“Surprise, my darling!” Sophie’s mom stood on the front porch, her arms flung out and a beaming smile on her face. Those two signs were ominous enough on their own, but they were accompanied by a stack of suitcases more suitable to a lengthy cruise than a brief visit. Her next words confirmed it. “I’ve come to batten myself on you and the girls for a few weeks. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Mom!” Sophie cried, and then, because it was the only thing she could say, “Of course I don’t mind. But I don’t understand. I thought you were going with Dad on his sabbatical to Greece.”

Her mom engulfed her in a warm hug, the lavish scent of her floral perfume blanketing them both. “I know, and I was so looking forward to it, but I’ve had this dratted tickle in the back of my throat I can’t seem to shake. You know how hard your father goes when he’s out in the field. My immune system would never be able to catch up.”

While it was true that Victor Vasquez had a tendency to lose himself in his antiquity studies whenever he slipped off the collegiate leash, her mother had never looked in better health. Not even the fake cough she remembered to emit a few seconds later was enough to convince Sophie that this was anything but a ploy.

“Lila called you, didn’t she?” Sophie asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Lila never tells me anything. That girl is an oyster.”

“Dawn.” Sophie clenched her hands. “The sneak. What did she say?”

Her mother adopted her loftiest pose. “Dawn doesn’t tell me anything either. None of my daughters do. I might as well be in my grave for all they care about involving me in their lives.”

She added a disdainful sniff for good measure. It was a good look on her—like her daughters, Alice Vasquez was a beautiful woman. Her hair was a light brown that her hairstylist kept from fading into gray, and strategic makeup applications and good lighting held her crow’s feet at bay. Her figure was still the envy of many, if a little more on the buxom side than in her youth, and she dressed with the ease of one who’d had a lifetime to learn what suited her best.

In other words, her mother was an impressive woman—confident and elegant and controlled in all the ways Sophie would never be.

“I don’t understand. If neither one of them ratted me out, who called you?”

“If you must know, I had a chat with Paulette late last night.”