hen I made it to the Ames family’s cove, I found Campbell lying out on the front of their dock, her skin glistening with some combination of sunscreen and sweat. She didn’t so much as raise her head or flip onto her side as I docked the Jet Ski.

“Not bad,” Campbell called out lazily. “For a rookie.”

I slid off the Jet Ski and hit a nearby button, which I assumed would either raise the watercraft out of the water or cause everything around us to self-destruct.

“If you’re going to stand there dripping wet, could you at least try to drip a little more quietly?” Campbell opened one green eye. “You’re spoiling the ambiance.”

That was more or less the Campbell Ames version of hello.

My version was: “Commit any felonies lately?”

Campbell rolled from her stomach to her back and popped one knee, her right hand taking up position behind her head. “You know what I love about you, Sawyer? You’re the only person in this whole state—maybe the entire country—who can say the word felony to me and be thinking of what I’m capable of and not that unfortunate mess with dear old Daddy.”

That “unfortunate mess” was something she’d masterminded and I’d helped with. Her father was in jail, having pled guilty to several crimes he had committed, because we’d framed him for several that he hadn’t. Campbell’s capabilities were, in a word, impressive.

I plopped down beside her, allowing my feet to dangle off the dock. “How are you holding up?”

Campbell had always intended for her father to go down, but I didn’t think she’d fully considered the collateral damage, the press coverage, the scandal.

“How am I holding up?” Campbell snorted. “My family has been exiled to the lake since the story broke. Mama’s decided that day-drunk is the new tipsy, Walker blames me because he’s trying not to blame Lily, and I am starved for civilization. And you?”

Campbell had a flair for the dramatic and a gift for holding people at arm’s length, but I could hear the vulnerability buried in her couldn’t-care-less tone.

I gave her honesty, tit for tat. “I’m sick of keeping secrets, haven’t spoken to my mom in a month, and am getting really tired of people asking me if I’m going to college in the fall.”

“Are you going to college in the fall?” Campbell asked innocently.

“I don’t know,” I shot back. “Are you starting to regret what we did to your father?”

There was a beat of silence. “I don’t believe in regrets.” Campbell stretched lazily, like a cat, and then stood. “If you want to hear someone mope about the consequences of Daddy’s arrest and the journalistic feeding frenzy that followed, I suggest you get on Walker’s calendar.”

I studied her for a moment. “Was the attempted takeover of your grandfather’s company one of those consequences?”

“Do I look like someone who has the inside track on the family businesses?” Campbell asked me. She didn’t—and that was the point.

“Spoken like a girl who has a love-hate relationship with being underestimated,” I said.

That won me a small, slow, genuine smile—and an answer. “There’s blood in the water. The sharks are circling—socially, financially, whatever. They think we’re weak. But don’t worry your pretty little face about it, Sawyer. Our grandfather is tougher than that. He can handle the sharks.”

She’d said our.

I swallowed. “Campbell?” I was going to regret this, but once I’d started the ball rolling down the hill, I couldn’t stop. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Whatever reaction I’d been expecting, I didn’t get it. Campbell just tossed her damp auburn hair over one shoulder. “So Daddy impregnated a different teenager, and I can stop wondering how you and I could possibly share even a quarter of our DNA.”

“You can’t tell Walker,” I said. “He’ll tell Lily.”

“And why,” Campbell asked me coyly, “don’t you want dear Lily to know?”

I’d told her who my father wasn’t—not who he was and not about the pact.

“Please.”

Campbell let the seconds tick by. “I have to admit,” she said finally, “I am flattered that you chose to confide in me.”

That was as close to a promise to keep my secret as I was going to get. “Side note,” I told her, now that I could. “The company that just attempted a takeover of your grandfather’s? The man who runs it has the same last name as that teenage girl your dad knocked up.”

“Payback?” Campbell arched an eyebrow.

“I don’t know.” It was a relief to speak openly, no pretending. “But I’d like to find out. Find her.”

I expected Campbell to ask me why I wanted to find Ana, but instead, she assented. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose there’s nothing left to do at this point besides attempting to identify and locate my actual half-sibling and doing something about that hair.”

“What hair?” I said. “Ouch!”

I batted Campbell’s hand away from my face in an attempt to keep her from trying to detangle my hair a second time. “There’s nothing wrong with my hair.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” Campbell turned her back on the water and pushed past me, striding toward the ramp that connected the dock to the shore. “And keep up.”

If there was one thing I’d had in plentiful supply in recent months, it was makeovers. I’d been poked, prodded, plucked, waxed, exfoliated, moisturized, buffed, highlighted, and conditioned within an inch of my life. Not to mention the makeup and the clothes.

But, as Campbell had just so pleasantly informed me, I didn’t have a choice. She knew my secret, and she wasn’t above a little blackmail. The fact that I’d known that about her and chosen her as the person to confide in deeply suggested that there was something wrong with me.

Either that, or some self-sabotaging part of me was hoping my secret wouldn’t stay a secret for long.

“I’d tell you to keep your voice down inside,” Campbell said as she opened the back door to her lake house. “But we could probably do some kind of ritualistic animal sacrifice in the living room and still not merit my mama’s attention.”

I didn’t know Charlotte Ames all that well, but my impression had always been that Campbell’s mother was closer to Aunt Olivia’s end of the maternal spectrum than my mom’s. Hovering was a way of life, holding one’s daughter to impossibly high standards was practically their religion, and acting the part of the perfect hostess was a darn near spiritual calling.

Over the muted sound of a television some distance away, I heard what could only be described as a belch.

Campbell ignored it as she herded me into a nearby bathroom to stand in front of the mirror. “Luckily for you, I can work around those unfortunate in-lieu-of-therapy bangs,” she said. “Far be it from me to point out that there are far more pleasant ways of working out tension and personal issues, so long as you can find a willing and attractive partner.” She pulled back the shower curtain. “Here ends the relationship-advice portion of our Betterment of Sawyer lecture series. Hop in the shower. Wash the lake out of your hair. Once you’re done, work a quarter-sized dollop of conditioner through that mess and leave it in. I’ll get you something to wear.”

Campbell Ames was the last person I would have gone to for relationship advice, especially given the identity of her last willing and attractive partner.

Nick.

“You’re really going to blackmail me into a makeover?” I asked, refusing to give life to any of my other thoughts.

“You really let me go on for weeks thinking we were sisters?” Campbell retorted, then she flashed me a sharp-edged smile. “The conditioner will minimize frizz when you’re out on the water, which in this humidity with that hair is a must. And you’ll need clothes for tonight. I’m assuming you and Lily received one of these as well?”

She reached into a nearby cabinet and brandished a matte black box, long and thin and flat, with a card affixed to the front and Campbell’s name embossed on the card.

The White Gloves.

“We can hardly rely on Lily to get you ready for your real debut in society,” Campbell said. I opened my mouth to reply, but she put a finger to my lips to hush me. “Things work differently at the lake. Lake formal basically translates to ‘you cannot wear a bathing suit.’ Semiformal means that you have to wear some kind of sundress over your suit. In either case, your makeup has to pass the boat test: if you can’t wear it on the water, you don’t wear it at all.”

“So you’re going to this White Glove shindig?” I asked when she finally stopped talking.

She shrugged. “Who am I to turn down a pity invite?” It was unlike Cam to admit to even the slightest bit of weakness. She was the kind of person who could come in last in a race and convince every person there that she’d won. “At this point in my exile, I will gladly let people gawk at the pitiable, scandalous Ames family to their hearts’ content, so long as they offer me some form of diversion as they gawk.”

“What kind of diversion are you expecting tonight?” I asked.

Campbell smirked and gestured to the shower. “You strip,” she said, “and I’ll talk.”

I made the executive decision to undress in the shower. I’d shed my swimsuit and started in on washing my hair when Campbell deigned to hold up her end of the bargain.

“Think of the White Gloves like the Junior League—by way of Skull and Bones. They tend to recruit from the debutante sets in a three-state area, but the initiation process is notoriously risky and risqué. A total adrenaline rush, from what I’ve heard.” Campbell paused for a few seconds. “Anyone can be born with a silver spoon in their mouth, but not every country-club girl is White Glove material.”

Lily had been excited to receive an invitation. As I stepped under the spray and rinsed the shampoo—and the lake—from my hair, I had the distinct sense that Campbell was relieved.

She needed this.

“Done yet?” Campbell demanded. I barely had time to wrap a towel around myself before she pulled the curtain. “Try this luminizer.” She slapped a container into my hand.

“What the hell is luminizer?”

Without answering, Campbell left the room and returned with a dress she’d selected for me: white cotton, with a gathered neckline and spaghetti straps. “I’ll send the dress home with you in a watertight bag. I’d recommend a bright-colored bathing suit to go underneath. You’re not trying to hide the fact that you’re wearing one, so you might as well go big or go home.”

I reached for the suit I’d worn here.

Campbell blocked my arm. “Not that one.” Having issued that edict, she disappeared back across the hall.

With a roll of my eyes, I studied the “luminizer” she’d handed me, determined it to be some kind of glittery lotion, and mentally filed it under hell no.

“What is she doing here?”

I turned to see Charlotte Ames standing in the doorway. Campbell’s mama wasn’t wearing makeup, and I could smell the alcohol on her breath from four feet away. Her question was clearly directed toward Campbell, but she stood facing me.

I could not help feeling that wearing nothing but a towel didn’t put me in the best position for a standoff.

“Isn’t it enough that your father’s in prison, Campbell? Do you really hate me so much that you would invite this…” Even inebriated, Charlotte Ames was not the type to fling about vulgarities or slurs, so she settled on simply referring to me as this. “…into my home?”

Maybe I should have felt attacked or degraded or, at the very least, condescended to, but the only thing I could bring myself to actually feel in that moment was pity.

This woman’s husband had cheated on her. Repeatedly. He had knocked up a teenager years ago. And even though that baby wasn’t me, I was one of the people responsible for her husband’s arrest. Campbell, Lily, Sadie-Grace, and I had planned his disgrace down to the last detail, and as a result, Charlotte Ames had spent much of the past month splattered on front pages right alongside her husband.

“I’ll go,” I said.

“No.” Campbell stepped into the hallway and blocked my exit. “Stay, Sawyer. After all, you’re my sister.” Given that she knew now that I wasn’t, I could only assume that Campbell and her mother were not currently on the best terms. “Blood is thicker than water—isn’t that what you always say, Mama?”

Charlotte’s sharp intake of breath was audible. “I didn’t raise you to talk to me that way, Campbell Caroline.”

“You raised me to be a lady,” Campbell countered lightly. “And ladies play to win. It’s not my fault you’re slipping, hiding out here with your tail between your legs like we have something to be ashamed of.”

“I am not having this argument with you,” Charlotte said, her voice low in a way that would have sounded a lot more ominous if she weren’t drunk enough to slur her words.

“Then don’t,” Campbell replied simply. Don’t argue. Don’t make a scene. Campbell turned back to me and held out an electric-orange swimsuit. I took it.

Charlotte straightened, doing a passable impression of someone who wasn’t fall-down drunk, and shifted her attention wholly and pointedly to me. “I suppose that I should offer you a beverage.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Charlotte stared at me so hard that I could feel her gaze on my skin. “It’s only a matter of time before your roots start showing, you know.” Her voice was strangely pleasant. She barely even slurred the words. “It doesn’t matter how they dress you up, or what little tricks you learn, or how well you think you can blend. You are what you are, sweetheart, and you’ll never be anything else.”

She took a long drink out of the glass in her hand—whiskey, by the smell of it.

“You can tell your mama I said so.” She smiled daggers at me and shook Campbell off when her daughter tried to lead her back down the hall. “Or better yet, pass the message along to your aunt.”