“Is that your way of asking me if I’m going to start dressing in all black?” I asked Lillian.

She put her gardening shears down, removed her gloves, and plucked her glass of wine from the deck. “Lily’s mourning, Sawyer. I cannot help but notice that you’re not.”

“I don’t get to be upset about this.” I set my jaw. When she didn’t reply, I elaborated. “They’re not my parents.”

Even with respect to Uncle J.D., that felt true now. What did it matter that I carried half his DNA? Just look what he’d done to the daughter he loved.

“You’re a part of this family, Sawyer Ann. If you want to play the part of the stoic, I’m hardly the one to stop you, but don’t you tell me that this doesn’t affect you.”

All things considered, I preferred our conversation the previous day, which had focused entirely on the way that my bangs were growing out. “Can we talk about something else?”

Lillian returned her attention to the roses. “Certainly.” She adopted a serene expression. “I’ve decided that it would be wrong to have your uncle killed. I’m still debating on the issue of kneecaps.”

I was 90 percent sure she was joking.

“Davis Ames seems like he might know some kneecap-busting types,” I volunteered. “Then again, Campbell said he won’t talk about anything related to Ana.”

I’d repeated to Campbell the single sentence Ana had given me back at the hospital. My baby deserved the world, and I deserved a chance to start over—alone. Cam and I took that to mean that the baby had been adopted, but for all that conversation with Ana had cost me, it hadn’t told me enough to know by whom.

“Incoming! Hostile at forty-four degrees! Duck, Mim! Sawyer—man down!” John David didn’t give me time to process whether that was supposed to be an order, a warning, or a threat before he army-crawled to my feet, swept them out from underneath me, and sent me flying.

“Man down,” I repeated, getting ready to give as good as I got.

“Oh, Sawyer,” my grandmother said indulgently. “He’s just having a bit of fun.”

John David wasn’t Lillian Taft’s grandson for nothing. He hopped to his feet and started blathering on a new topic in hopes of forestalling my revenge. “I love Fourth of July. It’s my favorite, isn’t it, Mim? This was going to be the year I won the golf cart parade and the pie-eating contest up at the lake. William Faulkner, too.”

“William Faulkner was going to win a pie-eating contest?” I asked.

Still channeling Lillian, John David gave me a look. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sawyer. There is no canine pie-eating contest. William Faulkner was going to win the costume contest, which is part of the parade.”