Page 70 of Deadly Little Scandals
Given the situation with Sadie-Grace’s baby brother, that thought had crossed my mind.
“Has it occurred to you,” Victoria continued quietly, “that the baby might be Campbell?”
“What?” I said. But as I turned the question over in my head, it made sense. Davis Ames had given Ana money. According to his own recounting of events, he’d promised her more when she had the baby but had never heard from her again.
What if he was lying? What if he had a family all picked out?I turned back to the folders I’d set aside as being within the window and shuffled through the Candidates’ to find Campbell’s.What if that family was his own?
I tried to wrap my mind around the way that might have played out. Would Campbell’s father have told his wife the baby was his? Would Charlotte really have agreed to pass the baby off as her own?
It might explain some things about Campbell’s relationship with her mama.
I flipped open Campbell’s file. My birthday was in July. Lily’s was the last week in August. Campbell’s was September 1.
“When was Walker born?” I asked. He’d been a year ahead of Lily and Campbell in school.
“October,” Victoria answered. “Walker and Campbell are only eleven months apart.”
“So either their mother got pregnant when Walker was just a couple of months old or…”
“Or,”Victoria echoed. She let that sit with me for a minute and then executed an elegant shrug. “It’s a theory, but not the only one I’m working on. There’s one more folder you should read through before we join the rest of the White Gloves and Candidates in the guesthouse.” She nodded to her dresser. A single folder lay there.
“Why wasn’t this in with the others?” I asked.
“Because,” Victoria replied, “it’s not from a White Glove in your year. Ana’s baby would be getting ready to turn nineteen—they’re just as likely to be a sophomore as a freshman.” I opened the folder and saw a girl with dark blond hair and light brown eyes staring back at me. Then I saw the last name.
“Hope’s little sister,” Victoria told me. “Also Nessa’s girlfriend. Her name was Summer.”
“Was?” I asked.
Victoria got quiet for a moment, and I thought of the secret Hope had buried during her initiation process years before.The cancer came back.
“Summer joined the White Gloves last August,” Victoria told me. “She and Nessa started dating in December.” Victoria looked down at Summer’s picture—blond hair, brown eyes, just like Ana.“She died in March.”
ere are the rules.” Liv smiled, leaning into J.D. “First one to jump makes them. Last one down pays the price.”
Before anyone could process that statement, Liv was running, full blast, for the cliff’s edge. Charlotte watched her in the air. There was something beautiful about this version of Liv. Something wild.
Something that made Charlotte think Liv might have considered jumping, even if there hadn’t been water down below.
In the time it took that thought to register, J.D. and Julia had followed Liv’s lead. Thomas Mason went after Julia, and that left just three of them on the ledge.
Sterling and Charlotte—and between them, Trina.
“This is a stupid game,” Trina said.
“Do I need to throw you over?” Sterling asked her.
Last one down pays the price.Charlotte was wary enough of Liv’s ever-changing moods to fear she’d make good on that threat, but the alternative was leaving Sterling up here alone with the girl he’d picked up.
He knew I’d be here. He knew I’d be here, and he brought her anyway.
That thought buzzing through her brain—and her bones and her blood—Charlotte grabbed the whiskey bottle off the ground and took a swig. Then she walked to the edge.
Instead of jumping, she dove.
orty-five minutes before the party was scheduled to start, Victoria pried me away from the dossiers and escorted me down to the guesthouse. Because, of course, the Gutierrez lakeestatehad a guesthouse. When we opened the front, we were greeted by utter silence.
Then I heard aneepthat was almost certainly Sadie-Grace.
