“Mama never liked me much,” Aunt Olivia said. “I was too much like Lillian, not enough like her. I wanted more. God knows what possessed me to go to her for help. But when I did, when I came clean about where I’d been and the life I’d been living, do you know what she said? She said that the things I wanted might have been Lillian things, but the way I’d gone about getting them? The focus and determination and grit? That was all her.” Olivia smiled. “She said that blood was blood, and I was hers, and she’d help me pull one over on her holier-than-thou sister.”

Help you. As in get you a baby. How had Ellen found Ana? How had she talked Ana into giving up the baby?

“Did Ana even know who she was giving her baby to?” I asked out loud.

Aunt Olivia’s response was immediate. “Lily is mine,” she said, in a tone I recognized—one that brooked no argument. She’d used the exact same tone when she’d dismissed my assertion that Greer was faking her pregnancy, telling me not to be ridiculous, that no woman would do a thing like that.

Because she’d done it, too.

“I love my daughter more than life,” Aunt Olivia said fiercely. “John David, too, and before you ask, yes, I carried him my own self, though quite frankly, I don’t see how that matters.” She closed her hand over the lighter, just for a moment. “My children are the best thing I’ve ever done, and I won’t let anyone ruin that.”

She repositioned her grip and flicked the lighter. The second I saw the flame, my mind dissolved into a mess of overlapping thoughts—lighter fluid, a house made out of old wood. Ana’s baby. Uncle J.D. The way he claimed he’d started paying Ana before they were ever involved.

What if she’d run out of money? What if she’d known—or figured out—who had been raising her baby?

What if she’d told J.D. exactly who she was?

For all their faults, Lily’s parents loved her. I’d never doubted that, and as I took a step toward her mother, I didn’t doubt that now.

“Lily loves me,” I said out loud. I took another step toward Lily’s mama. “She would be heartbroken if anything happened to me. You know that.”

“I know,” Aunt Olivia said. “But accidents do happen—especially at the lake.”

I wondered if that was why she—and Ellen and whoever else had helped them—had brought us to King’s Island. Did Olivia know we’d spent time here earlier this summer? Or was she just looking for a place where she could stage an accident?

What kind of accident involves a fire and a gun? I took another step.