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I emerge from the dressing room—ignoring my mother and Mrs. Wells’ shocked faces—and launch myself at my favorite person in the world aside from Ford and my sisters.

“Kappy!” I cry, throwing my arms around her and trying not to burst into tears—even if she can't help me, I'm just so glad she's here.

She squeezes me tight. “Apparently, I'm just in time, too. You can't get married in that dress.” She leans close and adds in a whisper, “Or at all, if you don't want to.”

“I don't,” I whisper back, then pull away to introduce her to Mrs. Wells.

“We didn't know you were coming, Kappy,” says my mother with a bit of ice in her tone.

“Small world,” Kappy says. “My aunt and uncle own this store. They told me Grace had an appointment.”

I assume it's a bold-faced lie, but Kappy says it with so much confidence that no one bats an eye.

“Is this the next dress?” Kappy asks, lifting a simple A-line satin gown off the rack. “Come on, Grace. That one you’re wearing is a microaggression. I'll help you get it off. Be right back!”

She's pulling me into the dressing room before anyone has a moment to object.

I hug her the moment the door is closed, though I'm fighting tears once again. “I'm so glad you're here.”

“No more hugs,” Kappy hisses. “Focus. You're being forced to marry this guy, right?”

“More or less. They were going to force me, so I agreed. If I run, they'll come after me, most likely, just to minimize the damage. Did you tell Ford I’m back?”

She laughs. “Yes, and I regret it. He’s ready to ride in here like Jamie rescuing Claire from being burned at the stake. I’m doing my best to make him hold off.”

Warmth spreads through my chest, and the corners of my mouth slip upward. “Is he okay? I really⁠—”

“Babe,” says Kappy, gripping my arms. “I love how in love the two of you are, but we’ve gotta focus here because we’ve got two minutes at most. What’s your plan?”

Argh. She’s right. My mother and Mrs. Wells are probably already wondering how they can kick Kappy out of here.

I exhale heavily. “I don’t know. Agreeing to marry Tommy got me this far, but I didn’t realize they’d be keeping me under lock and key until it happened. I could run, but that’s a big risk. They might come after me. They’ll definitely never let me see my sisters again if I do. And this shit with my dad…I mean, if things happened with Leila like the Kendalls said⁠—”

“They did,” Kappy says. “I spoke to Ford. I guess Leila got caught messing around with her boyfriend, and your father made her, uh, do things for him in order to keep her scholarship and Ford’s. She did them for two months—he even made her show up at the school during summer break—until she lost it. She said she just couldn't face an entire school year of it.”

I've seen the worst in my father and yet a part of me had hoped it wasn't as bad as it sounded. Instead, it’s worse. Months. Months spent submitting to a man her father’s age, just to keep their scholarships.

Ford didn’t vandalize my house or set fire to it, but I’d no longer blame him if he had. His sister suffered, in part because of him. And there I was that day in the hall, insisting she had it coming. No wonder he snapped.

She tried to kill herself because of what my father did to her. I wonder who else he's driven that far. Mrs. Humboldt? Kelly Maguire? My mother?

“Why hasn’t she pressed charges?” I ask. “If she’d just go to the cops, my father would go to jail and the Wells would want nothing to do with me.”

It would solve nearly everything, aside from the ways my mom and my sisters would suffer from the fallout.

“Ford has been begging her to do it for a year and she won't. She doesn't want the whole world knowing what happened to her—can you picture what the past year would have been like for her if the Kendalls had turned on her? Though by telling Larabeth she basically ensured that the world will know anyway.”

“I can't let him get away with it,” I say.

“I don't think you'll have to,” she replies. “I've got the DNA.”

My eyes widen. “And?”

“Grace,” she says, “Faith has thirty-one percent of your DNA.”

I frown. “That seems…high. Do second cousins share that much DNA?”

She winces. “It should be around six percent if she was only a second cousin. It would be fifty if she was a full sibling.”