I picked up a pool cue and nodded for my mom to start racking up the balls. I needed to keep busy, if I was going to persevere in giving Lily space.

“Are you okay?” I asked my mom once she’d finished racking.

My mom glanced back at Ana. “I just keep thinking that this was how it was supposed to be—Ana and her daughter, me and mine.”

Things between us weren’t the same as they’d been before my debutante year. Too much had happened since, and my mom was still learning to just let me be. A lifetime of interdependence was a nasty habit to kick.

“Sawyer? I know the pact was stupid.” My mom grabbed the cue ball and broke, sending the rest of the balls scattering around the table. “It wasn’t just our lives we were playing around with. It was yours, too. I know that it was selfish for me to think that you could solve everything that was wrong with my life, fill every hole.”

In the months that Lily and I had been here, this was the first glimmer I’d gotten that my mom had really changed.

That at least some part of her understood.

“You were a kid,” I said, lining up my first shot. “You were dealing with a lot. And if you hadn’t been . . .” I hit the ball. “You wouldn’t have me.”

The day after we’d arrived, I’d told my mom the truth about Liv. I’d expected her to explode, to go storming back to the city, demanding to know how Lillian felt about having chosen an impostor over her.

Why she was protecting Olivia still.

But instead, my mom had grieved. She’d told me, a few nights back, crying for her sister, that the truth hadn’t been a blow. It was a relief. The sister she’d known hadn’t iced her out. The disconnect she’d felt with Olivia wasn’t in her head. Her teenage anger at being forced to pretend otherwise, the grief that no one had understood . . .

It was real.

“You’re stripes,” my mom commented when my first shot went in.

“Ellie.” Ana cleared her throat behind us.

I turned around first. A few seconds later, my mom followed suit.

“I want you to know,” Ana told her, “that I’ve stopped seeing J.D.”

“Good for you?” my mom ventured.

It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if she wanted a prize, but then a horrible thought occurred to me. “He’s not back with Aunt Olivia, is he?”

“Not as far as I know,” Ana said. “I’m moving to the East Coast. I need a fresh start, and Victoria has talked me into investing in a start-up she’s been working on. I’m going to be following up with other potential investors while she finishes her degree.”