I hung up just in time to hear Aunt Olivia trill out, “Who wants to make personalized memo boards? And then I’ll show y’all the absolutely darling little outfits I got for Greer’s shower.”

My desire to make a memo board for a dorm room I hadn’t even agreed to live in yet ranked only slightly above my utter lack of inclination to attend a baby shower for a baby who I knew for a fact did not exist. I’d been expecting Sadie-Grace’s stepmother to have a “miscarriage” for months. When we’d received the invitation to the shower, I’d even tried telling Aunt Olivia that Greer was faking her pregnancy.

Aunt Olivia had shushed me. “Don’t be silly, Sawyer. I’m sure you simply misunderstood.” Personally, I thought witnessing a woman strapping on a fake pregnancy belly was the kind of thing that was pretty darn hard to “misunderstand,” but Aunt Olivia wouldn’t hear a word about it. “To think that any woman would do such a thing! Pshaw. I’ve had enough ridiculousness for one summer, thank you very much. We’re going to that shower. End of story.”

“Don’t you think the girls have been punished enough?” Uncle J.D. asked, right inside the window. As much as I agreed with the sentiment, the fatherly tone with which he’d said girls, plural, hit me like the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard.

“Are you implying that time spent with me is a punishment, John?” Aunt Olivia only called him by his first name when she was annoyed.

“They’re eighteen, Liv. Almost nineteen.”

“I’m always Liv when you want something,” Aunt Olivia said quietly.

“God forbid I try to talk to you like—”

“Like I’m her?”

I’d only heard them fight once before, about some kind of money problem.

Like I’m her. Like I’m her. Like I’m her. Aunt Olivia’s words repeated on a loop in my head. Who was she talking about? Did she think he was having some kind of affair? Or worse, had she found out what he’d done with my mother?

“Keep your voice down, Olivia.” J.D. followed his own advice, lowering his volume so much that I had to strain to hear him, even though they were standing right next to the window now.

“So I’m Olivia again?”

The question was met with silence—and then the sound of footsteps.

“Where are you going?” she called after him.

This time, my “uncle” actually answered his wife’s question, his words shot through with an emotion I couldn’t quite peg. “I’m going to the lake. If you’re going to keep the family home, someone has to check on the boats.”

CHAPTER 13

S.D. still wasn’t back the next morning when Aunt Olivia, Lily, and I left for Greer’s shower.