Aunt Olivia swung the gun toward me, her other hand still holding the flame. She spoke again as she began backing toward the door. “You stay right where you are, Sawyer Ann.”

“I think,” Sadie-Grace whispered beside me, “that this is bad.”

The gun. The lighter. Old wood, soaked in an accelerant.

Before I could say another word, someone else beat me to it. “Olivia, please.”

It took me a second to place the voice, whose words hadn’t sounded like a plea so much as the kind of chiding John David typically received when he farted loudly—and intentionally—at the dinner table.

Olivia sucked in a breath and turned toward the voice’s owner. “Mama.”

Not Ellen, I realized as the speaker walked toward us.

“Lillian,” I said. I’d never been so glad to see anyone in my life.

There was a split second of indecision on Aunt Olivia’s part, and then she turned the gun on my grandmother.

Lillian was not impressed. “For heaven’s sakes, put that thing away, Olivia. You’re being ridiculous.”

“She’s pathologically unhinged,” Victoria corrected.

Lillian spared her but a single look. “My condolences about your father, dear.” Because, of course, Lillian Taft would express condolences in the middle of a hostage situation. Without missing a beat, my grandmother turned back to my aunt. “Are we quite done here?”

She still has a gun pointed at you, Lillian. I don’t think that qualifies as “done.”

“Get over there,” Olivia ordered my grandmother. “With them.”

“Am I to believe you’re going to kill all of us?” Lillian asked. “You’ll do no such thing.”

Even with a gun pointed at her, she answered her own questions.

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” Aunt Olivia said. “Now move.”

“Kaci,” Lillian stated, exasperated, “I will do no such thing.”

The name—Kaci—froze Aunt Olivia in her spot.

“Kaci?” I repeated.

“You know.” Aunt Olivia’s voice shook, like Lillian knowing her real name was somehow more unfortunate than the fact that she’d been caught holding us hostage at gunpoint. “Did… did Ellen tell you?”

“My sister hasn’t spoken to me in forty years,” Lillian replied. “Thankfully, I am plenty capable of putting two and two together myself, though I will admit it took me some time.”

“What?” I said. “You knew?”

“Not right away,” Lillian told me. “Not nearly soon enough. I was grieving. I’d lost my husband. I couldn’t stand the idea of losing my daughter, too. When she came back, I thanked God and put it all behind me.”

“You couldn’t have known,” Aunt Olivia insisted. “I practiced. I got everything right.”