“You raised me to be a lady,” Campbell countered lightly. “And ladies play to win. It’s not my fault you’re slipping, hiding out here with your tail between your legs like we have something to be ashamed of.”

“I am not having this argument with you,” Charlotte said, her voice low in a way that would have sounded a lot more ominous if she weren’t drunk enough to slur her words.

“Then don’t,” Campbell replied simply. Don’t argue. Don’t make a scene. Campbell turned back to me and held out an electric-orange swimsuit. I took it.

Charlotte straightened, doing a passable impression of someone who wasn’t fall-down drunk, and shifted her attention wholly and pointedly to me. “I suppose that I should offer you a beverage.”

“That won’t be necessary.”

Charlotte stared at me so hard that I could feel her gaze on my skin. “It’s only a matter of time before your roots start showing, you know.” Her voice was strangely pleasant. She barely even slurred the words. “It doesn’t matter how they dress you up, or what little tricks you learn, or how well you think you can blend. You are what you are, sweetheart, and you’ll never be anything else.”

She took a long drink out of the glass in her hand—whiskey, by the smell of it.

“You can tell your mama I said so.” She smiled daggers at me and shook Campbell off when her daughter tried to lead her back down the hall. “Or better yet, pass the message along to your aunt.”

CHARLOTTE AND LIV
SUMMER BEFORE SENIOR YEAR
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS EARLIER

“Liv?” For years, Charlotte had prided herself on knowing the right thing to say in every situation. She was the sensitive one. Julia was the blunt, take-no-prisoners type. And Liv . . .

Liv hadn’t been herself since they’d buried her daddy.

Charlotte hovered in the doorway to the late Mr. Taft’s home office, her eyes fixed on the silhouette in the window.

“You can’t stay cooped up in here all day, Livvy,” she said delicately.

“I can do anything I want to.” Liv’s tone was calm, with just the slightest lilt. “That’s what he used to say. ‘Sky’s the limit, Bug.’” There was a pause. “He called me Bug.”

“I know.” Despite her best efforts, Charlotte could not find any words of honeyed comfort beyond that.

Liv probably didn’t want to be comforted.

“Come on.” Liv pushed off the window frame and stalked past her second-oldest friend.

Second-best, a voice inside Charlotte always whispered.

“Call Julia and tell her to meet us at the cemetery,” Liv ordered. She’d always been the charismatic one, enough so that people—male and female, young and old—did what she suggested.

Under any other circumstances, Liv being Liv might have gotten under Charlotte’s skin, but not today. Not when Liv Taft was finally starting to sound like herself.