Page 99 of Deadly Little Scandals
“Ellen wouldn’t let me visit. She certainly wouldn’t take my money, but I did what I could to make sure you kids didn’t go hungry. I kept eyes on you, for a time.”
I did what I could. That was the same thing Lillian had told me at the Gutierrezes’ party. At the time, I’d felt like she couldn’t have possibly done enough for her sister’s family. But now, listening to my grandmother tell Aunt Olivia that she’d known quite well she wasn’t her daughter and allowed the charade to continue…
“What about the real Liv?” I asked my grandmother. “Don’t you care?”
“Of course I care,” Lillian said quietly.
“It wasn’t me,” Aunt Olivia said urgently, before Lillian could finish. “I didn’t hurt her, Lillian. Iwouldn’thave….”
“I know that,” my grandmother said. “You’ve been by my side your entire adult life. I know you didn’t hurt my Liv. I know you won’t shoot me or hurt these girls. You’re a fighter, Olivia. Always have been. But you’re not a killer. Put the gun down. Now please.”
Obediently, the hand with which Olivia held the gun sank to her side. But the lighter—she held on to the lighter.
“I won’t snuff that flame out for you,” Lillian told her sternly. “You have to do that for yourself. Prove to yourself and these girls that no matter what ideas your mama put in your head, no matter what the stakes, you were never going to hurt them, any more than you would have hurt Liv.”
They stared at each other. And since they were staring at each other, neither one of them was looking at me.
I stepped forward, ready and willing to take that lighter by force. But the woman who’d been Olivia Taft for two and a half decades didn’t give me a chance.
She killed the flame.
’ll take care of…this.” Even in the most trying of circumstances, never let it be said that my grandmother was not discreet. An abandoned house soaked in lighter fluid? An impostor daughter who’d kidnapped us, drugged us, and held us at gunpoint?
All summarized in a single word:this.
“You girls head home.”
“And how do you suggest we do that?” Victoria was the first one to recover her voice. “Someonetook care ofour Jet Skis.”
Lillian was not ruffled in the least. “Lily and Walker are the ones who called me. They brought me here. They’re waiting on the east side of the island, and they have a boat.”
A hundred questions swirled and collided in my head. What were Lily and Walker—and for that matterLillian—doing here in the first place? And what could my grandmother possibly be planning on doing to contain this situation?
The only question that came out of my mouth was: “If we take the boat, how will you get home?”
Lillian turned toward the woman who’d been her daughter longer than the original Liv Taft had lived. “I suspect Olivia has a way off this island,” she said quietly. “But first, I’d like to finally hear, after all these years, what happened to my girl.”
Campbell, Sadie-Grace, Victoria, and I spent the first half of the walk back to the east shore of the island trying to figure out what—if anything—we should do. I knew what Lillian’s preference was. I could practically hear her ordering me to let her handle it.
Just this once.
“I meant what I said to Lily’s psychotic mother,” Victoria offered behind me. “I cannot imagine that trying to tell the police any of this would go particularly well.”
“For what it’s worth,” Campbell told Victoria, “more than one person might be willing to pay you to keep your mouth shut.”
Campbell had a vested interest in the truth about the Lady of the Lake not coming out. Given Sadie-Grace’s relationship with Boone, she did, too. As much as I might want to, I wouldn’t say a word to the authorities without Lily’s blessing—and Lillian’s.
That just left Victoria.
“Generous,” Victoria commented. “But I’ll pass. If the last month has taught me anything, it’s that I don’t need my father’s money—or anyone else’s. I have his brain.”
“But you’ll keep quiet?” Campbell asked. “For Walker.”
I had no idea what, if anything, had passed between Walker and Victoria since Walker and Lily had taken a step back from their relationship.
Oh, God,I thought suddenly.Walker and Lily.
If Lily was Ana’s baby, then her father was Sterling Ames. And if Lily’s father was Sterling Ames, that meant that Campbell was her half-sister.
