Victoria took the lead. “I will admit, something about the way you said that name—Ana Sofía Gutierrez—got me curious, so I called up the least overprotective and dictatorial of my many much-older brothers and asked if he knew of an Ana in the family.”

“Got any rogue Anas running around?” I asked. I could see the ground leveling out ahead. We were almost to the top. Campbell, Sadie-Grace, and Lily were only a few feet behind.

“My brother hung up on me,” Victoria informed me, “but not before ordering me to never so much as think that name again.”

I didn’t know Victoria, but I was willing to bet that her brother could not have stoked her curiosity more if he’d tried. I offered her a bit of information, in hopes that she’d be able to do something with it. “Ana was a Debutante with my mom. Midway through the year, the whole family moved.”

“That would be my brother Javier and his wife, Freja,” Victoria supplied, “which I know, because after Javier shut me down, I called my second-least overprotective and dictatorial older brother. He wouldn’t tell me what happened, but he did tell me who Ana was.”

“Black sheep of the family?” I guessed. It was a familiar story, close enough to my mom’s—and mine—that the answer mattered to me, viscerally.

“I didn’t even know Javier had a daughter,” Victoria replied as we came to a plateau. “He won’t talk about her. According to Rafi, no one in the family has heard a word from her in twenty years.”

Twenty years. Since she got pregnant. Before I could say anything, Lily and Sadie-Grace made it to the top of the cliff and took up positions beside us. Campbell followed, and without so much as a glance back at Victoria and me, she walked over to stand right at the cliff’s edge.

“What do we do with our suits?” Lily inquired politely. You would have thought she was asking about a coat closet, not the particulars of how and where we should strip.

“Leave your suits here.” Victoria gestured to the base of a large oak tree. “I’ll make sure someone fetches them for you. After.”

Sadie-Grace was the first one to ditch her bikini. Campbell was next, followed by Lily, whose experience with Secrets made her strangely adept at casually positioning her arms for maximal coverage.

“Pretend you’re getting a massage,” she advised me.

I made a face. Massages, saunas, spa days, and casual nudity were all things I could have done entirely without. But if I wanted an opportunity to get closer to the Gutierrez family, Victoria was it. And if I wanted to stay in Victoria’s orbit . . .

I needed the White Gloves.

So I got naked. And I jumped.

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

“Julia. Joo-lee-uh.” Liv drew out the name.