I scanned the area for Aunt Olivia. She stood on the other side of the lawn flanked by Boone’s mother and Campbell’s. Julia Ames had a grip on Aunt Olivia’s arm, the way I held Lily’s, but I got the distinct feeling that she wasn’t so much holding her as holding her back. Charlotte was standing an extra step or two away. She and Aunt Olivia had a habit of exchanging sugary-sweet barbs, and yet, Charlotte was the one who stepped forward, to block Uncle J.D. from Aunt Olivia’s view.

“Sawyer.” Lily’s voice took on a sudden urgency as she dug her fingers into my arm. “Your mama.”

I’d expected a scene when my mom had confronted Greer, but hadn’t gotten one. A lifetime of experience had taught me I wouldn’t be so lucky twice.

“What can I do?” Nick asked beside me. I hadn’t expected him to come with me, but his physical presence—and the way I felt the weight of it in every inch of my own body—reminded me that I’d confided in him.

Nick was the only one here who knew everything that Lily and I knew.

“Everyone is watching.” My half-sister didn’t sound as upset as I would have predicted, like she’d disassociated and couldn’t feel anything other than numb.

“Seriously, Ana?”

I could hear my mom from ten feet away. Under any other circumstances, I would have been amused by the way everyone in the vicinity was not-staring. Staring was rude, but there wasn’t a person nearby who didn’t find themselves casually glancing a few feet away from the action.

“Ellie,” J.D. said, striking a balance between cajoling and a warning.

“How could you?” my mom asked. Most people probably thought she was talking to him, but I flashed back to the dozens of pictures I’d seen of my mom and Ana and Greer, wearing white ribbons on their wrists or woven through their hair.

Ana seemed to know the question my mom had just asked was for her. “You have no stones to throw here,” Ana told her—quietly, calmly, her tone not entirely unpleasant.

I was suddenly overwhelmed with a horrible premonition of my mom laying her—and my—whole sordid past out for everyone to hear. How could you sleep with my sister’s husband? How could you sleep with the father of my child?

By the grace of God, the question my mom asked out loud was a different one. “What happened to you, Ani?”

The nickname seemed to penetrate the other woman’s shields in a way that nothing else had. She wavered, then stepped closer to my mom.

“You have no idea what I’ve been through. None.”