The Last House Guest Page 10

  I sorted through these forgotten pictures now, trying to find the right fit for the piece. God, she would hate this. In each photo, she was either too young-looking or too happy. Too disconnected to the purpose of the article. They would want something to appeal to everyone, insider and outsider alike. She had to appear both approachable and untouchable.

  In the end, I settled on her college graduation picture. She held the diploma in her hand, but her head was tipped back slightly, like she was starting to laugh. It was perfectly Sadie. And it was perfectly tragic.

  This photo captured the beginning of something. It was on the nose, but it would cut hard. The beginning of a laugh, of her life. Something that I now felt had been taken from her.

  And then I placed the rest of the photos back inside the box, hidden within the closet, where they would remain alongside all the other people I had lost.

  * * *

  SADIE JANETTE LOMAN TO be honored in Littleport memorial

  My fingers tapped against the edge of the keyboard, waiting for the words to come. I stared at the photo of her in the graduation gown, the blue sky behind her over the dome of the building.

  Sadie Loman may have spent nine months out of the year in Connecticut, but Littleport was her favorite place in the world.

  She’d told me that the first time we met. And now she was about to become a part of its history.

  For a small town, we had a long past that lived in our collective memory. It was a place filled with ghosts, from old legends and bedtime stories alike. The fishermen lost at sea, the first lighthouse keeper—their cries in the night echoed in the howling wind. Benches in memory of, in honor of; boxes moved from home to home. We carried the lost with us here.

  It was a place for risk-takers, a place that favored the bold.

  I was trying to find a place for Sadie in this history. Something to be part of.

  She was bold, of course she was. But that wasn’t what people wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that she loved the ocean, her family, this place.

  What I would say if I were telling the truth:

  Sadie would hate everything about this. From the bell, to the quote, to the tribute. She’d sit on the rocks, looking down on the beach where we would all be gathered, holding a drink in her hand and laughing. Littleport was unsympathetic and unapologetic, and so was she. As much a product of this place as any of us.

  She might demand that she be forgiven. She might compensate for a perceived wrong with an over-the-top counterbalance. She might know it, deep inside, when she had gone too far.

  But Sadie Loman would never apologize. Not for who she was and not for what she’d done.

  * * *

  I’M SORRY. I WISH it didn’t have to be this way.

  Two simple sentences. The note they found. Crumpled in the trash.

  What was the chance that all of this was a mistake? That the police, and her family, had seen one thing and believed another?

  What were the odds that Sadie had chosen those very same words, the ones I had used earlier that summer—the ones I had written myself, folded in half, and left on the surface of her desk for her?

  SUMMER

       2017

  The Plus-One Party

  9:30 p.m.

  It happened all at once. The light, the sound, the mood.

  The power had gone out. The music, the house lights, the blue glow from under the water of the pool. Everything was darkness.

  Inside, there were too many bodies all pressed together. My ears still buzzed from the music. Someone stepped on my foot. I heard the sound of glass breaking, and I hoped it wasn’t the window. Everything became sound and scent. Low whispers, nervous laughter, sweat and the whiff of someone’s hair product as they walked by, and then a spiced cologne.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, a breath on my neck. I froze, disoriented. And then I heard a scream. Everything stopped—the whispers, the laughter, the people brushing up against one another. The light from a phone turned on across the room, and then another, until I pulled my cell out of my back pocket and did the same.

  “She’s all right!” someone yelled from outside. Everyone shifted toward the back of the house.

  I pushed my way through the crowd, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Outside, the clouds covered the stars and the moonlight. There was only the beam of the lighthouse cutting through the sky above, swallowed up in the clouds.

  It was Parker, of course, who had her, surrounded by a semicircle of onlookers. At first I could see only a dark shape curled up in Parker’s arms. He rubbed her back as she coughed up water. “Okay, you’re all right,” he was saying to her, and then she turned her face up. Ellie Arnold.

  Sadie had known her forever, found her annoying. Said she would do anything for attention, and so my first thought was neither generous nor sympathetic.

  But when I crouched down beside her, she was so shaken, so miserable-looking, that I knew she hadn’t done it on purpose.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  She was soaked, clothes clinging to her skin, trembling.

  “She couldn’t see,” Parker answered for her. “She lost her place.”

  “Someone pushed me,” Ellie said, arms folded around herself. “When the pool lights went out.” She coughed and half sobbed. Her long hair was stuck to her face, her neck.

  “All right. You’re okay.” I repeated Parker’s words and smiled to myself, glad for the dark. The pool was four feet deep all the way across—she was never in any real danger, despite her present demeanor. All she had to do was plant her feet.

  I was more worried about the sound of her scream carrying in the night.

  One of Ellie’s friends finally made it through the crowd. “Oh my God,” she said, hand to her mouth. She reached down for Ellie’s hand.

  “Get her inside,” Parker said, helping her stand. Ellie wobbled slightly, then leaned on her friend as the crowd parted for them.

  “There are plenty of towels in the bathrooms, under the sinks,” I said. “Probably a robe somewhere, too.”

  Parker looked back toward the house. An amber glow flickered in the window—someone’s lighter, the flame touched to the wick of a candle.

  “I’ll go take a look,” I said. From here, we couldn’t tell whether the power had gone out in the entire town or just on our street. If it was just our street, I’d have to make a call, and this party would be over. Better if it was a town-wide outage. Best if the house had been tripped on its own from the speakers and the lights all running at once—grid overload.

  Inside, someone had found the rest of the candles and lined them along the windowsills, placing the pillar from the mantel in the center of the kitchen island. The guy with the lighter finished circling the downstairs, and now everything was subdued in pockets of dim light. The faces were still in shadows, but I could see my way to the breaker panel.

  The door to the master bedroom down the hall was ajar—at least the commotion had managed to clear out the people inside.

  The breaker panel was inside the hall closet, and I used my phone to light up the grid. I let out a sigh of relief—this was something I could fix. Every circuit was tripped, in the off position. I flipped them back one at a time, watching as the lights came back, as people looked around the room, momentarily disoriented by where they found themselves.

  At the last switch, the sound from the speakers blared unexpectedly, and my heart jumped.

  “Get someone to turn that down,” I said to the guy beside me. The same one who’d accused Greg Randolph of having a fling with Carys Fontaine. “And unplug some of those lights.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said with a lopsided salute.

  I made my way into the master bathroom, where two of Ellie’s friends were hovering around her. Ellie Arnold was clearly both mortified and shaken, and for the first time I doubted Sadie’s impression of her.

  “Hey,” I said, “everything okay in here?” Someone had found the towels, half
of which were heaped on the floor beside Ellie’s wet clothes. She was wrapped in a plush ivory robe, drying her hair with a matching towel. There were dark smudges under her eyes where her makeup had run. The floor was slick, the water puddling in sections, the mirror fogged. She must’ve taken a quick shower to warm up.

  Ellie shook her head, not making eye contact. “Some asshole’s idea of a joke.” She leaned toward the open door. “Well, fuck you!” she yelled.

  “Jesus,” I said, half under my breath, though there was no one in the bedroom to hear her yelling.

  The taller of her friends grimaced, shared a wide-eyed look with the other. “Calm down, El.”

  “The power was out,” I said. “No one could see. I’m sure it was an accident.” Even though I knew attempting to reason with someone fortified by an unknown quantity of alcohol was a lost cause.

  But Ellie pressed her lips together. Her shoulders slumped, the sharpness subsiding. “I just want to go home.”

  I looked from face to face, debating whether anyone in this room was sober enough to give her a lift, before deciding not. “I’ll see if anyone out there can take you.”

  Her face didn’t change. She stared at the wall, her eyes unfocused, until I realized that home meant somewhere outside Littleport, wherever she’d be heading tomorrow.

  “Come on,” the shorter friend said, arm on her shoulder. “You’ll feel better in dry clothes. Me and Liv have half the luggage in the trunk. Let’s see if we can find you something?”

  That got a faint smile from her, and the three of them walked out of the bathroom together, despite the fact that Ellie was in nothing more than a bathrobe.

  Maybe Sadie was right after all.

  I grabbed a few garbage bags from the kitchen, using one to store Ellie’s wet clothes, which she’d absently left behind. I stuffed the used towels, splotched with grime, into the other bag, then pulled a few more from under the sink to clean the water and dirty footprints left behind.

  “Don’t do that, Avie.” I turned around to see Parker standing in the entrance of the bathroom, watching me. “Leave it.”

  His eyes had gone dark, a sheen of sweat over his face, his brown hair falling over his forehead. He smelled like chlorine, and his shirt clung to his chest from the impression of Ellie’s wet body.

  “Someone has to do it,” I said, waiting for him to leave. Instead, I heard the door clicking shut.

  He took the garbage bag from my hand, finished stuffing the dirty laundry inside. We were too close. With the humidity of the room, it was hard to take a deep breath, to think clearly.

  “Do you think I’m a good person?” he asked, his face so close I could see it only in sections—his eyes, the scar through his eyebrow, the ridge of his cheekbones, the set of his mouth.

  Everything about Parker was hypothetical until moments like this, when there was some crack in his facade. Show me a chip in the demeanor and watch me fall. I never met a flaw I didn’t love. The hidden insecurity, the brief uncertainty. The waver behind the arrogance.

  Here’s the thing: I didn’t want Parker at first. Not in all the years I knew who he was before we met, and not when I first saw him in that house. Not really until Sadie said I couldn’t have him. I knew it was cliché, that I was no different from so many others. But there was something about that—some universal appeal to the thing you could not have. Something that, for a certain type of person, settles in and redoubles desire.

  But it was moments like this that focused everything—like I was seeing something that he kept hidden from everyone else. Something shared, just for me.

  I pushed the hair back from his face, and he reached for my hand.

  “Sorry,” I said. But he didn’t pull back. We stayed like that, mere inches apart, the room too humid, my vision unfocused at the edges.

  Someone knocked on the door, and I jumped. Imagining Luce seeing us in here. “Occupied,” I called, standing up.

  Someone groaned on the other side, but it was a man. Still, it was enough to shock us both to our senses.

  Parker’s fingers were looped around my wrist, and he let out a slow sigh. “One day I’ll probably marry Luciana Suarez and have beautiful children that are occasional assholes, but they’ll be good people.”

  “Yeah, okay, Parker.” I stepped back, my vision clearing. I thought he shouldn’t be discussing being a good person while standing too close to me in a bathroom while the woman he was discussing marrying waited somewhere on the other side, but that was just part of his allure.

  “Oh,” he said, shaking his head. “I came here to tell you. There’s some guy out there looking for you.” He nodded toward the door. “You go first. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  I cracked open the door, making sure there was no one waiting on the other side, where a rumor could take hold and grow. When I saw the room was empty, I slipped out.

  Before I shut the door again, Parker called after me: “Be careful, Avery.”

  SUMMER

       2018

  CHAPTER 11

  Friday morning, quarter to eleven, and Parker’s car was still at the house. At least I assumed it was. I hadn’t seen it pull out from the garage, and I’d been watching for it since I woke up.

  He could be walking, though, down Landing Lane to the entrance of Breaker Beach. I wouldn’t be able to see if he’d left on foot from the guesthouse. I opened the living room windows surrounding my desk and tried to listen, so I’d hear a door closing or his footsteps on the gravel, disappearing down the road.

  I’d pushed back a meeting with the general contractor for one of the new homes until Monday. I’d canceled the window replacement for the Blue Robin, telling the vendor we’d have to reschedule. My email sat unanswered; phone calls went unreturned. I did not want to be distracted and miss my chance.

  By eleven, I still hadn’t heard him, and I started to wonder if he’d been home at all this morning. But at five after the hour, I finally heard the garage door sliding open, the faint turnover of an engine, the wheels slowly easing down the driveway before fading in the distance.

  I waited another five minutes just to make sure he was gone.

  * * *

  I STILL HAD THE key from the lockbox. I could’ve sneaked in any of the doors—front or back or side—but thought it would look least suspicious to go straight in the front. I had already come up with an excuse if seen: I was checking the electricity after we’d had a few outages, before calling in a service appointment.

  After I entered, I locked the door behind me. The house looked much the same as when Parker arrived. Barely lived in. A single person could leave such little impression here. The house was the definition of sprawling, with large areas of open space. Places to sit and watch the water.

  I figured I’d be able to spot a box of Sadie’s things pretty easily down here.

  At first glance, it seemed that Parker hadn’t left her things in any of the common rooms downstairs. His coffee mug was on the counter, an empty carton of eggs beside it.

  A pile of neatly stacked mail sat on the corner of the island, most addressed to the Loman Family Charitable Foundation. Parker must’ve retrieved it earlier in the day—their local mail was always held at the post office until they returned. The envelopes had been slit open, with the receipts and thank-you notes for your continued support separated into piles. Each from local causes—the police department building fund, the Littleport downtown rehabilitation project, the nature preservation initiative. All their generosity reduced to a sterile pile of paper.

  The only other disturbance to the perfection were the throw pillows on the couch, where Parker had been sitting when we were here together that first night.

  I headed upstairs next, taking the wide curving staircase. At the right end of the hall was Parker’s bedroom, which I checked first. All the bedrooms upstairs faced the ocean, with sweeping floor-to-ceiling doors that led to private balconies.

  Parker’s room looked as it always had�
��bed unmade, empty luggage in the closet, drawers half closed. There was no box in the closet. Just a couple pairs of shoes and the faintly swaying hangers, disturbed by my presence. Same for under the bed and the dresser surfaces. I opened a few of the drawers to check, but it was just the summer clothes he’d brought with him.

  The next room was the master, and it appeared untouched, as expected. Still, I did a cursory sweep, looking for anything out of place. But it was immaculate, with a separate sitting area, a bright blue chair beside a stack of books that seemed to be picked more for design than reading desire, all in shades of ivory and blue.

  Sadie’s room was at the other end of the hall upstairs. Her door was open, which made me think someone had been in here recently. But nothing looked out of place. I knew that the police had been through here, and I wondered what else they had taken. It was hard to know what might be missing if you didn’t know what you were looking for.

  Her bedspread was smooth and untouched, the corner of the beechwood headboard where she usually hung her purse now empty.

  I’d assumed her family had taken her personal items, along with her clothes, back to Connecticut. But the back of my neck prickled. There was just enough of Sadie left behind for me to feel her still. To look over my shoulder and imagine her finding me here. Sneaking up on me, light on her feet, hands over my eyes—think fast. My heart in my stomach even as she was already laughing.

  I turned around, and the air seemed to move. It was the layout. The acoustics. A design that showcased the clean lines but also revealed your presence.

  The first time I’d slept over here, I’d woken to the sound of a door closing somewhere down the hall. Sadie had been asleep beside me, one arm thrown over her head—completely still. But I thought I saw a flash of light through the glass doors to her balcony. I’d slipped out of bed, felt a floorboard pop beneath my feet.