Lillian’s preferred method of coping involved tending the garden, drinking wine, and continually drafting me into joining her at the former.
I would have preferred the latter—if tequila could have been substituted for the wine.
“Do you know what today is, Sawyer?” my grandmother asked me.
“Tuesday?” I replied dryly.
“The third of July.” Lillian leaned forward to prune a rose with the exact same sense of determination with which she was tending to our conversation. “The last time this family missed the Fourth of July celebration at Regal Lake was the year your grandfather got sick and passed on.” Trim. Trim. Trim. Clip. Clip. “I did what I could for the girls, but I was mourning, too. By the end of the summer, your aunt was gone and your mama had taken to dressing only in black.”
According to my mom, Aunt Olivia had run away for almost a year in the wake of their father’s death, and once she’d returned, my grandmother had refused to acknowledge that she’d ever gone missing.
Denial wasn’t just a stage of grief; it was practically a family tradition.
“Is that your way of asking me if I’m going to start dressing in all black?” I asked Lillian.
She put her gardening shears down, removed her gloves, and plucked her glass of wine from the deck. “Lily’s mourning, Sawyer. I cannot help but notice that you’re not.”
“I don’t get to be upset about this.” I set my jaw. When she didn’t reply, I elaborated. “They’re not my parents.”
Even with respect to Uncle J.D., that felt true now. What did it matter that I carried half his DNA? Just look what he’d done to the daughter he loved.
“You’re a part of this family, Sawyer Ann. If you want to play the part of the stoic, I’m hardly the one to stop you, but don’t you tell me that this doesn’t affect you.”
All things considered, I preferred our conversation the previous day, which had focused entirely on the way that my bangs were growing out. “Can we talk about something else?”
Lillian returned her attention to the roses. “Certainly.” She adopted a serene expression. “I’ve decided that it would be wrong to have your uncle killed. I’m still debating on the issue of kneecaps.”
I was 90 percent sure she was joking.
“Davis Ames seems like he might know some kneecap-busting types,” I volunteered. “Then again, Campbell said he won’t talk about anything related to Ana.”
I’d repeated to Campbell the single sentence Ana had given me back at the hospital. My baby deserved the world, and I deserved a chance to start over—alone. Cam and I took that to mean that the baby had been adopted, but for all that conversation with Ana had cost me, it hadn’t told me enough to know by whom.
“Incoming! Hostile at forty-four degrees! Duck, Mim! Sawyer—man down!” John David didn’t give me time to process whether that was supposed to be an order, a warning, or a threat before he army-crawled to my feet, swept them out from underneath me, and sent me flying.
“Man down,” I repeated, getting ready to give as good as I got.
“Oh, Sawyer,” my grandmother said indulgently. “He’s just having a bit of fun.”
John David wasn’t Lillian Taft’s grandson for nothing. He hopped to his feet and started blathering on a new topic in hopes of forestalling my revenge. “I love Fourth of July. It’s my favorite, isn’t it, Mim? This was going to be the year I won the golf cart parade and the pie-eating contest up at the lake. William Faulkner, too.”
“William Faulkner was going to win a pie-eating contest?” I asked.
Still channeling Lillian, John David gave me a look. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sawyer. There is no canine pie-eating contest. William Faulkner was going to win the costume contest, which is part of the parade.”
“I mean, sure,” I said, nodding. “Who doesn’t celebrate American independence with some kind of dog costume contest?”
“And parade.” John David could not have emphasized those words more.
“I know you miss your father,” Lillian told him. “And I know you’re missing how things usually are.”
“No one’s missing anything!” Aunt Olivia stepped onto the back porch, an honest-to-God apple pie in her hands and a stars-and-stripes apron tied neatly around her midsection. She looked like something out of either a Norman Rockwell painting or an Alfred Hitchcock movie, depending on how soon she snapped. “Now, what’s this nonsense about us skipping the Fourth of July festivities? I certainly never said a word about that.”
Lillian arched an eyebrow at her. “You’ve never been overly fond of the lake, Olivia.”
“Go on with you, Mama. I love the lake as much as anyone in this family. I just don’t care much for the heat or the humidity or actually going out on the water. But in any case, we’re going. To the lake. For Fourth of July.”
That was unexpected. My mind went immediately to the texts that Lily and I had received. There hadn’t been any details, just enough to know that the White Gloves had plans for tonight.
“Is Dad coming?” John David asked tentatively. I couldn’t remember if he’d ever called J.D. Daddy the way that Lily did, but either way, he said Dad like a word that had lost nine-tenths of its shine.
“I’m afraid he can’t make it, sweetheart.” Aunt Olivia brandished the pie like she expected that to soften the blow. “But guess who is joining us?”
“Who?” John David asked, inching toward the pie.
Aunt Olivia beamed at me in a way that made me think she definitely hadn’t forgotten—or forgiven—the moment she’d seen me with Ana.
“Sawyer’s mama!”