“Of course. Right. Stupid rumors. Especially when you’re Sullivan’s girl.” She flushed, the color reaching her cheeks as she looked at her notepad.

“Except Sullivan’s dead.” Charity put my thoughts to words with a shrug. “So it really wouldn’t matter, would it?”

“Right. Of course. So does that mean Cam’s…available?” She drew out that last word so long it may as well have been its own sentence.

“You could probably ask him,” I suggested. I was liking Tillie a whole lot less.

“Right! Okay, I’ll have these right out!” She flounced away in her fifties skirt, her blond ponytail swishing in time with her hips.

“Usually I worry about Tillie spitting in my food, but I think you may have usurped me in the hated-Bradley-girl hierarchy.”

“Everyone is weird today.” I swirled my straw through my ice water.

“Normal weird or Alba weird?” Charity asked.

“Over-the-top Alba weird, and Genevieve Dawson was downright mean on the street.”

“Okay, well, you’re using up your Milkshake on Genevieve Dawson. Start talking.” She stared me down.

Calling Milkshake was never to be taken advantage of. It was only for the moments your sister, and only your sister, would do.

I talked.

I started at Cam’s arrival, pausing only when Tillie brought us our food. Then I continued.

Charity didn’t say a single word, simply sat across from me, eating her burger and fries and sipping on a chocolate shake. There was no judgment in her eyes, like I would have gotten if I’d talked to Mom. No giddy excitement, like I would have received if I were talking to Thea.

She just nodded every now and then, holding up a finger if anyone came close enough to listen, and that gave me the courage to empty it all out. The kiss. Sullivan’s death. All of it.

There was a sacred understanding that we were a combination-free vault. Secrets went in. Nothing came out. We were uncrackable. And when one of us called a Milkshake, the other stopped whatever she was doing, no questions asked.

We’d sipped on Bigg’s shakes on our parents’ deck the night Charity whispered that she was pregnant.

“And then he said, ‘It was Mom’s name on his lips, when I knew mine would have been yours,’” I finished.

The straw fell into her shake, but her mouth held the same shape as she stared at me.

“Say something,” I urged.

“He seriously said that? Not just all of it but that last sentence?”