Page 101 of Deadly Little Scandals
“Of course I came,” Lily told me, sounding offended. She hesitated. “Is my mama okay?” she asked. “Victoria’s text—or Hope’s, I guess—was a little vague on the details.”
Because Hope didn’t know them? Or because she was being discreet?
“Details later,” I told her. “For now…your mama’s fine.” That was what Lillian would have calleda bit of a stretch. “More or less.”
“I sense that this is a very long story,” Walker put in. “And based on how closely Campbell is standing to me right now, I have the general sense that it doesn’t have a happy ending.”
We have to tell them.
“Remember how you spent most of the summer being mad at me for things that weren’t my fault?” Campbell said flippantly. “Pretty sure what I’m about to tell you is going to extend that by a few dozen years.”
“Wait.” Victoria stopped Campbell. She moved toward Walker. “I need you to tell everyone on this boat what you told me at my father’s funeral, Walker.”
From what I’d gathered, Victor Gutierrez’s funeral had been a private one. Family only. I hadn’t realized Walker had attended.
By the looks of things, neither had Lily.
You should have left,I thought, unable to look away from the frozen expression on her face.Wherever you were going—you should have run away and never looked back.
“Vee,” Walker said lowly. Clearly, whatever he’d told her wasn’t something he particularly cared to share with the rest of us.
“Trust me,” Victoria told him, “you’ll be very glad once this secret is out.Very. Glad.”
“Fine.” Walker turned his attention to the boat’s console and hit a sequence of buttons that had the anchor pulling up. The noise was loud enough to drown out anything that was said, so he waited until the job was completed. “I’m a bastard.”
“This again?” Campbell asked. “I thought you got all of that pesky self-loathing out of your system last year.”
“He’s illegitimate,” Victoria clarified. “Your father isn’t Walker’s father.”
There was a moment of stunned silence, and then Lily spoke up. “How long have you known?” she asked Walker. I thought of everything that had passed between them this summer.
“Since Mama started drinking,” Walker replied. “She never would have told me if he hadn’t gone to prison.”
“Back up,” Campbell ordered her brother curtly. “Explain.”
“They got married because Mama was pregnant,” Walker said. “He didn’t know I wasn’t his.”
“No way,” Campbell replied.
“She had me tested, right after I was born.”
“Daddy didn’t know,” Campbell said decisively. “You were his favorite. You’restillMama’s favorite….”
“She told me that she loved me extra—in case he didn’t.”
Campbell took a moment to recover from that and then shrugged. “In that case,” she said, pivoting, “Lily, we have slightly less devastating news for you.”
Sadie-Grace took off her scarlet robe and placed it around Lily’s shoulders. “Just remember,” she cautioned, “what we’re about to tell you doesn’t change who you are. It’s just like musical chairs, but with parents.”
o, to recap,” Lily said, sounding calm, but not entirely apathetic, “Campbell isn’t your half-sister. She’s mine, because my daddy’s mistress, who had Campbell’s daddy’s baby way back when, is actually my biological mother, and that baby was me. Victoria is my great-aunt, and technically, so is Lillian, because my adoptive mama is actually Lillian’s identical twin sister’s daughter. The real Liv Taft was killed twenty-five years ago in what might—or might not—have been an accident, involving practically every adult I know.” Lily paused. “Does that about sum things up?”
It was just the two of us now. Walker had driven the boat across to the Ames family’s lake house. Campbell, Sadie-Grace, and Victoria had stayed there, but I’d known without asking that Lily needed to get away.
I’d asked Walker if we could take his car.
He’d told us to keep it.
“You forgot the part with the lighter fluid and the imminent threat of death,” I told Lily. “But otherwise, that seems to be a fairly accurate summary.”
