wo weeks post-pool-party, I hadn’t heard a peep out of my good friend Campbell. School had started for Lily, but from what she’d told me, not one word had been uttered about Secrets on My Skin, the stolen tablet, or the weekend that Campbell had spent bound and gagged in the pool house.

We still had no clue whatsoever what Campbell needed an alibi for.

For the sake of my own sanity, I had to concentrate on something other than the ticking time bomb that the senator’s daughter represented.

“What can you tell me about Charles Waters?” I asked my grandmother, lifting my hand to my face to block the sun. I was still waiting on Boone to make good on his promise to figure out what his father and uncle had been up to around the time I’d been conceived. In the meantime, all I could do was move on to the next name on the list.

Sadie-Grace’s father.

“Lillian?” I prompted when she didn’t respond to my query.

“You really should wear a hat in this sun, Sawyer.” My grandmother looked up from the rosebush she was inspecting. “The elements can be so harsh, and you only get one face.”

I almost responded by telling her that You Only Get One Face would make an excellent band name, but experience had taught me that smarting off wouldn’t get me any closer to answers. Instead, I slapped on a nearby sun hat and a pair of gardening gloves that Lillian had taken to leaving around when she tended her roses, in case I “decided” to join her.

My grandmother was big into allowing the rest of the family to make our “own” decisions, with nudges, hints, and guilt trips along the way. In the past two weeks, she’d learned that none of the above worked on me.

I had learned that if I wanted information, I had to give her something in exchange.

“When I was seven,” I offered, eyeing the flowers, “I had a brief obsession with poisonous and carnivorous plants.”

If Lillian had been around when I was growing up, she probably would have nudged me toward more appropriate pastimes, but as it was, whenever I mentioned anything about my childhood, she seemed to drink it up. The predictable flicker of interest in her eyes was enough to make a person wonder why, if she was so curious about what she’d missed, she hadn’t bothered, even once, to take a forty-five-minute drive and be a part of my life until now.

“I actually tried to join the International Carnivorous Plant Society,” I continued. “I wanted a membership card I could flash around school.”

“Of course you did,” Lillian said. She almost smiled.

I took that as an opening. “What can you tell me about Charles Waters?” I asked again. Quid pro quo. I’d given her something. Now it was her turn.

“Nature can be bloodthirsty, can’t it?” Lillian let her fingertips hover over a rose thorn. “I suppose there are those who would argue that people aren’t much better. Your mama, for one.”

That wasn’t what I’d asked, but she knew I wouldn’t sidestep a conversation about what my mom had been like as a teenager.

“Ellie Taft maniacally and devotedly believes the best of ­people,” I corrected. “Even when they don’t deserve it.” Especially when they didn’t deserve it. Especially if they were male.

“Some people, maybe,” Lillian replied. “But her family, our friends? After we lost her daddy, Ellie was… Cynical isn’t the right word. At the time, I might have said sullen. She always took things so personally.”

That was a loaded statement if I’d ever heard one.

“I remember when Charles Waters got married.” Up until ­Lillian said that sentence, I’d been convinced she was going to ignore my question altogether. “The whole ordeal caused quite the hubbub, and you would have thought any word uttered about the new Mrs. Waters was an insult directed straight at my daughter.”

“Were my mom and Sadie-Grace’s father close?” I asked, trying to imagine why a teenage girl would be so defensive of the marriage of a man six years her senior.

“Not in the least.” Lillian waved away the question. “It was a matter of principle for Ellie.” My grandmother managed not to roll her eyes, but only just. “Charles’s bride wasn’t from around here. She was a ballet dancer from New York, of all places. Of course people were going to talk. Charles was… well, I hate to put this fine a point on it, but he’s always been a bit… erudite.”

Awkward, I translated.

“His mother was a Kelley,” Lillian continued. “Oil family. Charles was the only heir, and you’ve seen the man. He’s no stranger to handsome. He could have had any girl he wanted, but the poor boy seemed genuinely unaware that the gentler sex even existed until he came back from a business trip to New York married. Of course that was going to raise a few eyebrows.”

Of course.

“So what you’re saying is that people were nice to his wife’s face and talked about her behind her back, and my mom—heaven knows why—seemed to find that offensive?”

Lillian must have heard the heavy wallop of sarcasm in my tone, because she was quiet for a moment. “You don’t care much what people think, do you, Sawyer?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Your mama did. I wish I’d seen that then. She’d get all riled up and talk about how she hated it here, but my Eleanor wanted people to like her. She wanted to be noticed.”

That hit me hard, because my mom had been wanting—and longing and searching—for as long as I could remember.

“What happened to the first Mrs. Waters?” I asked abruptly. I hadn’t come outside to talk about the hole in my mom’s life that she’d spent the entirety of mine trying to fill.

“Sadie-Grace’s mama passed away when she was little,” Lillian said. “Poor thing.”

“How—” I started to ask, but before I could get the rest of the question out of my mouth, the door to the backyard opened.

Lily stepped out onto the patio, still wearing her school uniform. Her hair was neatly parted down the middle, her lips recently glossed. Her already perfect posture straightened the moment she saw our grandmother.

“How are your roses, Mim?”

“Bloodthirsty,” Lillian replied lightly. She glanced at me. “And beautiful.”

“How was school?” I asked my cousin, willing our grandmother to look at her, not me. Two weeks had been more than enough time for me to realize just how badly Lily wanted to please the great ­Lillian Taft.

“School was lovely,” my cousin said. “Thank you for asking. Mim?” Lily swung her eyes back to our grandmother’s. “Do you think I could borrow Sawyer for a moment?”

“You girls go right ahead,” Lillian declared, removing her gloves. “I’ll make some lemonade.”

Lily waited for the screen door to close behind our grandmother before she crossed the lawn. “We need to talk.”

I waited for her to elaborate.

“It’s Campbell.”

And there it was, after two weeks of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“She says she has security footage of the pool house.” Lily swallowed, hard enough that I could practically taste the bile rising in the back of her throat. “And she’s gone through all of the files on my tablet.” Lily closed her eyes. “There are pictures. Uncropped copies of the ones on Secret—before I edited out my face.”

As far as proof went, that was ironclad—and almost certainly an order of magnitude worse than whatever Campbell had on Lily before.

“What does she want?” I asked flatly.

“For now?” Lily opened her eyes and tried not to look like she was in dire need of a fainting couch. “Campbell’s demanding your presence—and mine—at a party she’s throwing tonight.”