“No.” I shook my head as I wracked my brain to remember what I’d told her on the phone. I’d given her a different name to throw her off. Fuck. What was it again? Gavin? George? Graham? Gordon. I gave her a sympathetic smile, my mind racing ahead. “I can understand why you thought it was Ash, he and Gordon looked so alike it was uncanny. When I first saw him on the beach I thought it was Ash and waved to him. That’s how we met.”

Her shoulders sagged, her entire body almost collapsing in onto itself. “It wasn’t him.”

“No, and I feel so bad for not realizing you were talking about my brother, but I had no idea. I was so preoccupied with his condition, I didn’t connect the dots. I feel so guilty.”

“But then why did you delete the picture?”

The directness of her question caught me a little off guard, but it didn’t take me long to recover. I shrugged. “It weirded me out, you calling like that. I reacted.”

At the realization she was to blame, Lily’s shoulders sagged some more, and her voice became soft again. “Why do you think he lied to me about his name?”

“Oh, wow... I really don’t know.”

“You have no idea why he left town and pretended to be someone else?” Her left eye began to twitch, and she pressed a finger over it. The dusky circles under her eyes told me she was exhausted, and upon closer inspection I saw she had sallow skin, too. She looked like a once-pretty princess who’d lost her sheen, and I wasn’t about to allow her to get it back.

“No, I really don’t. I’d tell you otherwise, I promise.”

“Does it have anything to do with Kate or Celine?” she said, and I felt my eyes widen. “Who are they?”

“It doesn’t matter, Lily. They’re in the past.”

“It does matter,” she said, looking me up and down, and I wondered if her tears had been a ploy to get into the house. “It matters a lot and if you don’t tell me, I’m sure someone else in town will. Fiona, or her brother, Keenan, for example. I hear he and Ash don’t exactly get along.”

The intensity of her voice and her newly found backbone surprised me. I’d expected neither, had pegged Lily as being a bit of a pushover and a little weak, realized I’d have to be more careful around her than I’d first thought.

I told her about Fiona, Keenan and Celine being siblings, and that Celine had been Ash’s high-school sweetheart. Once done, I took a dramatic pause before finishing with, “Celine disappeared when she was sixteen.”

“What do you mean, disappeared?”

“She left town. Ran away.”

“And who was Kate?”