Little White Lies Read online

  That got a pause out of her—and not a calculated one. “I could,” she replied finally. “I could know you. And you could find yourself in the position to attend any college of your choosing and graduate debt-free.”

  here was a contract. An honest-to-God, written-in-­legalese, sign-on-the-dotted-line contract.

  “Seriously?”

  Lillian waved away the question. “Let’s not get bogged down in the details.”

  “Of course not,” I said, thumbing through the nine-page appendix. “Why would I go to the trouble of reading the terms before I sell you my soul?”

  “The contract is for your protection,” my grandmother insisted. “Otherwise, what’s to keep me from reneging on my end of the deal once yours is complete?”

  “A sense of honor and any desire whatsoever for an ongoing relationship?” I suggested.

  Lillian arched an eyebrow. “Are you willing to bet your college education on my honor?”

  I knew plenty of people who’d gone to college. I also knew a lot of people who hadn’t.

  I read the contract. I wasn’t even sure why. I was not going to move in with her. I was not going to walk away from my home, my life, my mother for—

  “Five hundred thousand dollars?” I may have punctuated that amount with an expletive or two.

  “Have you been listening to rap music?” my grandmother demanded.

  “You said you’d pay for college.” I tore my gaze from the contract. Even reading it made me feel like I’d just let the guy with the Dodge Ram tuck a couple of ones into my bikini. “You didn’t say anything about handing me a check for half a million dollars.”

  “It won’t be a check,” my grandmother said, as if that was the real issue here. “It will be a trust. College, graduate school, living expenses, study abroad, transportation, tutors—these things add up.”

  These things.

  “Say it,” I told her, unable to believe that anyone could shrug off that amount of money. “Say that you’re offering me five hundred thousand dollars to live with you for nine months.”

  “Money isn’t something we talk about, Sawyer. It’s something we have.”

  I stared at her, waiting for the punch line.

  There was no punch line.

  “You came here expecting me to say yes.” I didn’t phrase that sentence as a question, because it wasn’t one.

  “I suppose that I did,” Lillian allowed.

  “Why?”

  I wanted her to actually say that she’d assumed that I could be bought. I wanted to hear her admit that she thought so little of me—and so little of my mom—that there had been no doubt in her mind that I’d jump at the chance to take her devil of a deal.

  “I suppose,” Lillian said finally, “that you remind me a bit of myself. And were I in your position, sweet girl…” She laid a hand on my cheek. “I would surely jump at the chance to identify and locate my biological father.”

  y mom—in between alternating bouts of pre­tending that I’d been immaculately conceived, cursing the male of the species, and getting tipsy and nostalgic about her first time—had told me exactly three things about my mystery father.

  She’d only slept with him once.

  He hated fish.

  He wasn’t looking for a scandal.

  And that was it. When I was eleven, I’d found a picture she’d hidden away, a portrait of twenty-four teenage boys in long-tailed tuxedos standing beneath a marble arch.

  Symphony Squires.

  The caption had been embossed onto the picture in silver script. The year—and several of the faces—had been scratched out.

  Money isn’t something we talk about, I thought hours after Lillian had left. I mentally mimicked her tone as I continued. And the fact that the man who knocked your mother up is almost certainly a scion of high society isn’t something I’ll come right out and say, but…

  I picked the contract up again. This time, I read it from start to finish. Lillian had conveniently forgotten to mention some of the terms.

  Like the fact that she would choose my wardrobe.

  Like the mandatory manicure I’d have once a week.

  Like the way she expected me to attend private school alongside my cousins.

  I hadn’t even realized I had cousins. Trick’s grandkids had cousins. Half of the members of my elementary school Girl Scout troop had cousins in that troop. But me?

  I had an encyclopedia of medieval torture techniques.

  Pushing myself to finish the contract, I arrived at the icing on the cake. I agree to participate in the annual Symphony Ball and all Symphony Deb events leading up to my presentation to society next spring.

  Deb. As in debutante.

  Half a million dollars wasn’t enough.

  And yet, the thought of those hypothetical cousins lingered in my mind. One of my less random childhood obsessions had been genetics. Cousins shared roughly one-eighth of their DNA.

  Half-siblings share a fourth. I found myself going to my mother’s bedroom, opening the bottom drawer of her dresser, and feeling for the photograph she’d taped to the back.

  Twenty-four teenage boys.

  Twenty-four possible producers of the sperm that had impregnated my mother.

  Twenty-four Symphony Squires.

  When my phone buzzed, I forced myself to shut the drawer and looked down at the text my mom had just sent me.

  A photo of an airplane.

  It may be more than a few days. I read the message that had accompanied the photograph silently and then a second time out loud. My mother loved me. I knew that. I’d always known that.

  Someday, I’d stop expecting her to surprise me.

  It was another hour before I went back to the contract. I picked up a red pen. I made some adjustments.

  And then I signed.

  ackie kneaded his forehead. “Are you sure none of you wants to call your parents?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “Do you know who my father is?”

  “My stepmother’s faking a pregnancy, and she needs her rest.”

  Mackie wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot pole. He turned to the last girl, the one who’d successfully picked the lock mere seconds after he’d arrived.

  “What about you?” he said hopefully.

  “My biological father literally threatened to kill me if I become inconvenient,” the girl said, leaning back against the wall of the jail cell like she wasn’t wearing a designer gown. “And if anyone finds out we were arrested, I’m out five hundred thousand dollars.”

  arrived at my grandmother’s residence—a mere forty-five minutes from the town where I’d grown up and roughly three and a half worlds away—on the contractually specified date at the contractually specified time. Based on what I knew of the Taft family and the suburban wonderland they inhabited, I’d expected my grandmother’s house to be a mix of Tara and the Taj Mahal. But 2525 Camellia Court wasn’t ostentatious, and it wasn’t historic. It was a nine-thousand-square-foot house masquerading as average, the architectural equivalent of a woman who spent two hours making herself up for the purpose of looking like she wasn’t wearing makeup. This old thing? I could almost hear the two-acre lot saying. I’ve had it for years.

  Objectively, the house was enormous, but the cul-de-sac was lined with other houses just as big, with lawns just as sprawling. It was like someone had taken a normal neighborhood and scaled everything up an order of magnitude—including the driveways, the SUVs, and the dogs.

  The single largest canine I’d ever seen greeted me at the front door, butting my hand with its massive head.

  “William Faulkner,” the woman who’d answered the door chided. “Mind your manners.”

  She was the spitting image of Lillian Taft. I was still processing the fact that the dog was (a) the size of a small pony and (b) named William Faulkner, when the woman I assumed was my aunt spoke again.

  “John David Easterling,” she called, raising her voice so it carried. “Wh
o’s the best shot in this family?”

  There was no reply. William Faulkner butted his head against my thigh and huffed. I bent slightly—very slightly—to pet him and noticed the red dot that had appeared on my tank top.

  “I will skin you alive if you pull that trigger,” my aunt called, her voice disturbingly cheerful.

  What trigger? I thought. The red dot on my torso wavered slightly.

  “Now, young man, I believe I asked you a question. Who’s the best shot in this family?”

  There was an audible sigh, and then a boy of ten or so pushed up to a sitting position on the roof. “You are, Mama.”

  “And am I using your cousin for target practice?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “No, sir, I am not,” my aunt confirmed. “Sit, William Faulkner.”

  The dog obeyed, and the boy disappeared from the roof.

  “Please tell me that was a Nerf gun,” I said.

  It took my aunt a moment to process the question and then she let out a peal of laughter—practiced and perfect. “He’s not allowed to use the real thing without supervision,” she assured me.

  I stared at her. “That’s not as comforting as you think it is.”

  The smile never left her face. “You do look like your mother, don’t you? That hair. And those cheekbones! When I was your age, I would have killed for those cheekbones.”

  Given that she was the best shot in this family, I wasn’t entirely certain she was exaggerating.

  “I’m Sawyer,” I said, trying to wrap my mind around the greeting I’d gotten from a woman my mom had always referred to as an ice queen.

  “Of course you are,” came the immediate reply, warm as whiskey. “I’m your aunt Olivia, and that’s William Faulkner. She’s a purebred Bernese mountain dog.”

  I’d recognized the breed. What I hadn’t recognized, however, was that William Faulkner was female.

  “Where’s Lillian?” I asked, feeling like I’d well and truly fallen down the rabbit hole.

  Aunt Olivia hooked the fingers on her right hand through ­William Faulkner’s collar and reflexively straightened her pearls with the left. “Let’s get you inside, Sawyer. Are you hungry? You must be hungry.”

  “I just ate,” I replied. “Where’s Lillian?”

  My aunt ignored the question. She was already retreating back into the house. “Come on, William Faulkner. Good girl.”

  My grandmother’s kitchen was the size of our entire house. I half expected my aunt to ring for the cook, but it quickly became apparent that she considered the feeding of other people to be both a pastime and a spiritual calling. Nothing I said or did could dissuade her from making me a sandwich.

  Refusing the brownie might have been taken as a declaration of war.

  I was a big believer in personal boundaries, but I was also a believer in chocolate, so I ignored the sandwich, took a bite of the brownie, and then asked where my grandmother was.

  Again.

  “She’s out back with the party planner. Can I get you something to drink?”

  I put the brownie back down on my plate. “Party planner?”

  Before my aunt could answer, the boy who’d had me in his sights earlier appeared in the kitchen. “Lily says it’s bad manners to threaten fratricide,” he announced. “So she didn’t threaten fratricide.”

  He helped himself to the seat next to mine and eyed my sandwich. Without a word, I slid it toward him, and he began devouring it with all the verve of a little Tasmanian devil wearing a blue polo shirt.

  “Mama,” he said after swallowing. “What’s fratricide?”

  “I imagine it’s what one’s sister very pointedly does not threaten when one attempts to shoot her with a Nerf gun.” Aunt Olivia turned back to the counter. It took me about three seconds to realize that she was making another sandwich. “Introduce yourself, John David.”

  “I’m John David. It’s a pleasure to meet you, madam.” For a trigger-happy kid, he was surprisingly gallant when it came to introductions. “Are you here for the party?”

  I narrowed my eyes slightly. “What party?”

  “Incoming!” A man swept into the room. He had presidential hair and a face made for golf courses and boardrooms. I would have pegged him as Aunt Olivia’s husband even if he hadn’t bent to kiss her cheek. “Fair warning: I saw Greer Richards making her way down the street on my way in.”

  “Greer Waters now,” my aunt reminded him.

  “Ten-to-one odds Greer Waters is here to check up on the preparations for tonight.” He helped himself to the sandwich that Aunt Olivia had been making for me.

  I knew it was futile, but I couldn’t help myself. “What’s happening tonight?”

  Aunt Olivia began making a third sandwich. “Sawyer, this rapscallion is your uncle J.D. Honey, this is Sawyer.”

  My aunt said my name in a way that made it clear they’d discussed me, probably on multiple occasions, possibly as a problem that required a gentle hand to solve.

  “Is this the part where you tell me I look like my mother?” I asked, my voice dry as a desert. My uncle was looking at me the same way his wife had, the way my grandmother had.

  “This,” he told me solemnly, “is where I welcome you to the family and ask you, quite seriously, if I just stole your sandwich.”

  The doorbell rang. John David was off like a rocket. All it took was a single arch of my aunt’s eyebrow before her husband was on their son’s heels.

  “Greer Waters is chairing the Symphony Ball,” Aunt Olivia murmured, clearing away John David’s plate and depositing sandwich number three in front of me. “Between you and me, I think she’s bitten off a bit more than she can chew. She just recently married the father of one of the Debs. There’s trying and then there’s trying too hard.”

  This from a woman who had made me three sandwiches since I’d walked in the front door.

  “In any case,” Aunt Olivia continued, lowering her voice, “I am just certain she’ll have capital-O Opinions about the way your grandmother has arranged things.”

  Arranged things for what? This time, I didn’t bother saying a word out loud.

  “I know you must have questions,” my aunt said, brushing a strand of hair out of my face, seemingly oblivious to the fact that I had been asking them. “About your mama. About this family.”

  I hadn’t expected this kind of welcome. I hadn’t expected affection or warmth or baked goods from a woman who’d spent the past eighteen years ignoring my mother—and my existence—altogether. A woman that my mom had never even once mentioned by name.

  “Questions,” I repeated, my voice catching in my throat. “About my mom and this family and the circumstances surrounding my highly inconvenient and scandalous conception?”

  Aunt Olivia’s lips tightened over a pearly smile, but before she could reply, Lillian Taft entered the room wearing a gardening hat and gloves and trailed by a pale, thin woman with brown hair ­knotted severely at her neck.

  “Always grow your own roses,” my grandmother advised me without preamble. “Some things should not be delegated.”

  It’s nice to see you, too, Lillian.

  “Some things shouldn’t be delegated,” I repeated. “Like party planning?” I asked facetiously, eyeing the woman who’d followed her in. “Or like greeting the prodigal granddaughter when she arrives at your home?”

  Lillian met my eyes. Her own didn’t narrow or blink. “Hello, Sawyer.” She said my name like it was one that people should know. After an elongated moment, she turned to the party planner. “Could you give us a moment, Isla?”

  Isla, as it turned out, could.

  “You look thin,” Lillian informed me once the party planner had exited. She turned to my aunt. “Did you offer her a sandwich, Olivia?”

  Sandwich number three was literally still sitting on the plate in front of me. “Let’s stipulate that I have been sufficiently sandwiched.”

  Lillian was not deterred. “Would you like something to dri
nk? Lemonade? Tea?”

  “Greer Waters is here,” my aunt interjected, keeping her voice low.

  “Horrid woman,” Lillian told me pleasantly. “Luckily, however…” She removed her gloves. “I’m much, much worse.”

  That, more than the advice about roses, felt like a life lesson, à la Lillian Taft.

  “Now,” Lillian continued as the sound of high heels clicking against the wood floor announced the impending arrival of the apparently infamous Greer Waters, “Sawyer, why don’t you run on upstairs and meet your cousin? Lily’s staying in the Blue Room. She can help you get ready for tonight.”

  “Tonight?” I asked.

  Aunt Olivia took it upon herself to shoo me out of the room. “Blue Room,” she echoed cheerfully. “Second door on the right.”

  counted the steps as I made my way up the grand staircase and got to eleven before I paused to take in the artwork lining the wall. A blond-haired little girl blew a dandelion in one portrait and sat astride a horse in the next. I watched her grow, mahogany-framed picture by mahogany-framed picture, until a baby boy joined her in the yearly portrait, their outfits color-­coordinated, her smile sweet and practiced and his served with increasingly large sides of trouble.

  When I made it to the top of the stairs, I came face-to-face with a family portrait: Aunt Olivia and Uncle J.D., the blond girl, now a teenager, sitting beside John David, and the elegant Lillian Taft standing with one hand on her daughter’s shoulder and one hand on her grandson’s. To the right of the family portrait, there was one of Aunt Olivia in a white dress. At first, I thought it was a wedding dress, but then I realized that my aunt wasn’t much older in this picture than I was now. The teenage Olivia wore elbow-length white gloves.

  My eyes flitted to the left of the family portrait. There was a small, almost invisible hole in the wall. Had another portrait hung there once?

  Say, for instance, one of my mom?

  “I am on the verge of using some very unladylike language.” The voice that issued that statement was sweet as pie.

  “Lily…”

  “Unladylike and creative.”