Page 96 of Deadly Little Scandals
“What did you think was going to happen when you drugged Sawyer and Sadie-Grace and tossed them in ahole?” Campbell asked.
Aunt Olivia didn’t answer the question. “This wasn’t what I wanted,” she repeated.
“You wanted things to be perfect,” I said. I still wasn’t sure what had led Aunt Olivia to thinkingthiswas the solution to her problems, but I did know there was power in telling people what they wanted to hear. “Maybe they still can be.”
“Don’t be silly.” Aunt Olivia dismissed that notion out of hand. “If we’d been the only ones on this island, this could have been contained. But now? Campbell is trouble. She always has been, and don’t even get me started on—”
“Sawyer’s right,” Victoria interjected. “This can still be contained. As the only outsider to this whole situation, allow me to assure you that literally no one would believe any of this if we tried to tell them a word of it.”
“Besides,” Campbell added, “do you really think my mama is going to let anything about what happened to the real Liv come out? Aunt Julia? My grandfather?” Campbell seemed to have recovered from her near miss with the bullet. She tossed her auburn hair over one shoulder. “My father is already in prison. There is no way on this planet that my grandfather would allow a scandal like this one to touch my only remaining parent and both of Boone’s.”
There was a moment’s silence, which Sadie-Grace obligingly filled. “I don’t mind about the hole,” she promised sweetly. “Accidents happen. Lily and I once accidentally kidnapped Campbell and tied her to a chair for three days, and that turned out fine.”
“Youwhat?” Aunt Olivia said.
“You can still walk away from this,” I reiterated, putting everything I had into those words. “Things don’t have to be perfect. They can justbe.”
For a moment, I thought she was considering that. And then she finished dousing the wood in lighter fluid and pulled out a lighter.
his isn’t just about Liv.” Aunt Olivia toyed with the lighter for a moment, morose. “I could have dealt with the body washing up. That forensic sculptor nonsense—well, like Campbell said, I imagine someone in her family will be motivated to take care of it.”
“If this isn’t about the body,” Sadie-Grace said quietly, “whatisit about?”
What in the world had possessed Aunt Olivia to give up the game, ask Ellen to drug us, and haul us out to this island? Why dig the hole? Why throw us in?
“I thought I could talk to you,” Aunt Olivia told me. “Make you understand.”
“Because drugging people really puts them in an understanding frame of mind,” I said.
“Also,” Sadie-Grace added seriously, “holes.”
“I wanted you sedated and contained,” Aunt Olivia explained. “I wanted time to make this right, to do damage control. I never said anything about a hole.”
“Ellen,” I said out loud. “You askedEllento sedate us, andshehad us tossed in a hole.”
“I’m afraid she’s never once attacked a situation with a scalpel that she could go at with a hatchet. I thought I could handle this situation, have a little chat with you girls. She was a bit less optimistic. Hence, the hole.”
“So, what?” I said. “Ellen or her henchwomen helped you haul us out here, and the plan was just to keep us captive for a bit of chitchat?” Unbidden, my eyes went to the gun in Aunt Olivia’s hand.Was that the backup plan?
“It pains me to say this,” Aunt Olivia sighed, “but Ellen was right. Talking was never an option. There’s too much of your mama in you, Sawyer. You can’t ever just let things be. You push and you push, and the consequences be damned.”
What consequences?She’d already said that this wasn’t just about the body. Back at Ellen’s, she’d told me that I’d brought this on myself. But I hadn’t gone to Ellen’s asking about the Lady of the Lake.
“The baby,” I said. I hadn’t quite pieced this together yet, but that was the only explanation that made any kind of sense. “We went to Ellen to ask about the baby.”
Campbell’s eyes widened. “Am I missing something here?” she asked.
I glanced at her. “I texted you about going to Two Arrows. You didn’t answer.”
“You went.” Aunt Olivia spoke over me. “And so did Lily. You told her about Ellen, Sawyer. My little girl shouldn’t have been there. She shouldn’t have ever gone there.”
“Why?” Sadie-Grace asked.
Why was it okay for me to go to Two Arrows, but not Lily? Why did my aunt care that I’dpushedandpushedabout the baby?
I remembered something then, a tiny, seemingly meaningless detail that Lillian had told me when I’d confronted her with the truth about my father.
Lily was just two months younger than me.
