Deadly Little Scandals

by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

“Maybe they just floated away on their own,” Sadie-Grace said hopefully. “They couldn’t have floated far. We could wade out to find them?”

  “We could,” Victoria allowed. “Or we could wait for daybreak. They’ll be easier to spot then, and worse comes to worst, we could just swim to shore.”

  “I vote we swim for it now,” I said. “I know it’s dark, but Campbell’s cove isn’t far.” That idea was not met with any level of enthusiasm. “Night swimming,” I cajoled. “Gliding our way through pitch-black water with only the scantest moonlight to guide us. Seems like a White Glove kind of thing to do. Hell, we can do it naked, if that helps.”

  “Or,” Victoria countered evenly, “we could find Hope and wait for daybreak.”

  “Hanging around here is not a good idea,” I replied. “And for all we know, Hope left.” Something in my stomach twisted. “Did Sadie-Grace tell you…”

  “I told her everything!” Sadie-Grace chirped. “Especially about the part where I got the feeling in my body back.”

  “Your aunt’s gone off the deep end,” Victoria summarized. “I have no idea why she would stick you guys in a hole on an abandoned island, but I suppose everyone has a breaking point. I can relate.”

  I thought back to Ellen’s house, to the moment when Aunt Olivia had told me that I’d brought this on myself. What breaking point did I hit?

  “Relax, Sawyer,” Campbell told me. “There’s four of us and one of her. I seriously doubt Olivia Taft—or her mystery lookalike—is secretly some kind of suburban brawler.”

  “Heaven forbid,” a pleasant voice said. Aunt Olivia—or whoever she was—walked slowly out of the shadows. She held a flashlight in her left hand. “I’ve never been much for brawling,” Aunt Olivia commented. She looked down to her free hand, and my eyes followed. “I am, however, the best shot in this family. Isn’t that right, Sawyer?”

  Who’s the best shot in this family? That was something I’d heard Aunt Olivia say to John David, my first day at Lillian’s house.

  Ellen’s daughter has been playing the role of Olivia Taft for at least a year, I realized. I didn’t say that out loud. I didn’t say anything.

  I was too busy looking at her gun.

  he best shot in the Taft family forced us back across the island. Not to the hole—to the charred remains of what had once been a house.

  “Miss Olivia.” Campbell was the first to speak up once we were all shut inside. “You simply cannot think…”

  “Campbell, dear, I can and do think—frequently. And let’s drop the pretense of manners on your part, shall we? I’ve had your number since you and Lily were seven. Given the circumstances, I don’t feel particularly obligated to continue pretending that you aren’t a real piece of work.”

  The mention of Lily’s name set my teeth on edge and freed my voice. “Since Lily was seven? You’ve been pretending to be Olivia Taft since Lily was seven?”

  On some level, I’d thought that this woman—Ellen’s daughter—was a recent replacement, but from the moment she’d referenced being the best shot in the family, it had been clear to me that I’d never known the real Olivia Taft.

  How long has this been going on?

  Aunt Olivia—I couldn’t think of her as anything else—burst into a peal of laughter. “Oh, Sawyer, honey, you are just too much. You went to Two Arrows. You met Ellen. You were snooping around and asking questions left and right. And don’t think I didn’t overhear every word you said to J.D. about—what is it you girls call her?—the Lady of the Lake.”

  The Lady of the Lake? I tried to make sense of the direction Aunt Olivia’s statement had gone. The body. The one she was blackmailing Uncle J.D. about.

  “And still,” Aunt Olivia continued, tickled pink, “you ask me how long I’ve been Olivia Taft?” She shook her head, lifting the gun and assessing it the way I’d seen her appraising a piece of family jewelry, just before putting it on. “Sweetheart, I’m the only Olivia Taft there’s ever been.”

  aci was going to catch hell for staying out so late, but what else was new? These days, catching hell was all the world would let her do. No college. No real opportunities.

  Nothing.

  Kaci had always wanted more, and nothing her mama said or did could change that.

  She was twelve when she’d started promising that, one day, she’d leave Two Arrows and never come back.

  Thirteen when her mother had snapped that she was just like her.

  Fourteen when she’d discovered that the her in question was her mother’s sister. A twin sister that the rest of town knew better than to even mention.

  Kaci was fifteen the first time she’d hitched a ride into the city to spy on Lillian Taft. She’d had a plan to introduce herself. She’d daydreamed that Lillian would take one look at her and bring her into the Taft family fold.

  And then Kaci had seen her. Not Lillian. Lillian’s daughter—Liv.

  Her hair was longer than Kaci’s then, and she wore it blown out straight. Her skin was tan in the way that people who occasionally tanned were, not in the way that Kaci’s was, from living in the sun.

  But otherwise? They were identical.

  At least, it had looked that way from a distance. In the three years since, Kaci had found ways to get closer. She’d found pictures of Liv. Kaci had grown out her hair and taken to blowing it straight.

  She carefully measured her time in the sun.

  It still wasn’t enough. No matter how much she looked like Liv, no matter how often she watched her—Kaci wasn’t Liv.

  Kaci would never be Liv.

  And she couldn’t shake the feeling that Lillian wouldn’t want her, not when she had a daughter like that of her own. Liv was popular—and fearless. She had pretty manners, but she decided when to use them—and when to break the rules.

  Liv had a perfect boyfriend. Liv had perfect friends. Liv was just starting her Debutante year.

  And Kaci had nothing.

  Don’t think about that. Just watch. Kaci had gotten good at watching. It was easy. Liv wasn’t the type to worry or look over her shoulder. She took it for granted that the world was as it should be.

  As she wanted it to be.

  Just watch. Kaci pressed closer. It was dark enough that she could take some chances, late enough that there was no point in going home now.

  Hours earlier, Kaci had watched as Liv and her friends—Julia and Charlotte, Sterling and J.D. and a boy called Thomas—had set up camp. Kaci had pushed back a snort of laughter when they’d been unable to set up the fancy tents Liv had bought and decided to just make use of the sleeping bags.

  She’d watched them pair off.

  She’d watched Liv with her boyfriend. The boy Kaci had recently found herself dreaming about, more and more.

  J.D. Easterling.

  As Kaci watched from the shadows, Liv disentangled her limbs from his. Kaci was torn. Now that Liv was awake, she should leave.

  She should go before she got caught.

  Then again, what harm was there in lingering a bit longer? In staying close and hidden and imagining herself lying down next to Liv’s boyfriend?

  Don’t. The warning came from the snake part of her brain, the place where her fight-or-flight instincts lay in wait. Kaci hadn’t gotten away with watching Liv for this long by being sloppy. Stay very still.

  Oblivious to her presence, Liv crouched next to one of the other boys. Sterling Ames. Kaci cataloged what she knew about him: wealthy, handsome, too charming for his own good—or anyone else’s. Liv’s friend Charlotte had been pining for him.

  They’d kissed, just hours ago.

  And now, as Kaci watched, Sterling Ames was getting up with Liv. Liv was pulling him toward the cliffs. It was dark, but Kaci could imagine the smile on Liv’s face almost exactly.

  Kaci knew what was happening. She knew what Liv was doing. Why? Her life is perfect. Why does she keep trying her damndest to mess it up?

  Kaci might have left then. She might have gone home and taken
her lumps as they came. But then J.D. got up. He went to the bathroom.

  Had he noticed Liv was gone? Would he look for her?

  The next minute went by in a blur. Charlotte woke up. She saw J.D. The two of them heard Sterling and Liv.

  J.D. and Charlotte went toward the noise.

  And, keeping to the shadows, so did Kaci.

  “What the hell?” J.D. had the kind of voice that carried. “Get off of her!”

  J.D. was on Sterling Ames in a heartbeat. For a moment, Kaci’s heart pounded in her throat as the two of them exchanged shoves. The cliff. Watch the cliff, J.D.

  And then Charlotte took a hesitant step toward Liv. “How could you?” At first, Charlotte couldn’t manage more than a whisper; then she escalated. “How could you?” she shrieked. “How could you…you…you…bitch.”

  “Oh, don’t be a baby, Char.”

  One second, Charlotte Bancroft was frozen, and the next, she’d hurled herself at Liv.

  Neither one of them, Kaci thought as the two grabbed for each other’s hair, can fight worth a damn.

  J.D. came between them. He pulled Liv back and held her when she struggled against his grasp, trying to get at Charlotte again, screaming like she was the one who’d been betrayed, like all of this was something that had happened to her.

  “Let me go,” Liv demanded. She was crying. Or laughing. Or both.

  “You were supposed to be my friend.” Charlotte wasn’t crying. She was irate.

  “Go back,” J.D. told her.

  “Why should I?” Charlotte asked. “So you can forgive her? So you can tell yourself it’s not her fault? Because her poor daddy just died?”

  “You know what?” Liv was still spitting mad. “We’re done, Char. This friendship, or whatever you call it? Consider it over.”

  “You’re drunk,” J.D. told her. “And you’re hurting.”

  “You are hurting me,” she countered, straining weakly against his grip.

  He let go.

  The cliff. Watch the cliff.

  Charlotte leaned forward. “You’re right, Livvy. We’re not friends, because I’m not friends with sluts.”

  Liv lunged for Charlotte. Charlotte hit back. J.D. got between them. Liv walloped him, and he pushed her back. Charlotte leaped for her again, and Sterling edged forward.

  Watch his foot, Liv. Don’t trip.

  The silent warning went unheeded, and Liv—popular, fearless, privileged Liv—went over the ledge.

  ’m the only Olivia Taft there’s ever been.

  I remembered everything my mom had ever told me about her sister, including the way Aunt Olivia had run away during her own Debutante year, right after their father had died.

  Twenty-five years ago. Liv Taft ran away twenty-five years ago, and when she came back…

  She’d told everyone to call her Olivia. My mom had several go-to descriptors for the woman her sister had become. Ice queen had been one of them.

  Another was fake.

  “The Lady of the Lake is Liv Taft.” I said the words out loud, still trying to wrap my mind around them. “She never ran away. My mom said her sister was gone almost nine months, but really…”

  “I was preparing,” Olivia said. “Learning. I’d been watching Liv for years, but that wasn’t enough. If I was going to take her place, people’s memories needed time to fade. They needed to be able to tell themselves that she’d changed, and I had to make myself into something new. I had to be perfect.”

  Perfect. I thought about the way Lily had described her mama to me, back at the beginning of our Debutante year. Mama just likes things to be perfect.

  “You took her place,” I said, swallowing hard. “You killed the real Liv, and nine months later—”

  “I didn’t kill her!” That was the first flash of real emotion I’d seen out of “Olivia.” There was a depth of feeling in her voice—wild, unconstrained grief. “I never would have hurt Liv. I just watched her, that’s all. I wanted to find a way to introduce myself. We were supposed to be like sisters! But…”

  “But you killed her.” I pressed again. Since Olivia had started ranting, she hadn’t looked at the gun even once.

  She seemed to have forgotten she held one.

  What was it I’d said to Sadie-Grace in the hole? The name of the game is stall.

  “I did not kill Liv.” Olivia stepped toward me. “J.D. did.” She turned to Campbell. “And so did your mother. And your father. I was there. I saw them. They pushed her. She went over the edge. I heard her body hit the side of the cliff on the way down. J.D. dove in. Sterling, too. And all useless, vapid Charlotte could do was stand on the edge and scream. Eventually, Julia woke up. Thomas, too. And I watched.” She shook her head, closed her eyes. “I watched her friends drag her out of the water. I watched J.D. try to revive her. I heard them all agree, when he couldn’t, that it was an accident.”

  It was an accident. I could hear Lily’s father saying those words on John David’s recording. I could hear him telling Aunt Olivia to say her name.

  And then he had said it. Liv. I’d thought he was using a nickname.

  “They were all just going to leave her there,” Aunt Olivia continued, eyelids flying open, “but then they saw the marks the fight had left on her arms. It didn’t look good—for any of them. Sterling’s DNA was all over her. J.D. had a motive. Charlotte, too.”

  “So they sank her.” Campbell seemed to be taking this better than I was.

  “It was Julia’s idea,” Aunt Olivia said. “She cared about her brother more than she ever cared about Liv. Even Thomas, who was new to the group—he went along with it. They promised him the moon, and he promised to keep his mouth shut.”

  I forced myself to connect the flurry of names to the people I knew. Julia and Thomas were Boone’s parents. Charlotte and Sterling were Campbell’s. “They weighed her body down,” I said, trying to imagine how they could have made a decision like that. “And then they told everyone she’d run away.”

  “I kept expecting the body to be discovered,” Aunt Olivia said. “I thought about calling the police, but for all I knew, Liv’s rich friends and their rich families would try to find a way to turn it all around on me.”

  “So you didn’t say anything.” I stared at her. “You didn’t call the police. You bided your time, and then you took over her life.”

  There was a moment of elongated silence, and then Victoria burst into a speed of rapid-fire and very emphatic Spanish. She ended in English. “Who are you people?”

  She meant the question as an indictment of just how twisted this situation was, but I repeated her question with a different framing—and intent.

  “Who,” I said, taking a step toward Aunt Olivia, “are you?”

  “I’m Olivia Taft.”

  “You’re Ellen’s daughter, not Lillian’s.”

  “I’m Olivia Taft,” she repeated, chin held high. “I’m Lily’s mama—and John David’s. I am the perfect daughter to Lillian. I have been a wonderful wife. I knew you were my husband’s child, and I welcomed you with open arms, Sawyer, because you were like me. You grew up with nothing, and you deserved everything, and I helped give it to you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  There was truth to those words. I hadn’t expected the woman my mom had referred to as an ice queen to welcome my presence in Lillian’s house, but Aunt Olivia had. She’d hugged me and loved me and taken care of me.

  Drugged me. Tossed me in a hole. Pointed a gun at me.

  “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone.” Aunt Olivia stepped toward us, her grip visibly tightening over the firearm in her hand. “I didn’t kill Liv. I loved her. I think, if she’d had the chance, she would have loved me. She would have wanted me to…”

  “Become her?” I thought back to what Lily and I had heard on the tape. “You blackmailed her boyfriend into marrying you.”

  That’s all I ever was to you? A charade? I flashed back to the recordings, to the questions Aunt Olivia had tossed a
t her husband. When are you going to understand that I’m better for you than she ever was?

  “J.D. wanted to marry me,” Aunt Olivia insisted. “He wanted to forget what had happened. He wanted me to be her.” She paused. “The others just wanted him to keep me happy, because I knew.”

  At the Fourth of July picnic, when Uncle J.D. had brought Ana, Boone’s father had been the one to tell him to leave. Charlotte and Julia Ames had closed ranks around Aunt Olivia.

  “You blackmailed all of them,” I realized, thinking back to the message that Campbell’s mother had drunkenly instructed me to deliver to my aunt, back before she’d had reason to worry that J.D.’s infidelity might push Olivia over the edge.

  It doesn’t matter how they dress you up, Charlotte had said, or what little tricks you learn, or how well you think you can blend. You are what you are, sweetheart, and you’ll never be anything else.

  “You should have seen their faces when I showed up,” Aunt Olivia reminisced, “days before our debutante ball. I looked like Liv. I sounded like her. I spun the right story, and Lillian was so glad to have me back.” She smiled. “They couldn’t tell anyone the truth. Who would have believed them? They had no idea who I was or where I’d come from, and it wasn’t like they could go to the police and tell them they knew I was an impostor, because they’d killed the real Liv.”

  She looked at me for a moment. “Did you know that, genetically, I am Lillian Taft’s daughter? Genetically, there’s no difference between her and Ellen. I thought Lillian might do a DNA test when I showed up, but I knew that mine would come back as a match for hers. As long as she didn’t try to test me against Liv’s little sister’s DNA, I knew I would be fine.”

  Liv’s little sister. “My mom knew,” I said. “She might not have known known, but she sure as hell knew you didn’t feel like her sister anymore.”

  “That wasn’t my fault. I wanted to be a good sister to Ellie, but she just made that so impossible! I had to keep her at a distance, and she never forgave me for that. J.D. could never quite forgive me, either. And that, sweetheart, is how this family ended up with you.”