“It wasn’t me,” Aunt Olivia said urgently, before Lillian could finish. “I didn’t hurt her, Lillian. I wouldn’t have. . . .”

“I know that,” my grandmother said. “You’ve been by my side your entire adult life. I know you didn’t hurt my Liv. I know you won’t shoot me or hurt these girls. You’re a fighter, Olivia. Always have been. But you’re not a killer. Put the gun down. Now please.”

Obediently, the hand with which Olivia held the gun sank to her side. But the lighter—she held on to the lighter.

“I won’t snuff that flame out for you,” Lillian told her sternly. “You have to do that for yourself. Prove to yourself and these girls that no matter what ideas your mama put in your head, no matter what the stakes, you were never going to hurt them, any more than you would have hurt Liv.”

They stared at each other. And since they were staring at each other, neither one of them was looking at me.

I stepped forward, ready and willing to take that lighter by force. But the woman who’d been Olivia Taft for two and a half decades didn’t give me a chance.

She killed the flame.

CHAPTER 59

“I’ll take care of… this.” Even in the most trying of circumstances, never let it be said that my grandmother was not discreet. An abandoned house soaked in lighter fluid? An impostor daughter who’d kidnapped us, drugged us, and held us at gunpoint?

All summarized in a single word: this.

“You girls head home.”

“And how do you suggest we do that?” Victoria was the first one to recover her voice. “Someone took care of our Jet Skis.”

Lillian was not ruffled in the least. “Lily and Walker are the ones who called me. They brought me here. They’re waiting on the east side of the island, and they have a boat.”

A hundred questions swirled and collided in my head. What were Lily and Walker—and for that matter Lillian—doing here in the first place? And what could my grandmother possibly be planning on doing to contain this situation?

The only question that came out of my mouth was: “If we take the boat, how will you get home?”

Lillian turned toward the woman who’d been her daughter longer than the original Liv Taft had lived. “I suspect Olivia has a way off this island,” she said quietly. “But first, I’d like to finally hear, after all these years, what happened to my girl.”

Campbell, Sadie-Grace, Victoria, and I spent the first half of the walk back to the east shore of the island trying to figure out what—if anything—we should do. I knew what Lillian’s preference was. I could practically hear her ordering me to let her handle it.

Just this once.