ily and I spent the rest of the day waiting for the ax to fall, but Campbell’s social media accounts remained silent, and a few discreet texts on Lily’s part suggested that even ­Campbell’s highest-ranked minions still hadn’t heard from her.

The police did not show up at our grandmother’s house.

By the next morning, my cousin seemed intent on pretending that absolutely nothing had happened—and disturbingly adept at doing just that.

“It’s Monday,” Lily declared, entering my bedroom after a purely perfunctory knock. “Typically, that would mean the club is closed, and Symphony Ball events are usually spaced at least a month apart, but—”

“Lily,” I interrupted.

“But,” Lily continued emphatically, “this particular Monday is the exception to both rules. Northern Ridge is well aware that classes at Ridgeway and Brighton start next week, and the mamas on the Symphony Ball Committee realize that Pearls of Wisdom is more for the parents than for the Squires and Debs.” She finally took a breath, but it was a short one. “Today is for us.”

“Today?” I repeated.

Lily stalked toward my closet. “You’re going to need a bikini.”

Three hours later, I’d accepted that Lily was not going to discuss Campbell Ames, her missing tablet, or any form of impending social doom. I’d also developed a new life motto: You can make me wear a skimpy bathing suit, but you can’t make me take off the board shorts and cutoff T-shirt I’m going to wear over it.

Lily had attempted to coerce me into a designer “cover-up”—total misnomer—but I won that fight. It didn’t take long after we’d arrived at the pool party for me to realize that, in this social circle, the more questionable your fashion choices, the more compliments you received. No one would come right out and say that I looked like I’d taken a pair of scissors to a Walmart T-shirt myself (I had). Instead, I was told that my outfit was just darling.

I was so original.

And wasn’t it nice that I didn’t get all bothered by the way I looked?

“An insult doesn’t count as an insult if you phrase it as a question.”

I’d retreated from the pool area and taken refuge inside the Northern Ridge Country Club Boathouse, which did not, in fact, house boats, but instead served as the upscale version of a snack shack. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who’d decided to hide out among the onion rings and shrimp cocktail.

“Coincidentally,” Boone Mason continued, “an insult also doesn’t count as an insult if you pretend it’s a compliment, call the person you’re insulting sugar, or self-deprecatingly and completely insincerely criticize yourself at the same time. Shrimp?”

He offered me a plate, which he’d already piled high with hors d’oeuvres.

“No, thanks,” I told him, flashing back to the moment when I’d seen him at the dessert buffet the day before. My brain went into hyperdrive, searching his face for any similarity, no matter how subtle, to my own.

This was Thomas Mason’s son.

“I live life by relatively few rules,” Boone said, perfectly content to carry on a mostly one-sided conversation. “But one of those rules is to never turn down a free crustacean.”

Physically, Boone looked nothing like me, but it was all too easy imagining him as a child, adopting an endless series of truly odd obsessions.

“I have rules, too,” I found myself saying. “Anyone interested in flirting with a teenage girl isn’t remotely worth flirting back with. Don’t expect people to surprise you, and they can’t disappoint. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.”

There was a beat of silence.

“How refreshing,” Boone said, in a surprisingly good imitation of the last Debutante to not-insult me. “You are an interesting one, aren’t you?”

He offered me a crooked smile.

“I might also be your half-sister.” It was one thing for me to say that I didn’t believe in letting social niceties get in the way of the truth. It was another to walk the walk, but I hadn’t come here—to Lillian’s house, to high society, to today’s pool party—to be demure and observe.

I’d come here for answers.

“You might be what?” Boone sputtered.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” I said. “Your dad is just one of the men who might have knocked up my mom. You might be my half-brother, but it’s also entirely possible that we’re cousins.”

Brow furrowed, Boone ate another shrimp. It took three more delicious crustaceans before he’d recovered enough to question me further.

“First cousins?” he asked. “Or distant cousins, destined to a star-crossed love?”

I gave him a look.

“You will eventually find me endearing,” Boone promised. “And I will eventually stop flirting with you.”

Without warning, a third party entered our conversation. “And why would you ever do a thing like that?”

I turned.

Walker Ames was not wearing a bathing suit. He looked like he’d just stepped off the golf course.

“We meet again, Sawyer Taft,” he said. “Are you going to spend all of the Symphony Ball events hiding on the fringes?”

“She’s not hiding,” Boone said quickly. “She’s…” I waited for him to say something about the bombshell that I’d just dropped on him. Instead, he shoved his plate into my hands. “She’s monopolizing the shrimp, is what she’s doing.”

“Actually…” I started to say, but Boone elbowed me. Do not say to Walker about his father what you just said to me about mine. The warning was as clear as if he had spoken out loud.

Deciding—for once—that discretion was the better part of valor, I opted for a topic that was slightly less sensitive. “Heard from your sister yet, Walker?”

“Not a word.” Walker glanced out the bay window toward the pool. “But I’m banking on the likelihood that someone here has.”

I followed his gaze. Dozens of Debutantes and Squires lounged poolside. There was a game of volleyball going on in the water, and closer to the pool’s edge, a coed chicken fight was quickly devolving into a mess of intertwined limbs and sexual tension.

I searched for Lily and found her sitting on the side of the pool with Sadie-Grace. Beside me, Walker’s attention had landed in the exact same place. He’d already graduated high school. He wasn’t a Squire, and that meant that my cousin wasn’t expecting her ex to be here today.

“It’s nice to see you sober,” I told Walker dryly, deflecting his attention from Lily. “It’s a good look for you. Less poor little rich boy, more borderline-functional member of society.”

Walker had an automatic, default smile—that helping and a half of charm that Lily had mentioned. For just a moment, his go-to expression went lopsided: less handsome, more real.

“Like I said,” Walker told Boone before turning to take his leave. “Why would you ever want to stop flirting with the indelible Sawyer Taft?”

Without waiting for a reply, he exited the Boathouse, but hung a left at the pool, leaving me to wonder who, exactly, Walker expected to have heard from his sister.

“He’s protective of Campbell,” Boone said beside me. “Always has been.”

“That doesn’t explain why you didn’t want me to say anything to him about his father,” I said.

Boone ate two more shrimp, then dodged the question. “That thing you said about my dad and his implied sperm and your mom’s implied ovaries? I can’t really picture it. My uncle Sterling—or, as I like to call him, Senator Bossypants—likes to say that I’m all Mason. He means that I’m not smooth, because neither is my dad.”

“Nice uncle you got there,” I commented.

Boone shrugged. “It’s his way of getting under my mother’s skin, because she’s all Ames. Like Walker. And Campbell.”

I’d grown up without siblings—or cousins. But I still recognized sibling or pseudo-sibling rivalry when I saw it. Boone was used to being in his cousins’ shadows.

“My dad…” Boone searched for the right words. “He grew up middle class. I have no idea how he and Uncle Sterling became friends, but they did. So my dad got a taste of what this life was like, and he decided he wanted it, too.” Boone paused. “He made something of himself, and he married an Ames. Some days, I think he regrets it, but back then? I can’t imagine him risking all of it for some woman.”

Not a woman, I thought. A girl.

“My mother is what one might charitably call vindictive,” Boone said, almost fondly. “She would have buried him if he’d cheated.”

Maybe Boone had the right read on his parents, but my mother had scratched Thomas Mason’s face out of the picture for a reason.

And if I’d been a boy, she would have named me Sawyer Thomas.

“What about your uncle?” I asked Boone, returning to the point he’d skirted. “The senator. Any idea what he was up to, approximately eighteen years plus nine months ago?”

“None whatsoever,” Boone said cheerfully. “But might I suggest not asking any other member of my extended family that question? We are, on the whole, a merciless lot, especially Uncle Sterling.”

And that’s why you didn’t want me saying anything to Walker.

“I can take care of myself,” I said.

Boone did not seem to like that response. “I’ll see what I can find out,” he promised. “About my uncle, my dad, your mom—just… hang tight, little buddy.”

“Little buddy?” I repeated incredulously.

“Hey,” Boone said, “you deal with your possibly incest-y feelings for me in your way, and I’ll deal in mine.”