King’s Island. 10 p.m. That was all our invitations said. Once we ascertained that John David was occupied with decorating his golf cart—and once we had promised to return in time to put the finishing touches on it in the morning—we did get the hell out of Dodge, via Jet Skis.

Riding separately from Lily, I leaned into the wind as we cut across the main channel. As far as we can, as fast as we can. I’d missed Lily these past weeks. I’d missed being us. Whatever she needed from me, I’d give her.

Anywhere she ran, I’d run, too.

Water sprayed the right side of my body as Lily sped past me. We wove in and out of a larger boat’s wake. Farther. Faster. I could feel the sun on my face and forearms and the tops of my feet.

But no matter how loud the roar of the engine beneath me was, no matter how free I should have felt, I still couldn’t outrun the realizations of the past hour: that Aunt Olivia had known about her husband’s mistress—not to mention the truth about my paternity—for an indeterminate amount of time; that Uncle J.D. had apparently been giving Ana money; that years ago, long before either Lily or I had been conceived, Aunt Olivia had blackmailed her husband into marriage.

You won’t tell anyone what happened, I could hear Uncle J.D. saying. You have as much to lose as I do if the truth about that body comes out.

Right after the Lady of the Lake had washed ashore, Aunt Olivia had gone on a strike against weekend trips to Regal Lake. She’d filled our days with crafts and togetherness and left zero time for us to follow up on what we’d stumbled into. That wasn’t suspicious per se.

Not in isolation.

That body . . .

I hoped Lily was having an easier time outrunning her thoughts than I was having with mine. Barring that, I was cautiously optimistic that whatever the White Gloves had planned for this evening would do the trick.

It was still light outside when Lily and I made it to King’s Cove. We stayed out on the water until the sun started its descent. As daylight began to give way, we cut our engines and waded into the shallows, throwing the entire weight of our bodies into pulling the Jet Skis up onto the shore.

King’s Island wasn’t more than a hundred yards across. There was no dock and only one crumbling building, made of siding and wood. The closer we got to it, the more apparent it became that, at some point, there had been a fire here. Parts of the house had burned and had never been replaced.

There was no roof.

“What time is it?” Lily asked me.