Page 94 of Deadly Little Scandals

“Let me go,” Liv demanded. She was crying. Or laughing. Or both.

“You were supposed to be my friend.” Charlotte wasn’t crying. She was irate.

“Go back,” J.D. told her.

“Why should I?” Charlotte asked. “So you can forgive her? So you can tell yourself it’s notherfault? Because her poor daddy just died?”

“You know what?” Liv was still spitting mad. “We’re done, Char. This friendship, or whatever you call it? Consider it over.”

“You’re drunk,” J.D. told her. “And you’re hurting.”

“Youare hurting me,” she countered, straining weakly against his grip.

He let go.

The cliff. Watch the cliff.

Charlotte leaned forward. “You’re right, Livvy. We’re not friends, because I’m not friends withsluts.”

Liv lunged for Charlotte. Charlotte hit back. J.D. got between them. Liv walloped him, and he pushed her back. Charlotte leaped for her again, and Sterling edged forward.

Watch his foot, Liv. Don’t trip.

The silent warning went unheeded, and Liv—popular, fearless, privileged Liv—went over the ledge.

’m the only Olivia Taftthere’s everbeen.

I remembered everything my mom had ever told me about her sister, including the way Aunt Olivia had run away during her own Debutante year, right after their father had died.

Twenty-five years ago. Liv Taft ran awaytwenty-five years ago, and when she came back…

She’d told everyone to call her Olivia. My mom had several go-to descriptors for the woman her sister had become.Ice queenhad been one of them.

Another wasfake.

“The Lady of the Lake is Liv Taft.” I said the words out loud, still trying to wrap my mind around them. “She never ran away. My mom said her sister was gone almost nine months, but really…”

“I was preparing,” Olivia said. “Learning. I’d been watching Liv for years, but that wasn’t enough. If I was going to take her place, people’s memories needed time to fade. They needed to be able to tell themselves thatshe’dchanged, and I had to make myself into something new. I had to be perfect.”

Perfect.I thought about the way Lily had described her mama to me, back at the beginning of our Debutante year.Mama just likes things to be perfect.

“You took her place,” I said, swallowing hard. “You killed the real Liv, and nine months later—”

“I didn’t kill her!” That was the first flash of real emotion I’d seen out of “Olivia.” There was a depth of feeling in her voice—wild, unconstrained grief. “Ineverwould have hurt Liv. I just watched her, that’s all. I wanted to find a way to introduce myself. We were supposed to be like sisters! But…”

“But you killed her.” I pressed again. Since Olivia had started ranting, she hadn’t looked at the gun even once.

She seemed to have forgotten she held one.?

What was it I’d said to Sadie-Grace in the hole?The name of the game is stall.

“I didnotkill Liv.” Olivia stepped toward me. “J.D. did.” She turned to Campbell. “And so did your mother. And your father. I was there. I saw them. They pushed her. She went over the edge. Iheardher body hit the side of the cliff on the way down. J.D. dove in. Sterling, too. And all useless, vapid Charlotte could do was stand on the edge and scream. Eventually, Julia woke up. Thomas, too. And I watched.” She shook her head, closed her eyes. “I watched her friends drag her out of the water. I watched J.D. try to revive her. I heard them all agree, when he couldn’t, that it was an accident.”

It was an accident.I could hear Lily’s father saying those words on John David’s recording. I could hear him telling Aunt Olivia tosay hername.

And then he had said it.Liv. I’d thought he was using a nickname.

“They were all just going to leave her there,” Aunt Olivia continued, eyelids flying open, “but then they saw the marks the fight had left on her arms. It didn’t look good—for any of them. Sterling’s DNA was all over her. J.D. had a motive. Charlotte, too.”