Victoria,” I said.
“Keep an old man company,” he told me, filling a glass with ice. “Perhaps I might convince you to reconsider some of the ideas you have been putting in my daughter’s head.”
He was still smiling, so it took me a second to process what he’d just said. “Excuse me?”
He took a sip of his drink and closed his eyes. “I am well aware of why this party is happening and who you are hoping will be in attendance. I suspect the Ames girl has something to do with it, but she is not here, and you are. You will forgive me for asking you to pass the message along.”
What message? I thought.
“You may pass it along to the Ames boy as well.” Mr. Gutierrez made that sound like an act of generosity on his part. “I know that he and my daughter have been spending time together.”
He hadn’t referred to Victoria by her name once. She was always my daughter.
“If you’re concerned about the amount of time Victoria and Walker are spending together—or the ideas in her head—maybe you should discuss it with her,” I su
ggested.
Victor Gutierrez gave a wry shake of his head, with an expression that suggested that I was quite amusing. “Who do you think asked her to dance with Walker Ames at that silly fund-raiser in the first place? She is my eyes and ears.”
He told Victoria to dance with Walker? “What is your game here?” I asked. Why aim his daughter at Walker, then ask me to warn Walker away?
“I am an old man, Miss Taft,” Victor Gutierrez said contemplatively. “But not too old to remember the wounds of the past.”
He could beat around the bush all he wanted. I wasn’t obliged to do the same. “Sterling Ames knocked up your granddaughter. You weren’t happy about it.”
“She was a child!” He pounded his fist on the bar, then recovered his composure in the blink of an eye. “And do not tell me eighteen is not a child. You, Victoria—you’re all children to me. My Ana…”
He trailed off, and I thought about what Victoria had said about the rift between her father and his formerly favorite granddaughter. “You wanted her to come to you for help.”
He’d wanted her to beg forgiveness.
“I wanted to protect her,” Victor said emphatically. “From her own judgment most of all.”
“And now you won’t even talk to her.”
“She gave away our blood.” Victor set his drink down on the bar, his voice softening. “I would have taken her in—her and the child, both. We are family. That is what family does.”
But she didn’t come to you, I thought. And then I realized why he would have found that so insulting. “Ana went to Davis Ames.”
“But for the money he gave her, she could have been made to see reason,” he told me, his dark eyes fixed on mine. “I implore you to see it now.”
“Imploring would be more effective if I had any idea what you actually wanted from me,” I said.
“Stay away from my Ana,” he requested. “You and that family of yours.” He smiled then and put a hand on my shoulder as he raised his eyes to the stairs. “Ah,” he said when Victoria descended. “There’s my girl.”
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