“So, to recap,” Lily said, sounding calm, but not entirely apathetic, “Campbell isn’t your half-sister. She’s mine, because my daddy’s mistress, who had Campbell’s daddy’s baby way back when, is actually my biological mother, and that baby was me. Victoria is my great-aunt, and technically, so is Lillian, because my adoptive mama is actually Lillian’s identical twin sister’s daughter. The real Liv Taft was killed twenty-five years ago in what might—or might not—have been an accident, involving practically every adult I know.” Lily paused. “Does that about sum things up?”

It was just the two of us now. Walker had driven the boat across to the Ames family’s lake house. Campbell, Sadie-Grace, and Victoria had stayed there, but I’d known without asking that Lily needed to get away.

I’d asked Walker if we could take his car.

He’d told us to keep it.

“You forgot the part with the lighter fluid and the imminent threat of death,” I told Lily. “But otherwise, that seems to be a fairly accurate summary.”

Lily started giggling. Hysterically.

“This isn’t funny,” I told her.

“I know,” she agreed. “It’s not funny at all. I just can’t stop laughing, because if I do . . .” The muscles in her throat tightened convulsively.

“I know,” I said. Lily had already been pushed past her breaking point before any of this had come out. There wasn’t any place left to go.

“I thought I could get away,” she said, giggling madly. “Do you know why I went to Two Arrows? Because that’s the place that Lillian got away from.”

I doubted my grandmother had ever imagined, when she’d entered high society, that it was a place that decades later, another member of her family might want to flee.

“This is so messed up,” I said, because someone had to say it.

“It is,” Lily agreed. She still didn’t have the laughter under control. “You know the crazy thing?” she wheezed. “I’m not even mad anymore. It’s just all so . . .” She shook her head, unable to put it into words. “And to think, I was so terrified about the Secrets blog becoming public knowledge. At this point, I could literally become a porn star, and I still wouldn’t be the real scandal in this family!”

“Do you have aspirations toward the adult film industry?” I joked.

“Very funny.” And just like that, she was very serious. “I don’t even know where to go now. Or what to do.” Her voice was hoarse. Her breathing turned jagged. “I spent weeks trying not to feel all of this, and then, when I finally let it come, I just wanted to start over. I was supposed to run away and find myself, Sawyer. Even when I said I was done with it all, I was still trying to be like her. I was still emulating my mama.”