“Hello, Daddy.” Lily had woven her hand through mine, and she squeezed it a little tighter as she said the words.

I’d pushed. She’d let me. She’d stayed.

“Lily.” J.D. smiled. “Sweetheart, I’ve missed you so much. Thank you for . . .”

“Talking to you?” Lily’s voice was a little wobbly. She let go of my hand and rested both of hers on the deck railing. “I’m not here to talk to you. Maybe I’ll be ready for that someday. Maybe I won’t. But right now, Sawyer is.”

“Sawyer is what, honey?”

“Ready to talk to you,” I elucidated.

He was an affable person. He’d treated me fondly—as his niece. But now?

“I really don’t think . . .” he started to say.

“If you want me,” Lily said, her eyes fixed on the water down below, without any feeling in her tone, “then Sawyer is part of the package. You can talk to both of your daughters—or neither.”

Lily’s father straightened slightly in his chair, the only tell I could see that until that moment, he’d been holding out hope that I hadn’t told Lily the truth about my parentage.

“This situation is… complicated,” J.D. said, casting a meaningful look at the house. Through the window, I could see Aunt Olivia in the kitchen, watching us.

“I’m not looking for a father,” I told him. “Evidence suggests you’re not a particularly good one anyway.”

“He was,” Lily said quietly. “Once.”

That, more than anything else, seemed to pierce his armor. “Sweetheart, you don’t understand. . . .”

She understood enough. Lily had agreed to come out here with me so that I could get something resembling closure, but standing this close to the man who’d fathered me, I found that I didn’t have any real desire to ask him how he’d ever been able to pretend I was just his niece.

I couldn’t ask him to fix whatever it was that was wrong with me.

So I asked a different question—for Lily. “What do you know about the Lady of the Lake?”

Lily hadn’t been able to stop listening to that recording. She needed to know, and I needed to push her, to trust that I could.

“Who?” J.D.’s confusion was genuine, if momentary.

“The Lady of the Lake,” I repeated. At the railing, Lily’s hands tightened over the wood. “The body we found.” I took a stab in the dark. “The reason Aunt Olivia called you when Lily mentioned a forensic sculptor.” No visible response. “The one,” I continued, “that Aunt Olivia is holding over your head.”

I could see the gears in his mind turning, could see the exact moment when he decided to smile and shake his head and treat me like I was speaking nonsense. “Sawyer, I—”