If stoking Nick’s enmity toward her family had been Campbell’s goal—well, goal achieved.

“Campbell is jumping to conclusions,” I said. I couldn’t leave it there, though, because Nick deserved better than for me to let her dangle the possibility like a string in front of a cat. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t dismiss the idea Campbell had planted in my mind the week before, and I couldn’t lie to Nick. “But there was a teenage girl that her father knocked up. As far as we can tell, no one’s heard from said girl in twenty years.”

Nick ran a hand roughly through his hair, then forced a smile for anyone watching. “Do you two even hear yourselves?” he asked. “You get that this isn’t normal, right?”

“What isn’t normal?” a voice asked cheerfully.

I turned to see Sadie-Grace. Beside her, Boone held out his hands, as if framing a picture around my face. “Lo,” he called out dramatically, “thereby a vision in red came upon me, and her name was . . .”

I shot him a look that almost proved effective in preventing him from finishing that sentence.

“Sawyer,” he whispered. “Her name was Sawyer.”

Boone’s last name might have been Mason, but he was an Ames, and though Nick didn’t have anything against him specifically—as far as I knew—I couldn’t help thinking that my “date” was probably reaching his limit with all things Ames.

He probably wished—like I did—that we were back at his car, my hands teasing his hair.

If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride. Turning that idiom over in my mind, I looked away from Nick—and the rest of the group. On the other side of the room, an immaculately dressed couple approached Lillian and Davis Ames. The man looked to be in his seventies—at least; the woman he had his arm around didn’t look all that much older than my mom. Her skin was a glowing, medium brown; his was lighter. They both resembled their daughter, enough so that I might have pegged them for Victoria’s parents, even if she hadn’t mentioned their notable age difference.

The expression on Victoria’s father’s face as he shook Davis Ames’s hand was inscrutable.

“Earth to Sawyer?” Campbell said. I had no idea what I’d missed.

“We were just about to discuss how incredibly debonair I look in this hat,” Boone informed me, sliding his fingers along its brim. “I was born to fedora.”

I wasn’t sure whether the pained look on Nick’s face was the result of Boone’s use of the word fedora as a verb or the conversation he, Campbell, and I had been having before we’d been interrupted.

“I’m sorry to do this,” I told him. “But I have to go—just for a few minutes.”