Page 3 of Deadly Little Scandals
Unwittingly, my mind went to another high-society soiree where one of the attendees had not belonged. His name was Nick. We’d shared one dance—him in a T-shirt and me in a ball gown. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the ghost of that dance had lingered.
“If anyone else had found me out, there might have been trouble,” Lillian mused, continuing her own stroll down memory lane, “but your grandfather had a way about him….”
The nostalgia in her voice allowed me to tuck the dance with Nick back into the corners of my mind and focus on the conversation at hand. Lillian almost never spoke about her early years. I’d gathered that she’d grown up dirt-poor and ambitious as hell, but that was about all I knew.
“You miss him,” I said, my eyes on the tombstone and a lump in my throat, because she’d loved him. Because I’d never know the man buried here well enough to love or miss him, too.
“He would have liked you, Sawyer.” Lillian Taft did not get misty-eyed. She was not one to allow her voice to quiver. “Oh, he would have pitched a fit when Ellie turned up pregnant, but the man would have gone to hell and back for his little girls. I’ve no doubt he would have done the same for you, once he came around.”
Edward Alcott Taft had died when my mom was twelve and Aunt Olivia was closing in on eighteen. I was fairly certain that if hehadbeen alive during my mom’s Deb year, she probably wouldn’t have “turned up” pregnant in the first place. The fact that she had made a pregnancy pact with two of her friends didn’t exactly scream “well-adjusted.” But the fact that she’d chosen her own brother-in-law to knock her up?
That hadDaddy Issueswritten all over it.
“Have you talked to her?” Lillian asked me. “Your mama?”
That put me on high alert. If Lillian had brought me here in hopes of inspiring a little family forgiveness, she was going to be sorely disappointed.
“If bytalkyou meansteadfastly ignore, then yes,” I said flatly. “Otherwise, no.”
My mom had lied to me. She’d let me believe that my father was former-senator, now-convict Sterling Ames. I’d believed the senator’s kids were my half-siblings. They—and his wife—believed it still. The senator’s son was Lily’s boyfriend. Walker and Lily had just gotten back together. I couldn’t tell him the truth without telling her.
And if I told Lily who my father was, what my mother and her beloved daddy had done…I’d lose her.
“I can’t help but notice you’ve been awfully quiet these past six weeks, sweetheart.” Lillian spoke gently, but I recognized a Southern inquisition when I heard one. “Not talking to your mama. Not talking to anyone, really, about things that matter.”
I read between the lines of what she was saying. “Are we having this conversation because you want me to come clean to Lily and Aunt Olivia about the baby-daddy situation or because you want my word that I won’t?”
Lillian Taft, grande dame of society, philanthropist, guardian of the family fortune and reputation, was not impressed with my choice of words. “I would consider it a great favor if you would refrain from using the termbaby daddy.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said.
“It’s not mine to answer.” Lillian glanced down at her husband’s grave. “My time to speak up was years ago. As much as I might regret my choice, I’m not about to take this one away from you now. This is your life, Sawyer. If you want to live it with your head in the sand, I’m not going to stop you.”
When it came to the art of making her opinion known while explicitly declining to share an opinion, my grandmother was an artist.
After all these years, she was tired of secrets.
Like I’m not,I thought.
“The only fight Lily and I have ever had was because her daddy’s name was on my list ofpossiblefathers.” I willed that to matter less than it did. “We made up because I ‘discovered’ my father was someone else and told her as much.”
Lily worshipped her dad. Aunt Olivia was a perfectionist; Uncle J.D. was the one who told Lily, again and again, that she didn’t have to be perfect to be loved.
“I think you underestimate your cousin,” Lillian told me quietly.
I let myself say the words I was constantly trying not to think. “She’s not just my cousin.”
She was my sister.
“Don’t you go feeling guilty,” Lillian ordered. “This is your mama’s mess, Sawyer. And mine. Lord knows I should have kicked J.D. to the curb years ago, the moment I suspected he woulddare—” My grandmother cut herself off. After a moment, she bent to lay the wildflower bouquet at the base of the tombstone. When she straightened, she gathered herself up to her full height. “The point, Sawyer Ann, is that this mess is not, in any way, shape, or form, yours.”
“This mess isn’tmine,” I countered. “It’sme.”
I fully expected Lillian to take issue with that statement, but instead, she raised an eyebrow. “You are rather perpetually disheveled.” She produced a hair clip seemingly out of nowhere and “suggested” that I make use of it. “You have such aprettyface,” she added. “Lord knows why you’re so intent on hiding it under those bangs.”
She saidbangslike a curse word. Before she could lament the fact that I’d had her hairdresser chop off a great deal of my hair, I preempted the complaint. “I needed a change.”
I’d neededsomething. I’d spent years wondering who my father was. Now I was living under the same roof with the man, and neither one of us had acknowledged that fact. It would have been easier if I’d thought he was ignorant, but he knew I was his daughter. My mom had said as much, and on that, I was certain she was telling the truth.
