I sighed. “Tilley, for heaven’s sake, sit down. We know. We wanted it to work out, too. But they’re not children anymore. This isn’t like the cotillion; we can’t force them into it. They have to come together in their own time.” I paused and took a sip of tea. “I have to believe they will.”

“Or…” Tilley interjected.

A wicked smile popped across Olivia’s face, and she said the phrase that kept my stomach in knots, the one I hoped she wouldn’t. “Or we play the trump cards.”

I sighed. The trump cards: the big, monumental things that Liv and I kept in our skirt pockets in case we ever needed them. We’d joked a lot about those two ending up together, and I have to say that, on this trip, I was convinced they might. A woman does not offer to have a man’s dead wife’s babies out of the goodness of her heart. That is a thing that one does only out of pure, unadulterated love. But my trump card was one I did not ever want to have to play. Not now. Not ever.

“You play yours, Olivia. I’m not ready.”

Tilley rolled her eyes. “It’s a new day,” she said. “People don’t look at things the same way. She won’t blame you.”

And that’s what I had worried about all these years, right? Being blamed. Everything somehow being my fault, like I had secretly suspected. Amelia not understanding. I looked Tilley in the eye, wondering if maybe she wasn’t having as good a day as I had thought.

Olivia locked her gaze on me. “Liz, it’s not fair to make me play mine if you don’t have to play yours.”

“But you have to,” I disagreed. “Eventually, Parker has to know. Amelia never does.”

She sipped her tea. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Let’s give it a few months,” Tilley moderated. “They will have had the chance to sort through these very strong emotions and perhaps the truth will come to light all on its own, no meddling necessary.”

I nodded optimistically, but I had to say that that very real possibility—that the truth would come to light on its own—haunted me night and day.

Parker GROW UP

THE DAY AFTER AMELIA LEFT, I knew I needed to leave, too. She was gone. The dream was gone. I went over to the house to say goodbye to my mom. She was nowhere to be found, but Mason was in the kitchen, eating cereal in his boxers. For a minute, it took me back to the days when we sat at that bar together, eating Cap’n Crunch, watching cartoons, and feeling the freedom of childhood Saturday mornings that can never be replicated. Mason was my hero. I wanted to be just like him.

I hadn’t seen my brother more than a handful of times since I’d been home. He kept odd hours, sleeping during the day, going out all night. Basically, everyone else had grown up while he had stayed eighteen. I tried not to think about it, especially because it was at least partially my fault that his life had turned out this way. Sure, there was the whole bad-things-happen-and-can’t-be-controlled argument. But I had controlled a large part of this. I was the reason that my brother, the next Babe Ruth, had never spent one single day on a professional baseball field.