“But not you?” Bliss asked, trying not to appear as nervous as she felt.

“No, not me, and I don’t think I really have to explain myself.”

“Why don’t you try,” Katie suggested.

A flash of anger flitted through the eldest’s eyes. “Okay, if that’s what you want. It’s been hard for me, okay? And all this nearly killed Mom. She lied at first, told me my dad was dead. I guess that way she thought I wouldn’t feel so abnormal, but the truth of the matter was that I was born illegitimate, unwanted by a father who preferred another woman over my mother.”

“No!” Bliss gasped. “Dad didn’t know Mom until after—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Tiffany held out her hands to cut off Bliss’s protest. “Katie asked and I just answered truthfully. I think there’ve been enough lies as it is.”

Bliss gulped. It was time to leave. Past time. Obviously, Tiffany didn’t have any of Katie’s need for family unity.

But Tiffany wasn’t finished. “I know what the local story is. My grandmother filled me in. It goes something like my mother didn’t love John Cawthorne, didn’t want to marry him. Nor did he want her. I was the result of a fling.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Anyway, for all my mom’s tough words, I learned later from my grandmother that it about killed her when he married a rich woman from San Francisco, a woman of breeding, so to speak, and then you came along and were treated like a princess.”

Heat soared up Bliss’s cheeks and for a second, hot tears touched the back of her eyelids.

“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Tiffany added, as if she could see the pain ripping through her half-sister. “But you two asked. The way I see it is that my mother struggled to raise me, and she taught me never to depend upon a man—any man. She never married, refused to even date much, and was of the opinion that most men were rats or even worse. When things got tight, there was Grandma to depend upon.”

“Aunt Octavia,” Katie clarified. “She’s not everyone’s aunt but everyone calls her that, and she is Tiffany’s grandmother.”

“Yep, and she somehow helped keep my mother sane, I swear, during those . . . well, the rough years.”

Bliss rubbed her sweating palms on her pants. “You mean when Dad married Mother?”