The Last House Guest Page 14

  Depending on the source, there was either a police car outside, or an officer out front, or one of the guests had received a call in warning. But the message was clear: Someone was coming.

  Okay, okay. I closed my eyes, trying to focus, trying to think. Parker’s family owned the house; Ellie Arnold was fine. I scanned the sea of faces until I saw her—there—across the room, half in the kitchen, half in the living room. Hair wet and now braided over her shoulder, face clean of makeup, in a loose-fitting blouse and ripped jeans that hung a little low on her hips. Enough to give away that they weren’t hers. But she was here, and she was fine. Laughing, at that moment, at something Greg Randolph was saying.

  I let myself out the front door, the hinges squeaking behind me as I pulled it shut, in hopes of interceding if the police had already arrived. I’d explain what had happened, retrieve a safe and unharmed Ellie Arnold, a witness or two, and keep everything outside.

  But the night was empty. It had dropped at least five degrees in the last hour, maybe more, and the leaves rustled overhead in the wind. There was no police car that I could see—not with the lights on, anyway—and there was no officer on the doorstep. Just the crickets in the night, the soft glow of the porch light, and nothing but darkness as I stared into the trees.

  I walked down the front porch steps, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the night so I could see farther down the road. The stars shone bright through the shifting clouds above. It was part of the town bylaws to keep the lights dim, to opt for fewer street lamps rather than more, leaving the town untouched, poetic, one with the surroundings, both above and below. It was why we had the dark winding roads in the mountains. The beach lit only by bonfire. The lighthouse, the sole beacon in the night.

  From the edge of the front lawn, I saw a quick flash of red at the end of the road. Brake lights receding and then disappearing. I kept my focus on the distance, just to make sure the car wasn’t coming back. That it hadn’t been turning around and parking. I stared for a long string of moments, but no one reappeared.

  My hope: Maybe the police did come. Maybe they got the call and drove up the street and realized this was just a party, just a house. The Plus-One party, they must’ve realized. And when they saw the street and realized the house belonged to the Lomans, they left it well enough alone.

  Worst case, I had the key for Sunset Retreat. I could move everyone if needed.

  Back inside, I saw exactly what needed to be done, could see everything playing out, three steps forward. The liquor coursing through my veins only heightened my sense of control. I had this. Everything was okay.

  “Hey, can I talk to you?” Connor shifted a step so he was blocking my path. His breath was so close I shivered. His hands hovered just beside my upper arms, like he had meant to touch me before thinking better of it.

  Connor standing before me could go one of two ways. There could be the slide to nostalgia, where he turned his head to the side and I caught a glimpse of the old him, the old us; or there could be the slide to irritation—this feeling that he had secrets I could no longer understand, an exterior I could not decipher. An entire second life he was living in the gap.

  He held my gaze like he could read my thoughts.

  Look again, and now I couldn’t see Connor without picturing Sadie. The arch of her spine, the smile she’d give, the scent of her conditioner as her hair fell over his face. And him—the way he’d look at her. The crooked grin when he was trying to hide what he was thinking, giving way as she leaned closer.

  I started to turn but felt his hand drop onto my shoulder. I shrugged it off, more violently than necessary. “Don’t,” I said. This was the first time we’d touched in over six years, but there was something about it that felt so familiar—the emotion snapping between us.

  He stood there, eyes wide and hands held up in surrender.

  * * *

  SIX YEARS EARLIER, CONNOR had found me on Breaker Beach kissing another guy. I’d stumbled after him, clothes and skin covered in wet sand, soles of my feet numb from the night. I reached a hand for his shoulder, to get him to stop, to wait. But when he spun, I didn’t recognize his expression. His voice dropped lower, and a chill ran down my spine. “If you wanted me to see this,” he said, “mission accomplished. But you could’ve just said, Hey, Connor, I don’t think this is going to work out.”

  I’d licked my lips, the salt water and the shame mixing together, and, my head still swimming, said, “Hey, Connor, I don’t think this is going to work out.” Trying to get him to laugh, to crack a smile and see how ridiculous the whole thing was.

  But all he heard was the cruelty, and he nodded once, leaving me there.

  The first time I saw him after that night was at Faith’s, when she broke her arm. The second time, at the bonfire at Breaker Beach, where Sadie found me and our friendship began. After that, for a small town, it had been surprisingly easy to avoid each other. I kept away from the docks and the inland edge of town, where he lived. He kept away from my grandmother’s place at Stone Hollow and from the world the Lomans occupied—the orbit in which I soon found myself.

  After a while, it was less an active process than a passive one. We didn’t call, didn’t seek each other out, so that eventually, we didn’t even nod in passing on the street. Like a wound that had thickened as it healed. Nothing but rough skin where nerve endings once existed.

  But on this night, at the Plus-One party, when I’d just learned he’d been seen with Sadie earlier in the week, it was harder to feel nothing when his hand dropped on my shoulder. Suddenly, his interest in Sadie felt like a personal slight meant to hurt me.

  And maybe it was. But it worked both ways; Sadie knew exactly who Connor was. We’d crossed paths a few times over the years. I’d glanced in his direction, then looked away, and she’d done the same; when I’d fallen silent, so had she, in a show of understanding. Though maybe I had understated his importance. She should’ve read it on my face, seen me then as I had seen her. I felt my teeth grinding, because she must have. She must have known. And she’d done it anyway. Taking everything, even this—owning it all.

  Connor looked around the party and shook his head to himself. “I should go. I don’t belong here,” he said, but I had to lean in to hear him. Could feel the blade press against my ribs the closer I got.

  Then leave, I wanted to say. Before Sadie gets here. Before I have to see it, too.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. What I should’ve said the first time but never did.

  Connor frowned but didn’t respond.

  I heard voices from the second floor, the sound of something dropping. “I have to . . .” I gestured toward the staircase, turning away. “Just—” But the word was lost in the chaos, and when I turned around to try again, he was already gone.

  Upstairs, there were three doors set back from the open loft. The door to the bedroom on the left was open but the light was off. Inside, a heap of jackets and bags were piled on top of the bed. The second bedroom door was closed, though a strip of light escaped from the gap between the door and the floorboard. In between the two rooms, the door to the bathroom was slightly ajar, and I heard a whispered “Shit.”

  I pushed the door open farther, and a young woman inside jumped back from the mirror. “Oh,” she said.

  “Sorry. You okay?”

  She had her hand over her eye, and she leaned over the sink again, undisturbed by my presence. It took me a second to realize she was trying to remove a contact lens. “It’s stuck, I can feel it.” She talked to me like I was someone she knew. Maybe she was expecting someone.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, taking her wrists in my own. “Let me see.” I had done this once before, for Faith. When she got contacts our freshman year of high school. Back when we trusted each other with the most fragile parts of ourselves. You poked my eye. No, you moved. Try again. And again, and again.

  This girl held perfectly still until it was over, then blinked rapidly, giving me the type of sudden hug that simu
ltaneously revealed her blood alcohol content.

  “Thanks, Avery,” she said, but I still had no idea who she was. I blinked, and she was Faith again, falling away from me. But then she came into focus—dark brown hair, wide brown eyes, somewhere in her twenties, probably, though I wouldn’t bet money on it. I didn’t know whether she was a resident or a visitor. In which context she had heard my name. I couldn’t orient myself here. Not tonight, not when we were all playing at people who didn’t exist.

  Maybe it was seeing Connor. My past and present blurring. The old me and the new me, both fighting for the surface.

  “Are you—” I began, just as something banged against the wall, hard enough to rattle the mirror.

  Her head darted to the side. “That’s the second time that happened,” she said. We held perfectly still, listening. Low voices, growing louder.

  I realized that was what I’d heard from downstairs—not the sound of an object hitting the floor but something else. A door slamming shut; a fist making contact with the wall.

  I stepped out into the loft, listening, and the girl continued on, down the stairs. Light on her feet, like a ghost. Not interested in the secrets hidden behind closed doors.

  Something scratched against the loft window, and I jumped, peering out into the darkness. But it was just a branch brushing against the siding.

  I headed to the closed bedroom door, trying to work up my nerve to knock. I didn’t know what I’d be walking into.

  As I approached, the door swung open, and a woman barreled straight out of the room.

  It took me a moment to realize it was Luce, wild and unlike herself. Up close, her eyes looked dark and imperfect, the makeup running; her lipstick smeared, and the strap of her top slipped halfway down her shoulder.

  She slammed the door shut behind her as she readjusted her top, backpedaling when she saw me there. Then her face split, and she laughed as she leaned in close. “What is it about this place?” she said, and I was so sure I’d smell something foreign on her, something strange and unfamiliar that had taken her over. Something that had stripped the facade and made her one of us. Her eyes locked on mine.

  Right then I thought she could see everything: me and Parker in the bathroom; me and Connor by the stairs; every thought I’d had, all summer long. I didn’t know whether she meant the party or all of Littleport, but at that moment, it felt like there wasn’t any difference between the two.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, and she laughed, deep and sharp. She took a step back, and it was like the last minute hadn’t happened at all. She was Luciana Suarez, unshakable.

  “You would know better than me, Avery.”

  I closed my eyes, could feel Parker standing over me in the bathroom, watching. “Let me explain—”

  Her eyes sharpened, as if something new had just shaken loose and become visible. “You, too?” she asked. “My God.” She leaned in closer, her lips pulling back into a grin or a grimace. “I have never seen so many liars in one place.”

  SUMMER

       2018

  CHAPTER 16

  In the end, I backed out of the driveway of One Landing Lane with nothing more than I’d arrived with six years earlier: a laptop on the seat beside me; the box of the lost and my luggage tossed into the backseat; the remaining items from the kitchen, bathroom, and desk hastily thrown into a few plastic garbage bags that fit on the floorboard. I didn’t even have to open my trunk.

  * * *

  SADIE’S SERVICE THE YEAR earlier had been in Connecticut, an unseasonably warm day with a traitorous bright blue sky.

  I’d picked my outfit because it had been hers first, because I could feel her beside me as I slipped my arms into the short bell sleeves of the dress, could imagine the dark gray fabric brushing against her legs. I thought it would help me blend in. But I felt too large in her clothes, the zipper cinching at my waist, the hemline more festive on me than serious, as it had been on her. I felt the sideways glance from the couple beside me, and the fabric prickled my skin.

  I heard once that you can’t dream a face until you’ve seen it in real life. That the figures in dreams are either real people or, blurry and unformed, things you can’t recall when you wake.

  But that day it felt like I must’ve dreamed up the whole town. Row after row of flat, stiff expressions. Everywhere I looked, a sense of déjà vu. Names on the tip of my tongue. Faces I must’ve conjured from Sadie’s stories of home.

  When everyone reconvened at the Lomans’ stately brick-front home after the service, there was an odd familiarity to it, like something I almost knew. Maybe it was the way Bianca had decorated, a similar footprint to the homes. Or a familiar scent. The background of photos throughout the years that had pieced together subconsciously in my mind. So that I could open a door and know what would be there in the second before it was revealed. On my right, the coat closet. The third door on the left down the hall would be the bathroom, and it would be a shade of almost blue.

  I believe that a person can become possessed by someone else—at least in part. That one life can slip inside another, giving it shape. In this way, I could judge Sadie’s reaction before it occurred, picture an expression in the second before she shared it. It was how I could anticipate what she would do before she did it, because I believed I understood how she thought, and the push and pull that would lead her to any given moment—except her final ones.

  As I moved through the house, the only person I suspected could see that possession in me was Luce, standing beside Parker on the other side of the living room, glass in hand, watching me closely. Ever since Parker had introduced us when they pulled up in the drive that summer, she’d been watching me. At first, I thought, because she didn’t understand my history with the Lomans and therefore Parker. But lately, I felt it was something else: that she could sense things from a remove. As if there was something I had believed invisible that only she could see clearly.

  Parker leaned down to whisper something in her ear, and she flinched, distracted. Her face was stoic as she turned to face him, and I used the moment to slip away, taking the steps to the second-story landing. The hallway was bright and airy, even with the darker wood floors and closed doors. I knew as soon as I put my hand on the knob, second one down the hall, that this room was hers.

  But the inside was so different than I’d imagined. There were relics from childhood lingering, like the horse figurines on a high shelf. Photos tucked into the edge of her dresser mirror—a group of girls I might’ve seen downstairs. Sadie had spent her high school years at a boarding school and summers in Littleport. Her room was as temporary a place as any, filled with the things left behind, never fully growing with the person who returned to it each time.

  Her quilt was designed in bursts of color—purple, blue, green—the opposite of her bed in Littleport, which was all in shades of ivory. She hadn’t been here since before the start of the summer season, but I kept searching for some sign of her, something left behind that could fill the void she once occupied.

  I ran my hand over the ridges of wood grain on the surface of her dresser. Then over the jewelry box, monogrammed with her initials, painted peach on white. Beside it, a pewter tree was positioned in front of the mirror, its branches bare and craggy, meant to display jewelry in a child’s room. A single necklace hung from the farthest point. The pendant was rose gold, a swirling, delicate S, and set with a fine trail of diamonds. I closed my fist around it and felt the edges poking into the flesh of my palm.

  “I always knew you were a thief.”

  I saw her in the mirror first, pale and unmoving, like a ghost. I spun around, releasing the necklace, coming face-to-face with Bianca. She stood in the doorway; her black sheath dress hit just below her knees, but she was barefoot. Her toes flexed while I watched.

  “I was just looking,” I said, panicked. Trying desperately to hold on to something that I could feel slipping away.

  She swayed slightly in the doorway, her face frac
turing, like she was overcome—picturing Sadie here, seeing me instead, in her daughter’s room, in her daughter’s dress. But then I wasn’t sure—whether she was the one moving or whether it was me. She looked so pale, I thought if I blinked, she might fade away into the bone-colored walls.

  “Where does your money go? I wonder,” she said, shifting on her feet, the hardwood popping beneath her soles. I could feel the mood shifting, the room changing—a new way to channel her grief. “You make a living wage directly from us. You have no bills, no expenses, and I know exactly what we paid for your grandmother’s place.” She took a step into the room, then another, and I felt the edge of the dresser pressing into my back. “You may have had my husband fooled, but not me. I saw exactly what you were from the start.”

  “Bianca, I’m sorry, but—”

  She put a hand out, cutting me off. “No. You don’t get to talk anymore. You don’t get to roam my house—my house—as if it’s your own.” Her eyes caught on a photo of Sadie, wedged into the corner of the mirror. Her finger hovered just over her daughter’s smile. “She saved you, you know. Told Grant that stealing the money was her idea, that she was the only one responsible. But I know better.” Her hand moved to the necklace, the delicate S, enclosing it in her palm.

  I set my jaw. Bianca was wrong. She believed I had stolen from their company, taken Sadie’s job, let her take the fall for it, but it wasn’t true.

  In mid-July, over a month before Sadie’s death, I’d been reconciling the rental property finances when I realized the numbers didn’t line up. That money had gone missing, systematically and quietly, and had never been flagged.

  For a brief moment, I considered asking Sadie about it first. But I worried I was being set up—all summer I’d felt she’d been holding me at a distance. It was the reminder that everything in my life was so fleeting, so fragile. That nothing so good could last.