I stared at him.

“You believed every ridiculous word I told you, because it came from me. It never occurred to you I might lie. Maybe eventually you would have questioned it, looked it up and found no mention of the Honourable Jonathan Peele anywhere on Wikipedia or beyond, but for the moment, I had you hook, line and sinker.”

I didn’t answer, so he went on. “Did the details make sense? If we got closer to shore, you’d see the house is actually fairly ordinary, once the trees aren’t blocking it. Ostentatious, yes, but what isn’t in this neighborhood? Would you have gotten closer just to check my story? I don’t think you would have made the effort. You wanted to go with the easiest explanation. And you thought you could, because you trust me. You can’t imagine why I might lie to you.”

“There’s got to be a point to this,” I said, but I already knew what it was.

“You don’t take anything with the podcast at face value, Ryan. You’re relentless and thorough, and you question everything. That’s why the first season of Out in the Cold did so well. Between you and Sophie, everything is examined, even when you’re leaning a different way. So why did your guard slip today? Why did you absorb my story without questioning anything I said?”

Of course we were no longer talking about the youngest son of an earl, nor had we ever been. We were talking about the younger daughter of Dale and Arlie Gracey, and the older one, too.

I heard myself repeat what I’d said to Sophie. “She’s my sister.”

He started the motor again and angled his way down the lagoon. Only when we pulled up to his dock did he reply. “Those are not words to live by, Ryan. You know that, don’t you?”

He was right, and worse? I was afraid putting family ties aside might be the hardest thing I would ever have to do.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

On the way back to Seabank I didn’t listen to podcasts. I had plenty of noise in my own head to keep me company.

Sebastian hadn’t told his bogus fairy tale to ridicule me. He’d wanted to teach me a valuable lesson, and it had worked. Sophie had tried, too. But even though most of the time my family values privacy over intimacy and evasion over candor, we are still a family. Could I be the one who destroyed it?

By the time I pulled into the town house garage, I could no longer pretend that Wendy’s virtues, the same ones I’d listed for Sebastian, were anything other than a younger sister’s illusions. I had always seen Wendy from a distance, even when we were standing next to each other. I had assembled my view of her from occasional thoughtful moments and gifts, and from my parents’ accounts. I knew about her achievements. I knew how many people admired her. But did I know her heart?