Page 86 of Deadly Little Scandals

Lily turned back to us. Wordlessly, she walked down to the doorway to stand beside the little girl. “This is Makayla,” she told us. “She’s our second cousin.”

“That means our mamas are cousins,” Makayla informed me.

Ellen has six children,I thought.Who knows how many childrentheyhave.

“It was nice to meet you,” Lily told Makayla, with all the pomp and circumstance of someone thanking the queen for her hospitality. “But I think it’s time for me to go.”

Lily flicked her gaze from me to Sadie-Grace. “Did you hear from the White Gloves?”

As tired as she was, Sadie-Grace still managed a smile as she nodded. “You too?” she asked. “This is going to be so much fun!”

Sadie-Grace was delighted. Lily was not.Not delighted,I thought.But not hurt. Not anymore.I wasn’t sure what exactly to read into that.

“I want you to promise you’ll go to initiation tonight,” Lily told Sadie-Grace, before shifting her gaze to me. “Both of you.”

If you’re leaving, why do you care?I bit back the question, and after Sadie-Grace promised, I offered Lily the barest nod.

“You should try the lemonade,” Lily told Sadie-Grace, falling back on idle chitchat. “It’s not too sweet.” There was a beat of silence, and then Lily turned back to me. “See you around, Sawyer.”

I watched her go. It took me until she made it to the bottom of the drive to remember where I was—and why I’d come here.

“What did Lily want?” I asked Ellen.

“A little family history.” Ellen let her arms dangle loose at her side. “What doyouwant?”

That wasn’t my great-aunt making conversation. That was a challenge.

“We have some questions.”

“We?” Ellen looked from me to Sadie-Grace, then back again. “I do something on your last trip to make you think I’m the type of person who likes questions?”

Sadie-Grace—even a tired Sadie-Grace—didn’t know whennotto be optimistic.

“You gave us Audie,” she pointed out cheerfully. “We named the baby Audubon. Daddy is almost as fond of bird-watching as he is of bugs, and Greer told him no bug names. Would you like to see a pic—”

“No.” Ellen cut her off. “That’s not how this works, girl. You’re not meant to come back here.”

“We’re not here about the baby,” I said. I let that sink in. “Or at least, we’re not here aboutthatbaby.”

t became quickly apparent that little Makayla was damn near expert at knowing when to make herself scarce. I had the distinct sense that Ellen wanted nothing more than to send us trotting after Lily, but instead, she disappeared back into the kitchen.

“Are you coming, or ain’t ya?”

I came. In other circumstances, I might have wondered at the fact that her accent had thickened halfway through that sentence, but right now, I had to focus.

“Almost twenty years ago, a girl named Ana Gutierrez got pregnant.” I cut straight to it.

Ellen displayed no reaction whatsoever to Ana’s name. “Sit,” she ordered.

Sadie-Grace, cowed by Ellen’s tone, went to plop down where she was standing, but I grabbed her elbow and steered her toward the kitchen table. It was made of a light-colored wood, and stained with years of use, rings burned and etched into its surface.

To me, it almost felt like home.

I sat down in a chair that put my back to the wall. Sadie-Grace sat down with her back to the door. Behind her, I could see a fraction of the hallway. To my left, I could see the rest of the kitchen, where Ellen was pouring lemonade out of a white plastic pitcher. The appliances looked old and none of the colors matched, but everything in that kitchen was spotless.

Ellen plunked a mason jar down in front of each of us. “Drink.”

I drank the lemonade. So did Sadie-Grace. And then I circled back to what I’d said before. “Twenty years ago, Ana Gutierrez got pregnant. The baby was a summer baby—or very early fall. Ana came here to give birth.”