Page 95 of Deadly Little Scandals
“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. “Whoareyou 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 theperfectdaughter to Lillian. I have been awonderfulwife. 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 havewantedme 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 at her husband.When are you going to understand that I’m better for you than she everwas?
“J.D. wanted to marry me,” Aunt Olivia insisted. “He wanted to forget what had happened. He wanted me tobeher.” 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 blackmailedallof 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 anythingelse.
“You should haveseentheir 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, IamLillian 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 haveknownknown, 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 withyou.”
Aunt Olivia raised the gun. She held it on us but didn’t fire. Instead, she walked over toward the door and picked something up.
It took me a moment to realize that it was a can of lighter fluid.
One secret to bury,I thought, hysterical laughter bubbling up inside of me.One to burn.The White Gloves couldn’t have equipped Aunt Olivia better for this insanity if they’d tried.
Campbell lunged forward, but Aunt Olivia whipped the gun toward her and shot. “Consider that your only warning, young lady,” she said as the bullet buried itself behind Campbell in the wood. “I won’t deign to miss again.”
“You were always nice to me,” Sadie-Grace said quietly. “When my mama died, you were the one who held me, not my daddy. I stayed at your house for weeks.”
“I know, sugar,” Aunt Olivia replied gently. “This isn’t what I wanted. Believe me.”
