: Chapter 24

HALF AN HOUR later, Delilah couldn’t stop smiling as they hurried along the trail toward the springs. Her fingers tangled with Claire’s under the trees, and Claire kept releasing these little giggles that made Delilah feel like she was back in high school, but not any kind of high school she’d ever experienced. This high school felt like belonging and friendship and laughter. Delilah didn’t even have those things now, much less back when she was a kid.

There were a million feelings curling in her gut, confusing and addictive. She wasn’t sure what to do with them all other than ignore them, push them down, and focus on the way Claire’s palm felt pressed against hers.

The way Claire seemed . . . happy.

It was a heady sensation, making a beautiful woman smile and laugh like that. So heady, in fact, that when the trees cleared and the small natural pool sparkled in front of them, Ruby squealing as Josh tossed her into the air, Delilah and Claire didn’t let go of each other. Not at first. For a second it felt so . . . normal, to be holding hands in front of other people.

But when Ruby resurfaced, Claire pulled her fingers free. Delilah determined not to let it bother her, the secrecy. Claire was an adult who had a kid, and Delilah knew she was no one’s idea of a dream partner.

She got it.

But as Claire walked away from her and toward the water, kicking off her shoes and sliding her shorts down her lovely thighs, Delilah was starting to think she didn’t like it.

She didn’t like it one bit.

DELILAH SPENT THE rest of the afternoon with Ruby. They swam in the steamy water while Claire spoke in low tones with Josh, Delilah pretending she couldn’t hear the stress in Claire’s voice the whole time. Later, when they got back to camp and changed into dry clothes, she sat with Ruby on a log and showed her how to edit the birdbath photo the girl had taken the night before.

“Whoa,” Ruby said as Delilah adjusted the exposure. “That’s amazing, how much of a difference it makes.”

“Well, the trick is,” Delilah said, fiddling with the saturation, “make it look like you didn’t edit it at all. Figure out what to do so that the natural light, color, tone is all enhanced, not completely altered. Like, look at this part right here.” Delilah pointed to the flower floating in the middle of the dingy water on the screen. “What would you do to make it look better?”

Ruby screwed up her face in thought. “I’d . . . I’d sharpen it.”

Delilah smiled and nudged her shoulder. “Me too.” She tapped the Detail tab and handed the phone over to Ruby. “Go for it.”

The girl played around with the sharpening tool, watching how it changed the photo, before deciding on a setting that outlined the flower a little more clearly against the water.

“What else?” Delilah asked.

Ruby stared down at the phone. “The color. I want it to look kind of . . . faded?”

“Why?”

“Because . . . because it’s sort of a sad picture? An old birdbath, a single flower, dirty water. It’s not . . . it’s not something birds actually use. It’s forgotten.”

Delilah’s mouth parted as she watched the girl frown at her photo, her chest tightening. But not in a bad way. In a way that brought back that feeling she had with Claire earlier, like years reforming themselves. Ruby saw the world in a way that felt familiar to Delilah, an artist’s point of view, and it could be a lonely way to move through life. Ruby wasn’t alone, of course. She had myriad people who cared about her, so she and Delilah were different in that way. But in other ways, with this little birdbath and what it might symbolize, they were alike.

And it was . . . comforting.

Delilah felt a wild urge to reach out and tuck the girl’s damp hair behind her ear. She didn’t. Instead, she just nodded. “Yeah. Fading the color would be really powerful.”

Ruby looked up at her. “Really?”

“Absolutely.” She tapped on the Color tab. “You can adjust the temperature here—like cooler and warmer tones—and the vibrancy, which will leach out that color without making it full-on black-and-white.”

Ruby nodded and started fiddling with the app. Delilah sat back, and when she looked up, she saw Claire watching them from the picnic table. She’d tried to appease Josh by offering to help with the chili he planned to cook, so now she was popping open cans of beans and dumping them into a pot while he seared some meat over the firepit. Claire had a little smile on her face, her eyes soft as she watched Ruby create.

Delilah got up, leaving Ruby to do her thing, and sat across from Claire at the table.

“Thank you for that,” Claire said, prying open another can of black beans.

“Nothing to thank me for,” Delilah said. “It was fun. She’s an amazing kid, Claire.”

Claire beamed. “She is.”

“She’s talented.”

“You think so?”

“Hell yes. She draws really well, and she’s got a good eye, good instincts.”

Claire took a deep breath, but then her smile faded as she looked off toward the trail. “Should we be worried that they’re still not back?”

Delilah frowned, picking up Claire’s phone to look at the time. The hikers had been gone awhile. “Did you text Iris?”

Claire nodded. “And Astrid. Three times. But the signal’s not great out here.”

“Maybe they—”

But she was cut off by the sound of voices coming from the trail. The three hikers appeared, all of them scowling, and they looked . . . well, they looked horrible. Spencer was fully clothed and soaking wet, including his leather sneakers, which made a distinct squelching sound as he stomped into view. Iris had twigs sticking out of her hair, and Astrid’s expression was a thunderstorm.

No, a hurricane.

“Uh-oh,” Claire said, wincing. She stood up and started toward her friends, but stopped when Spencer flung his pack down with a loudly yelled “thank fuck that’s over” and then disappeared into his tent.

“What happened?” Claire asked as Astrid took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes.

“Nothing,” she said. “We just got a little lost.”

“Shit,” Josh said, standing up from where he was squatting by the fire. “Are you okay?”

“Obviously,” Astrid said, her voice dripping with disdain.

Josh lifted his hands as though surrendering and went back to cooking, muttering something under his breath Delilah couldn’t decipher.

“We didn’t get lost,” Iris said. “Spencer, oh great wonder of the outback, got us lost.”

“Iris,” Astrid said, sighing. “Just drop it.”

“It’s not my fault your fiancé can’t stick to a trail,” Iris said. “The path is clearly marked, but oh no, he just had to be Daniel Boone out there.”

“He wanted to explore.”

“That’s how people die in the woods, Astrid, which I clearly told him.”

“Well, we didn’t die.”

“No, we just got a million bug bites, saw a fucking black bear, and ran out of water an hour ago. Real good time exploring.”

“Whoa, whoa, you saw a bear?” Claire asked.

“It was far away,” Astrid said, rolling her eyes. “And it didn’t even hear us.”

Delilah grabbed her water bottle and walked it over to Iris, who snatched it out of her hands and gulped it noisily. Claire offered hers to Astrid, who took it with her eyes focused on the ground.

“The only good part was when Spencer Dearest took a little tumble after he decided he could never be a real man unless he forded the great rivers of the earth.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Iris,” Astrid said. “He was trying to fill up his water bottle.”

“Good way to get cholera, that,” Iris said.

Astrid shoved the bottle back into Claire’s hands and stomped off toward her tent without another word.

“Jesus,” Delilah said, fighting a smile. Nothing was more entertaining than an Astrid Parker off her poised game. But when she turned back around to see Iris glaring at Claire and Claire wringing her hands, her joy evaporated.

“You,” Iris said, teeth gritted. “Left. Me.”

“I’m sorry,” Claire said. “I thought—”

“You left me alone with them, and you know I can’t keep my mouth shut around that shit loafer.”

“What did you say to him?” Claire asked.

“Which time? When he wouldn’t shut up about his precious Italian leather shoes that he wore into the fucking woods or when he kept telling Astrid that there was no shame in using a walking stick since she was pretty out of shape? Or, no, wait, how about the time he started grilling me about why Grant and I aren’t married and don’t have any kids, even though Astrid asked him to drop it, and then he started waxing poetic about how my eggs were drying up?”

“Holy shit, he said that?” Claire asked.

“He said that. I’m just glad Grant had to work today and wasn’t around to hear it.” Iris’s shoulders slumped, all her breath leaving her lungs as she rubbed her forehead.

Delilah felt as though she was missing something here, something important and best-friend-shaped, but she didn’t know how to ask.

“Honey, I’m so sorry,” Claire said, stepping close to Iris and rubbing her arms. “Josh and I fought and I just—”

“I get it,” Iris said, her voice soft now. “But our plan, I fear, has gone to shit.”

“I don’t know,” Delilah said. “Astrid didn’t look happy.”

“Yeah,” Iris said. “With me.”

Delilah tilted her head. “Maybe a little. But it sounds like Spencer was a real jackass. Maybe she’s partly frustrated with him too.”

Iris looped her arm through Claire’s and rested her head on her friend’s shoulder, her anger clearly forgotten. “Maybe. I did find out that she didn’t ask him to come on the trip.”

“She didn’t?” Claire asked.

“Nope. When we got lost, they started arguing because Astrid wanted to turn back and he thought we should keep going. He snapped at her that the trip was her idea, and she snapped back that she hadn’t asked him to come in the first place. That he just had to tag along because he didn’t think she could brave the woods by herself.”

“Oh my god,” Claire said. “He actually said that to her?”

“Well, Astrid isn’t exactly a wilderness girl,” Delilah said.

Iris glare at her. “Not the point. The point is he thinks she’s totally incompetent, and she knows it.”

“Poor Astrid,” Claire said. “What do we do?”

“We just need to talk to her, Claire,” Iris said. “Enough is enough. You and me. Tonight.”

Claire nodded, grabbing onto Iris’s hand. Neither woman looked at Delilah or tried to include her in their BFF plan. And that was just fine with Delilah. Totally and absolutely fine.

She turned away and left them alone to plan out what they’d say to Astrid, and she sat back down next to Ruby to see what beauty the girl had created.

EVERYONE HAD CALMED down by the time they all sat around the fire to eat. Delilah sat with Ruby, who had taken a few more pictures with Delilah’s phone and wanted to show her what she did with them. Delilah was more than happy to disappear into the world of color and angles and tone for a little while. These last few days had been a lot with Claire, and honestly, she could use a break from all the thinking and feeling. Josh sat on Ruby’s other side, listening to his daughter tell Delilah all about her vision for an image of the evergreens against the sky. Delilah kept shooting glances at him, watching him for signs of boredom or disdain—or for signs that he couldn’t keep his eyes off his ex—but he didn’t rise to the occasion. Instead he oohed and aahed over his daughter’s photographs, asking her questions here and there. Mostly, though, he shut up and let Ruby talk, let her have her moment. Delilah would say she was impressed, but she didn’t feel like being so charitable toward him quite yet.

Claire was busy with Iris. They sat close together on a log, talking and laughing, but constantly looking over at Astrid, who was pressed against Spencer’s side at the picnic table while he rambled on and on about all the bug bites he’d incurred on the hike.

Astrid barely responded, her eyes glazed over while she ate.

They’d all been eating for about ten minutes when Delilah noticed a sudden quiet. Spencer had finally shut his mouth, and a frown puckered his golden brows. She watched him shift on the bench as though trying to get comfortable . . . then shift again.

She cleared her throat, trying to get Claire’s attention, but her face was turned away as she and Iris talked in low voices.

She cleared her throat again, then coughed.

“Do you need some water, Delilah?” Astrid asked, her tone already annoyed.

“Yes, thank you so much,” Delilah said, then sipped from her water bottle. Astrid rolled her eyes and went back to staring at her food, while Spencer was most decidedly starting to sweat next to her. He couldn’t sit still, and Delilah watched as he tried to adjust his crotch as surreptitiously as possible.

She coughed again. “Phew, this chili is spicy,” she said loudly.

This, finally, got Claire’s attention. She glanced at Delilah, who widened her eyes meaningfully and ticked her head toward Spencer.

“Really?” Josh said, frowning at his bowl. “I barely added any cayenne to it. Turns out, I didn’t bring as much as I thought I did.”

Delilah choked on a laugh, something giddy and girlish and just plain fun rising up in her chest. Claire covered her mouth with her hand, and Iris watched Spencer with a maniacal sort of glee sparkling in her eyes. Claire had clearly told Iris how she and Delilah had borrowed Josh’s cayenne pepper and sprinkled a generous amount in all four pairs of Spencer’s black Ralph Lauren boxer briefs, and now the three women watched as Spencer squirmed and sweated, wiping his brow with the back of his hand.

“Are you all right?” Astrid asked, finally noticing her fiancé’s discomfort.

He nodded, but his face was quickly turning red, perspiration dripping down his temples.

“You’re not,” Astrid said, alarmed. “What is going on?”

“Just . . . ah, fuck!” This time he didn’t even bother trying to hide the fact that he was pawing at his crotch. He scrambled off the bench, his body jolting this way and that to try and get some relief.

“What the hell?” Josh said.

“Is he okay?” Ruby asked.

“Oh, he’s totally fine,” Delilah said, waving her hand, but then Spencer yanked off his khaki shorts, revealing his boxer briefs and grabbing at himself in desperation.

“Whoa, dude, whoa!” Josh yelled, clapping his hands over Ruby’s eyes.

“Spencer!” Astrid leaped up from the picnic table and pushed at her fiancé’s chest, shoving him toward their tent before he could expose himself further.

“Water! I need water!” he screeched. Astrid grabbed her water bottle from the table and then continued to haul him toward their tent. Once they were safely tucked inside, his moans and groans and what the fucks echoing against the trees, the rest of the party sat in stunned silence for about ten seconds before Iris broke into a fit of laughter so vehement, she fell off the back of the log she was sitting on.

“Oh. My. God,” she said, still cackling while lying on the ground, her arms splayed and her chili bowl safely tucked between her feet.

“What just happened?” Josh said.

Delilah locked eyes with Claire, her own laugh bubbling onto her tongue.

“Well, Josh,” she said, “let’s just say we owe you some cayenne pepper.”

DELILAH COULDN’T SLEEP.

It was too damn quiet, too hot in this tent, and her mind was too damn busy. Claire was next to her, completely conked out and snoring softly, Iris on her other side. Earlier, after it became clear that Astrid and Spencer were not going to emerge from their tent for the rest of the night—and Iris stopped laughing like a villain in a Disney movie—they’d all settled down around the fire as the sun slipped behind the evergreens. They spent the next couple of hours drinking the beer Josh had brought in one of the huge coolers and listening as Josh spun campy ghost stories for Ruby, who didn’t seem the least bit freaked out about a girl who found a spider bite on her cheek after a camping trip and then watched in her mirror at home as the boil burst and a million baby spiders spilled out.

“Josh,” Claire had said at the story’s conclusion, rubbing her cheek absently.

“What?” He smiled, then nudged Ruby, who couldn’t stop laughing and babbling about what an amazing photograph that would’ve made.

“Wouldn’t it, Delilah?” she asked.

“It totally would,” she said, winking at the girl.

Claire shook her head, but her gaze kept drifting toward Astrid’s tent, concern creasing her brow. Iris told her over and over not to worry, that they’d talk to Astrid tomorrow when they all got back to Bright Falls. She nodded, but Delilah could almost feel her stress on her own shoulders, which was a preposterous idea.

Delilah didn’t care if Astrid was pissed about the pepper. And she certainly didn’t care if Spencer was sporting a rather large rash on his crotch. She didn’t care that Iris had sat next to her near the fire and leaned her cheek on Delilah’s shoulder, still hiccupping from laughing so hard, and just . . . stayed like that. Delilah kept expecting her to say something about the pepper, but she didn’t. Iris Kelly simply sat there for a good ten minutes, snuggling with the Ghoul of Wisteria House while she sipped her beer.

Delilah proceeded to chug her own drink, hoping the alcohol would calm her down and give her the courage to shrug Iris’s face away, but it didn’t. If anything, it made her more maudlin, and the word friends kept lighting up in her brain like June fireflies.

Once they all settled into their tents at the ungodly hour of nine thirty and Iris went to pee in the woods, Claire had curled toward her in her sleeping bag, stolen a kiss, and whispered in her ear about sneaking off to the soaking tubs once Iris was asleep.

“She’s impossible to wake up once she’s out,” Claire had said.

Delilah had agreed, eager for . . . something. She felt unsettled and anxious, so maybe an hour with Claire’s skin under her hands and mouth would do the trick. But Claire, exhausted after getting next to no sleep the night before, was completely unconscious within thirty minutes of announcing her midnight hookup plan.

So now here Delilah was, wide awake despite her own lack of sleep, staring at the tent’s roof and nearly suffocating with the heat of three bodies under a June sky. Claire mumbled something and then flopped an arm over Delilah’s stomach, pushing closer to her until her mouth was pressed right up against Delilah’s neck. She was still asleep, her limbs heavy, but Delilah couldn’t stop the slow spread of comfort that wound its way through her veins as she drifted her fingers over Claire’s soft arm.

Finally, she sat up, her heart pumping too fast to sleep now. She wiggled out from under Claire, shucking her sleeping bag off her bare legs, and unzipped the tent. Cool night air flowed in, and she sat there on her knees in the entrance for a second, waiting for her heart to go back to normal.

About twenty feet away, remnants from the fire still glowed. Delilah crawled from the tent, heading toward Josh’s coolers for another beer, but found them locked tight with a complicated mechanism she couldn’t half see in the darkness.

“What the fuck?” she said quietly, squatting down to squint at the lock.

“It’s so the bears don’t get into it.”

“Jesus Christ!” Delilah tumbled backward onto her ass, heart rate definitely pumping at full speed now.

“Nope, just me,” Astrid said languidly, tipping her own beer can at Delilah from where she sat on a log by the fire. “Though that was worth it to see you fall on your butt and screech like a little kid.”

“I did not screech like a little kid,” Delilah said, standing up and brushing the dirt off her sleep shorts.

“You did. It’s okay.” Astrid blinked at her, a blanket around her shoulders, hair slightly less coiffed than it usually was, and a definite intoxicated gleam to her eyes. Of course it could just be the firelight, but her voice was also a bit fuzzy. Delilah had never seen Astrid Parker drunk. Not once, even during their teenage years when she would watch from her window at one in the morning as her stepsister, Iris, and Claire sneaked out on sleepover nights, meeting boys at Bryony Park a half mile down the road from Wisteria House. Astrid always came back stone-cold sober. So did Claire for that matter. Iris, not so much.

“Just lift the bottom latch and then twist it to the left,” Astrid said, motioning toward the cooler.

Delilah watched her for a second before squatting back down and following her stepsister’s directions. Sure enough, the cooler popped open, revealing a few beer cans floating in a sea of watery ice. She grabbed one and locked the cooler again before walking toward the fire. She settled on a log across from Astrid, far enough away to indicate she was not here to talk. There was just nowhere else to go, not in the dark of night with black bears and god knew what else roaming the forest.

“Spencer okay?” she asked, cracking open the beer. The question popped out, untried and impulsive. She wasn’t sure what Astrid suspected about Spencer’s little, er, problem from earlier. The pepper was odorless and was hard to see against the black cotton of his boxers, especially in the fading sunlight. It would probably look like a little bit of dirt if one peered closely. Either way, Delilah expected at least some backlash, narrowed eyes and some snarky retort, because that’s how the two of them had always interacted, even if Delilah had simply asked about the weather. But Astrid didn’t do any of that. She just sighed, took another swallow of beer, and shrugged.

Delilah watched her, brain automatically calculating what to say next to get under Astrid’s skin, to piss her off, annoy her, passive-aggressively guilt her over one thing or another, all her usual mechanisms for interacting with her stepsister.

She came up with nothing. Astrid looked small, lost even, shoulders rounded and purple half-moons snuggled under her eyes. Nothing a little concealer wouldn’t fix, but still. Delilah couldn’t remember a time she’d seen Astrid look so disheveled.

Her fingers itched for her camera or her phone, the vision of Astrid looking like a character from a horror movie—at least by Astrid’s own standards—almost too heady to resist. She didn’t move though. After all these damned emotions from the last few days, she found she didn’t have the clarity of mind for wicked-stepsister games tonight.

So she didn’t play them. She drank her beer and let the cool summer breeze slide over her skin. She stared into the fire and tried to pretend Astrid wasn’t even there. This proved impossible, however, as in the absence of any bitchy banter, Delilah’s mind filled with all the things that led back to Astrid in one way or another—Claire, Iris, Ruby, the wedding and the money she’d be paid for it, even the show at the Whitney, which just reminded her how desperate she was to be something, someone in this world. Someone who mattered and who people remembered, who people wondered about and sought out, even if they were just strangers chasing the emotions her photographs evoked.

Usually, this line of thinking led to a steely resolve—produce mind-blowing pieces for the Whitney, work harder, think more creatively, forge more contacts with artists and gallery owners, be more, do more, don’t stop until that piece sells or her vision for another series comes to fruition. Now, though, Ruby’s wide-eyed wonder filled her thoughts. The girl’s awe, excitement over creating. Claire slid right in there too, the way she felt in Delilah’s arms, the sounds she made when Delilah touched her, the way she drifted toward Delilah even in her sleep.

Which had to have been accidental. Claire was a snuggler—Delilah knew that from their first night together—and Claire had simply been facing Delilah’s direction. She would’ve burrowed against Iris had she been turned the other way.

Wouldn’t she?

Fuck. Delilah rubbed her forehead and gulped her beer. Fresh air, it seemed, was doing very little to get rid of these goddamn feelings.

“What’s wrong?” Astrid asked.

Delilah’s head snapped up. “What? Nothing.”

Now came the quintessential narrowing of eyes. “Bullshit.”

“You’re a real connoisseur of swear words lately.”

“Hard to hold them in around you.”

Delilah smiled at her across the fire. “Me? Are you sure about that?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you’re out here in the cold drinking a beer, for god’s sake. What did you call it once? A loaf of bread in a can?”

“That’s just a fact. Have you seen the carb count on these things?”

“Meanwhile,” Delilah went on, “your Prince Charming is sleeping under the stars cuddled up in his feather duvet.”

“He didn’t bring a feather duvet.”

“Okay, fine, a silk duvet. Point is, maybe something else is pulling out all your shits and fucks.”

She waited for Astrid’s retort, something supremely bitchy and most likely demeaning, but she met Delilah’s proclamation with nothing but silence. Her stepsister swirled her beer in the can, eyes downcast. It was the perfect situation, really, to keep annoying her, poking at her like a sleeping bear. Maybe it was the liquid bread, but instead, Delilah found herself suddenly wondering what Claire would say or do in this situation. It was a strange thought. Even stranger, she actually knew what Claire would say and do. She’d be sweet. She’d be comforting. She’d put Astrid’s happiness before her own. She’d care.

And that had never been how Delilah and Astrid operated.

“Do you remember when my mother had the sex talk with us?” Astrid asked.

“Oh god.” That was definitely not what she was expecting. “Why would you bring up such a horrible memory?”

A tiny smile ghosted across Astrid’s mouth. “We were, what? Twelve?”

“And already knew about sex from Bright Falls’s inept sex education curriculum. Thank god for the cheap romance novels our babysitter always seemed to leave stuck in the couch cushions, is all I’m saying.”

Astrid laughed. “Oh my god. I just remember that one where the courtesan or whoever liked to tie her lover to the queen’s throne.”

“And then make him call her Your Majesty? If that didn’t teach us all we needed to know, I don’t know what would.”

“Mom’s version was a little different.”

Delilah sat up straight, holding her beer can like a teacup and sticking out her pinkie. “Now, dears,” she said with an affected British accent that sounded nothing like Isabel Parker-Green, “be sure you always use the little girl’s room after being intimate, and for goodness’ sake, don’t let him talk you into getting on top.”

Astrid laughed loudly, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “She did not say that last part.”

“She was thinking it. Trust me.”

Astrid’s smile faded. “Yeah, she probably was.” Then her voice took on a ghostly quality, eyes glazing over. “ ‘It’s not always pleasant, but it makes your husband happy, so I count it time well spent.’ ”

“What?”

“That’s what she said.” Her gaze met Delilah’s. “You don’t remember that part?”

“Not verbatim,” Delilah said. “Plus, by twelve years old, I already had a good feeling that the word husband would never apply to me, so I probably just zoned out whenever she went down that road.”

Astrid nodded. “She said it. And I’ve never forgotten it.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Delilah said, standing up and moving to a log next to her stepsister. “She really said that? In those words?”

Another nod.

“You know how disturbing this is considering she was married to my father, right?”

Astrid winced but smiled at Delilah, something like camaraderie blooming between them. Delilah felt suddenly young and hopeful, which was just silly. She wasn’t that young anymore, and she’d never associated Astrid with hope by any stretch of the imagination.

“Sorry,” Astrid said. “Yeah, that’s weird, but . . . I can’t stop thinking about it for some reason.”

“So Spencer’s terrible in bed. Is that what this is about?”

Astrid groaned. “No, he’s—”

“Because you know that’s bullshit right? That a woman has to have sex with her man—or any partner—to keep them happy?”

“I know. It’s not about the actual sex; it’s the spirit behind what she said. Like I have to . . .” She trailed off, staring out into the space in front of her. Firelight danced in her wide eyes, and Delilah swore she saw a tiny swell of tears, but Astrid blinked it away before she could be sure.

“Like you have to what?” Delilah asked softly.

Astrid looked down, trailed her finger along the beer can’s rim. “Say yes. All the time, no matter what. Be calm and poised and controlled and just say yes.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds, Astrid’s confession hovering between them. Delilah thought back to their childhood, their teen years, all the attention Isabel lavished upon Astrid with her grades and track, her monthly trips to the salon, balanced diets and French lessons, debate team in high school and early admission and a bachelor’s degree in business. All the things Isabel had never bothered to push for Delilah. Well, that wasn’t strictly true. Isabel had hounded her about her homework, made sure she ate a decent dinner every night, but regarding everything else, right down to Delilah’s wild hair and disdain for anything resembling a sport, Isabel let her be. She accepted Delilah’s refusals so easily, like they were a relief and she could focus her attention where it really mattered, on her perfect Astrid, who never put up a fuss about slipping into a satin gown and parading around a fundraiser like a princess.

Astrid was right. She never said no. But Delilah had always assumed she’d never wanted to.

“Astrid—” Delilah started, but her stepsister cut her off when she stood up abruptly.

“You don’t care about any of this,” Astrid said, waving her hand and offering Delilah a plasticky smile. She wrapped the blanket more tightly around her shoulders and swept off toward her tent before Delilah could say anything else.