our father asked you to dance with Walker Ames.”

“I never said that he didn’t.” Victoria barely spared me a glance as she led me up the staircase and away from her father and the party preparations below. “I did tell you that Campbell’s invitation to the first White Glove event had nothing to do with the business between our families’ companies, and that was the truth. Now,” she continued, leading me into what I presumed to be her bedroom, “do you want to spend the next hour cross-examining me about Walker and my father’s grudge toward his family…” She nodded to her bed. “…or do you want to look at those?”

There were dozens of file folders, possibly hundreds, in neat little stacks.

“Dossiers,” Victoria informed me. “Our man is very…thorough.” She spoke like it was completely normal to have “a man” and refer to him as such, then gestured to the different piles of folders. “Those are the girls the White Gloves considered as Candidates but decided against. Next, we have the ones who made our initial pool, and finally, those”—she gestured to the last pile—“are the ones who’ve made it to the final round of selection.”

I reached for the folder on top of the last pile and flipped it open. Lily’s smiling picture stared back at me. Behind the picture, there was a report—a biographical sketch, notes on her parents, a summary of her dating history, which only included Walker. Behind the written summary, there were pictures—of Secrets on My Skin.

Once upon a time, that had been the biggest secret—and vulnerability—in Lily’s life.

“Your PI didn’t say anything about her father’s affair,” I commented, skimming the file.

Victoria shrugged. “Perhaps he’s not as thorough as we believed.”

I looked from Lily’s folder to the others. “You have this information on all of us?” I asked. “And everyone you considered?”

“Date of birth, family history, known social ties, past and current relationships, and potential…points of interest?” Victoria inclined her head. “Yes.”

Without another word to her, I sorted the folders in all three piles by date of birth. My mom had said that it took Ana a little longer than her to get pregnant, but by December, when my mom had told Lillian she was pregnant with me, Ana was expecting, too. Casting a wide net, that put the date of birth for her child at some point in time between late July and the first week in September.

Once I had pulled the dossiers for all the Candidates and Potentials who had been born in that window, I started reading. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. Three of the dossiers noted that the subject had been adopted, but all three also included copies of the adoption paperwork.

“Has it occurred to you,” Victoria said as I scrutinized the three folders in question, “that Ana’s child might not know they were adopted? That there might not be paperwork?”

Given the situation with Sadie-Grace’s baby brother, that thought had crossed my mind.

“Has it occurred to you,” Victoria continued quietly, “that the baby might be Campbell?”

“What?” I said. But as I turned the question over in my head, it made sense. Davis Ames had given Ana money. According to his own recounting of events, he’d promised her more when she had the baby but had never heard from her again.

What if he was lying? What if he had a family all picked out? I turned back to the folders I’d set aside as being within the window and shuffled through the Candidates’ to find Campbell’s. What if that family was his own?

I tried to wrap my mind around the way that might have played out. Would Campbell’s father have told his wife the baby was his? Would Charlotte really have agreed to pass the baby off as her own?

It might explain some things about Campbell’s relationship with her mama.

I flipped open Campbell’s file. My birthday was in July. Lily’s was the last week in August. Campbell’s was September 1.

“When was Walker born?” I asked. He’d been a year ahead of Lily and Campbell in school.

“October,” Victoria answered. “Walker and Campbell are only eleven months apart.”

“So either their mother got pregnant when Walker was just a couple of months old or…”

“Or,” Victoria echoed. She let that sit with me for a minute and then executed an elegant shrug. “It’s a theory, but not the only one I’m working on. There’s one more folder you should read through before we join the rest of the White Gloves and Candidates in the guesthouse.” She nodded to her dresser. A single folder lay there.

“Why wasn’t this in with the others?” I asked.

“Because,” Victoria replied, “it’s not from a White Glove in your year. Ana’s baby would be getting ready to turn nineteen—they’re just as likely to be a sophomore as a freshman.” I opened the folder and saw a girl with dark blond hair and light brown eyes staring back at me. Then I saw the last name.

“Hope’s little sister,” Victoria told me. “Also Nessa’s girlfriend. Her name was Summer.”

“Was?” I asked.

Victoria got quiet for a moment, and I thought of the secret Hope had buried during her initiation process years before. The cancer came back.

“Summer joined the White Gloves last August,” Victoria told me. “She and Nessa started dating in December.” Victoria looked down at Summer’s picture—blond hair, brown eyes, just like Ana. “She died in March.”