Lily made a mewling sound. Her father saw her, saw us. There was frenzied movement as he pulled on his pants, then a string of stammered explanations, none of them worth a damn thing. Questions, cursing, demands—and all I could think, through all of it, was that the woman standing next to Lily’s father, the very naked woman he was having an affair with, looked so much like she had as a teenager.
Ana Sofía Gutierrez. She wasn’t dead. She wasn’t missing. She was here, pulling a dress over her head. She was looking at Lily and at Victoria and at me.
“Lily’s bleeding.” Victoria somehow managed to sound, if not calm, then at least somewhat in control of the situation. “We crashed. She hit her head. Hard.”
“Lily . . .” Uncle J.D. choked on her name. “Sweetheart, what—”
“No.” Lily’s voice wasn’t quiet, exactly, but I had to strain to hear it.
“No,” J.D. repeated. “You didn’t hit your head?”
“Stay away from me.” Lily took a step back. Her entire body was shaking. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t touch me.”
I crossed in front of her, between them. I had about a million questions, but right now, it didn’t matter that the woman was Ana—or that Campbell and I had been looking for her. It mattered that Lily was bleeding, figuratively and literally.
It mattered that she was shattered.
“Sawyer.” J.D. turned his attention to me. “What happened?”
I hated him for doing this to her, the way I hadn’t ever quite been able to hate him for myself.
Behind me, Lily gripped my arm. At first, I thought she was using me as a shield.
And then she went down.
Lily regained consciousness just as we made it out of the woods. She didn’t say anything—not when the other White Gloves mobbed us, not when Campbell and Sadie-Grace got close enough to ask us what was going on, not when Ana emerged from the forest, too, and the whispers started.
Lily was silent on the way to the car.
Silent on the way to the hospital.
I stayed with her, even though that meant staying with J.D. Campbell texted that she and Sadie-Grace were going to follow. I called Lillian. What else was I supposed to do? In the ER, the doctors sent Lily for a CT scan, just as Campbell and Sadie-Grace arrived.
“Is Lily okay?” Campbell asked, and then, because she couldn’t be caught caring too much, she continued, “Inconveniencing others with an unruly head injury is awfully impolite for Miss Manners.”
“Lily isn’t okay,” I said. Campbell did me the favor of not asking if I was.
“Is Lily… dead?” Sadie-Grace asked, horrified.
“She’s getting a CT scan,” I clarified.
A second or two passed before the next question came, and in that time, it took everything I had not to look back at Uncle J.D., who was filling out forms.
“What happened?” Campbell said. “Who was that woman?”
I realized then that I’d never shown her the pictures I had of Ana. Now that Lily was out of earshot, now that the emergency was under control and there was nothing more I could do for her, the enormity and ridiculousness of the situation hit me.
“That,” I told Campbell, “was Ana Gutierrez.”
“I’m not one to throw stones, but . . .”
Campbell’s disclaimer was a clear and direct indication that stone throwing was imminent.
Since this situation was more messed up than she even knew, I saved her the trouble. “But Ana seems to have a type?”
“Tall men with thick hair and side parts?” Sadie-Grace suggested guilelessly.
Married men, I thought, but I didn’t say it, and neither did Campbell.
“We should talk to her,” Campbell told me. “Ask her if she had the baby.”
Even thinking about talking to my uncle’s mistress made me feel sick and disloyal to Lily. This was such a mess.
I reached for my phone. I looked down the screen—no new texts, no missed calls. Nothing from Nick. It was easier, for once, to think about him than it was to think about anything else. My whole life felt like it was imploding, but the fact that I’d ditched him before he’d walked out on me was simple.
Of course he hadn’t been waiting on me when I got back. I could text him. To apologize.
“Sawyer?” Campbell prompted. “Don’t you want to talk to Ana?”
I did, and I didn’t. Nothing about this was okay. I wasn’t okay. So I sent the text to Nick, and then I waited.
The hospital had a room for Lily. The nurse showed us back as we waited for her to finish the CT scan—family only. We left Campbell and Sadie-Grace in the waiting area and I found myself alone with Lily’s father.
Our father.
“How long?” I asked him, my voice devoid of all emotion.
He looked at me, no more disheveled than if he’d just stepped off the golf course or out of a boardroom. “They’ll bring her back as soon as they—”
“How long have you been sleeping with Ana?”
“We’re not discussing this, Sawyer,” J.D. said.
“Would you rather not discuss the affair you’re having now,” I asked him, eyes narrowed, “or the one you had approximately nine months before I was born?”
The implication underlying my question landed like a punch.
“You . . .”
“I know,” I said. “I know that you slept with my mother. I know that you got her pregnant. I know that you’re the kind of person who could pretend, all this time, that I was just your niece.”
“Does Lily—”
I didn’t let him finish the question. “You are aware that Ana was a friend of my mom’s, right? Did you know that they got pregnant together? That they planned it?”
“Sawyer.” J.D.’s hand closed around my forearm. “This isn’t the time or the place.” He might have said something else, but then his gaze caught on something behind me.
Someone.
I turned to see Ana Sofía Gutierrez standing in the doorway. I couldn’t believe she’d had the gall to come to the hospital, let alone Lily’s family-only room. I definitely couldn’t believe that the moment Lily’s father saw her, he stopped talking to me and crossed to take her hands in his and whisper something in her ear.
I stared at the two of them. For ten or fifteen seconds, I stood there, frozen, and then a strange, numb fury settled over my body, extremity by extremity and limb by limb. I’d spent months not acknowledging the truth of my relationship to the man, and now that I had?
He’d walked away.
I didn’t remember taking a single step toward the two of them, but the next thing I knew, I was within an arm’s length.
“I should go,” Ana was murmuring. I didn’t know why she’d come to the hospital in the first place, why she’d followed us out of the woods, in a way sure to inspire questions and start the rumor mill churning.
“I’ll be okay,” J.D. told her.
That was about all I could take. “Really don’t think whether or not you are going to be okay is the real issue here.”
“Hey,” Ana said, looking directly at me for the first time since she’d appeared in the doorway. “Ease up. We’re all worried about Lily.”
“You don’t even know Lily,” I snapped. “And clearly, she isn’t much of a priority to either one of you.”
“Sawyer,” Uncle J.D. said lowly. “Please.”
“Please what?” I retorted. “Please don’t make a scene?”
Before he could reply, a doctor appeared and pulled him aside, and the two of them began talking in muted tones. I wanted to hear what they were saying, but I couldn’t quite convince my body to turn my back on the woman opposite me.
The woman who was having some kind of affair with my aunt’s husband. The other participant in the pregnancy pact. A woman Campbell and I hadn’t been able to find a trace of.
“Everything is going to be fine,” she told me.
That snapped me out of it. “You don’t get to tell me that things are going to be fine,” I said, enunciating every word. “And you don’t get to ‘worry’ about Lily. You’re banging her father, who, as goes without saying, is a fetid piece of rotting—”
“I get it,” Ana interjected softly. She tucked her blond hair behind her ears, her dark brown eyes oozing understanding. “I do, honey, and I’m leaving. I just… I needed to make sure y’all got here okay.”
I should have let her go. I should have told her to get the hell away from me. But some ghosts can’t be banished that easily, and my mom’s past—my past—had been haunting me for months now. Campbell’s statement in the waiting room, her assertion that we should ask Ana about the baby, wouldn’t be banished.
Somehow, what ended up coming out of my mouth next was: “I know who you are. You’re Ana Sofía Gutierrez.”
If she was surprised that I knew her full name, she didn’t show it. “These days, I go by Olsson—my mother’s maiden name.”
I wondered how long she’d gone by a different name. I wondered if she’d made herself difficult to find on purpose.
“I’m Sawyer,” I told her. “Ellie’s Sawyer.”
For a moment, something like nostalgia crossed Ana’s features. “Ellie always said that’s what she was going to name you, even if you ended up being a boy.”
I breathed in and breathed out and then spoke again. “You always imagined having girls,” I said, the words coming out hoarse.
Emotion flickered over her features, but she washed her face clear of it a moment later.
“I know about the pact.” I waited for a response, but the only thing I got in return for the statement was silence. “Where have you been, all of these years?” I asked. “What are you doing here? Why would you sleep with him?”
Ana had been one of my mother’s closest friends. She had to have known who my father was. Didn’t she? Either way, she must have known that J.D. was married.
“It’s complicated, Sawyer.”
“Then uncomplicate it.”
Ana tried stepping past me again, but this time, I reached out and touched her arm. I didn’t grab her, but she ground to a stop like I had.
“Campbell Ames is in the waiting room,” I said. “She’s a friend of mine. And Lily’s. You know her father.” I let that sink in. Even though I felt like I’d swallowed cotton, I made my mouth form the question. “What happened to your baby?”
Three things occurred in the wake of that question. The first was that a nurse brought Lily back from her CT scan; the second was that Lillian and Aunt Olivia arrived.
And the third was that Ana Gutierrez placed a hand softly against my cheek, leaned forward, and whispered the answer to my question.