The Last House Guest (ARC) Page 3

  “It’s in the garage. Just drove up this evening.”

  I cleared my throat, nodded to his bags. “Is Luce here?” I hadn’t heard her name in a while, but Grant kept our conversations focused on the business, and Sadie was no longer here to fill me in on the personal details of the Lomans’ lives. There’d been rumors, but that meant nothing. I’d been the subject of plenty of unfounded rumors myself.

  Parker stopped at the island, a whole expanse between us, and picked up the mug, taking a long drink. “Just me. We’re taking a break,” he said.

  A break. It was something Sadie would’ve said, inconsequential and vaguely optimistic. But his grip on the mug, his glance to the side, told me otherwise.

  “Well, come on in. Join me for a drink, Avery.”

  “I have to be at a property early tomorrow,” I said. But my words trailed off with his returning look. He smirked, pulled a second mug out, and poured.

  Parker’s expression said he knew exactly who I was, and there was no point in pretending. Didn’t matter that I was currently overseeing all of the family’s properties in Littleport—six summers, and you get to know a person’s habits pretty well.

  I’d known him longer than that. It was the way of things, if you’d grown up here: the Randolphs, on Hawks Ridge; the Shores, who’d remodeled an old inn at the corner of the town green, then proceeded to have a series of affairs and now shared their massive plot like a child of divorce, never seen at the same time; and the Lomans, who lived up on the bluffs, overlooking all of Littleport, and then expanded, their tendrils spreading out around town until their name was synonymous with summer. The rentals, the family, the parties. The promise of something.

  The locals referred to the Lomans’ main residence as the Breakers, a subtle jab that once bonded the rest of us together. It was partly a nod to the home’s proximity to Breaker Beach and partly an allusion to the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, a level of wealth even the Lomans couldn’t aspire to. Always whispered in jest, a joke everyone was in on but them.

  Parker slid the second mug across the surface, liquid sloshing out the side. He was this haphazard only when he was well on his way to drunk. I twisted the mug back and forth on the countertop.

  He sighed and turned around, taking in the living room. “God, this place,” he said, and then I picked up the drink. Because I hadn’t seen him in eleven months, because I knew what he meant: this place. Now. Without Sadie. Their enlarged family photo from years earlier still hung behind the couch. The four of them smiling, all dressed in beige and white, the dunes of Breaker Beach out of focus in the background. I could see the before and after, same as Parker.

  He raised his mug, clanked it against mine with enough force to convey this wasn’t his first drink, just in case I hadn’t been able to tell.

  “Hear, hear,” he said, frowning. It was what Sadie always said when we were getting ready to go out. Shot glasses in a row, a messy pour—hear, hear. Fortifying herself while I was going in the other direction. Glasses tipped back and the burn in my throat, my lips on fire.

  I closed my eyes at the first sip, felt the loosening, the warmth. “There, there,” I answered quietly, out of habit.

  “Well,” Parker said, pouring himself half a glass more. “Here we are.”

  I sat on the stool beside him, nursing my mug. “How long are you staying?” I wondered if this was because of Luce, if they’d been living together and now he needed somewhere to escape.

  “Just until the dedication ceremony.”

  I took another sip, deeper than intended. I’d been avoiding the tribute to Sadie. The memorial was to be a brass bell that didn’t work, that would sit at the entrance of Breaker Beach. For all souls to find their way home, it would say, the words hand-chiseled. It had been put to a vote.

  Littleport was full of memorials, and I’d long since had my fill of them. From the benches that lined the footpaths to the statues of the fishermen in front of the town hall, we were becoming a place in service not only to the visitors but to the dead. My dad had a classroom in the elementary school. My mom, a wall at the gallery on Harbor Drive. A gold plaque for your loss.

  I shifted in my seat. “Your parents coming up?”

  He shook his head. “Dad’s busy. Very busy. And Bee, well, it probably wouldn’t be best for her.” I’d forgotten this, how Parker and Sadie referred to Bianca as Bee—never to her face, never in her presence. Always in a removed affect, like there was some great distance between them. I thought it an eccentricity of the wealthy. Lord knows, I’d discovered enough of them over the years.

  “How are you doing, Parker?”

  He twisted in the stool to face me. Like he’d just realized I was there, who I was. His eyes traced the contours of my face.

  “Not great,” he said, relaxing in his seat. It was the alcohol, I knew, that made him this honest.

  Sadie had been my best friend since the summer we met. Her parents had practically taken me in—funding my courses, promising work if I proved myself worthy. I’d been living and working out of their guesthouse for years, ever since Grant Loman had purchased my grandmother’s home. And after all this time when we’d occupied the same plane of existence, Parker had rarely made a comment of any depth.

  His fingers reached for a section of my hair, tugging gently before letting it drop again. “Your hair is different.”

  “Oh.” I ran my palm down the side, smoothing it back. It had been less an active change and more the path of least resistance. I’d let the highlights grow out over the year, the color back to a deeper brown, and then I’d cut it to my shoulders, keeping the side part. But that was one of the things about seeing people only in the summer—there was nothing gradual about a change. We grew in jolts. We shifted abruptly.

  “You look older,” he added. And then, “It’s not a bad thing.”

  I could feel my cheeks heating up, and I tipped the mug back to hide it. It was the alcohol, and the nostalgia, and this house. Like everything was always just a moment from bursting. Summer strung, Connor used to call it. And it stuck, with or without him.

  “We are older,” I said, which made Parker smile.

  “Should we retire to the sitting room, then?” he said, but I couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of himself or me.

  “Gonna use the bathroom,” I said. I needed the time. Parker had a way of looking at you like you were the only thing in the world worth knowing. Before Luce, I’d seen him use it a dozen times on a dozen different girls. Didn’t mean I’d never thought about it.

  I walked down the hall to the mudroom and the side door to the outside. The bathroom here had a window over the toilet, uncovered, facing the sea. All of the windows facing the water were left uncovered to the view. As if you could ever forget the ocean’s presence. The sand and the salt that seemed to permeate everything here—lodged in the gap between the curb and the street, rusting the cars, the relentless assault on the wooden storefronts along Harbor Drive. I could smell the salt air as I ran my fingers through my hair.

  I splashed water on my face, thought I caught a shadow passing underneath the door. I turned off the faucet and stared at the knob, holding my breath, but nothing happened.

  Just a figment of my imagination. The hope of a long-ago memory.

  It was a quirk of the Loman house that none of the interior doors had locks. I never knew whether this was a design flaw—a trade-off for the smooth antique-style knobs—or whether it was meant to signify an elite status. That you always paused at a closed door to knock. If it inspired in people some sort of restraint; that there would be no secrets here.

  Either way, it was the reason I’d met Sadie Loman. Here, in this very room.

  IT WAS NOT THE first time I’d seen her. This was the summer after graduation, nearly six months after the death of my grandmother. A slick of ice, a concussion followed by a stroke that left
me as the last Greer in Littleport.

  I had ricocheted through the winter, untethered and dangerous. Graduated through the generosity of makeup assignments and special circumstances. Become equally unpredictable and unreliable in turn. And still there were people like Evelyn, my grandmother’s neighbor, hiring me for odd jobs, trying to make sure I got by.

  All it did was bring me closer to more of the things I didn’t have.

  That was the problem with a place like this: Everything was right out in the open, including the life you could never have.

  Keep everything in balance, in check, and you could open a storefront selling homemade soap, or run a catering company from the kitchen of the inn. You could make a living, or close to it, out on the sea, if you loved it enough. You could sell ice cream or coffee from a shop that functioned primarily four months of the year, that carried you through. You could have a dream as long as you were willing to give something up for it.

  Just as long as you remained invisible, as was intended.

  EVELYN HAD HIRED ME for the Lomans’ Welcome to Summer party. I wore the uniform—black pants, white shirt, hair back—that was meant to make you blend in, become unnoticeable. I was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, wrapping the base of my hand in toilet paper, silently cursing to myself and trying to stop the blood, when the door swung open and then quietly latched again. Sadie Loman stood there, facing away, with her palms pressed to the door, her head tipped down.

  Meet someone alone in a bathroom, hiding, and you know something about her right away.

  I cleared my throat, standing abruptly. “Sorry, I’m just . . .” I tried to edge by her, keeping close to the wall as I moved, trying to remain invisible, forgettable.

  She made no effort to hide her assessing eyes. “I didn’t know anyone was in here,” she said. No apology, because Sadie Loman didn’t have to apologize to anyone. This was her house.

  The pink crept up her neck then, in the way I’d come to know so well. Like I’d been the one to catch her instead. The curse of the fair-skinned, she’d explained later. That and the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose made her look younger than her age, which she compensated for in other ways.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, frowning at the blood seeping through the toilet paper wrapped around my hand.

  “Yeah, I just cut myself.” I pressed down harder, but it didn’t help. “You?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said, waving her hand airily around. But I didn’t. Not then. I’d come to know it better, the airy wave of her hand: All this, the Lomans.

  She reached her hand out for mine, gesturing me closer, and there was nothing to do but acquiesce. She unwound the paper, leaning closer, then pressed her lips together. “I hope you have a tetanus shot,” she said. “First sign is lockjaw.” She clicked her teeth together, like the sound of a bone popping. “Fever. Headaches. Muscle spasms. Until finally you can’t swallow or breathe. It’s not a quick way to die, is what I’m saying.” She raised her hazel eyes to mine. She was so close I could see the line of makeup under her eyes, the slight imperfection where her finger had slipped.

  “It was a knife,” I said, “in the kitchen.” Not a dirty nail. I assumed that was what tetanus was from.

  “Oh, well, still. Be careful. Any infection that gets to your bloodstream can lead to sepsis. Also not a good way to go, if we’re making a list.”

  I couldn’t tell whether she was serious. But I cracked a smile, and she did the same.

  “Studying medicine?” I asked.

  She let out a single bite of laughter. “Finance. At least that’s the plan. Fascinating, right? The path to death is just a personal interest.”

  This was before she knew about my parents and the speed at which they did or did not die. Before she could’ve known it was a thing I often wondered, and so I could forgive her the flippancy with which she discussed death. But the truth was, there was something almost alluring about it—this person who did not know me, who could toss a joke about death my way without flinching after.

  “I’m kidding,” she said as she ran my hand under the cold water of the sink, the sting numbing. My stomach twisted with a memory I couldn’t grasp—a sudden pang of yearning. “This is my favorite place in the world. Nothing bad is allowed to happen here. I forbid it.” Then she rummaged through the lower cabinet and pulled out a bandage. Underneath the sink was an assortment of ointments, bandages, sewing kits, and bathroom products.

  “Wow, you’re prepared for anything here,” I said.

  “Except voyeurs.” She looked up at the uncovered window and briefly smiled. “You’re lucky,” she said, smoothing out the bandage. “You just missed the vein.”

  “Oh, there’s blood on your sweater,” I said, appalled that some part of me had stained her. The perfect sweater over the perfect dress on this perfect summer night. She shrugged off the sweater, balled it up, threw it in the porcelain pail. Something that cost more than what I was getting paid for the entire day, I was sure.

  She sneaked out as quietly as she had entered, leaving me there. A chance encounter, I assumed.

  But it was just the start. A world had opened up to me from the slip of a blade. A world of untouchable things.

  NOW, CATCHING SIGHT OF myself in that same mirror, splashing water on my face to cool my cheeks, I could almost hear her low laughter. The look she would give me, knowing her brother and I were alone in a house, drinking, in the middle of the night. I stared at my reflection, the hollows under my eyes, remembering. “Don’t do it.” I whispered it out loud, to be sure of myself. The act of speaking held me accountable, contained something else within me.

  Sometimes it helped to imagine Sadie saying it. Like a bell rattling in my chest, guiding me back.

  PARKER WAS SPRAWLED ON the couch under the old family portrait, staring out the uncovered windows into the darkness, his gaze unfocused. I didn’t know if it was such a good idea to leave him. I was more careful now. Looking for what was hidden under the surface of a word or a gesture.

  “You’re not going to finish that drink, are you,” he said, still staring out the window.

  A drop of rain hit the glass, then another—a fork of lightning in the distance, offshore. “I should get back before the storm hits,” I said, but he waved me off.

  “I can’t believe they’re having the party again,” he said, like it had just occurred to him. “A dedication ceremony and then the Plus-One.” He took a drink. “It’s just like this place.” Then he turned to me. “Are you going?”

  “No,” I said, as if it had been my own decision. I couldn’t tell him that I didn’t know anything about any Plus-One party this year, whether it was happening again or where it would be. There were a handful of weeks left in the season, and I hadn’t heard a word about it. But he’d been here a matter of hours and already knew.

  He nodded once. In the Loman family, there was always a right answer. I had learned quickly that they were not asking questions in order to gather your thoughts but to assess you.

  I rinsed out my mug, keeping my distance. “I’ll call the cleaners if you’re going to be staying.”

  “Avery, hold up,” he said, but I didn’t wait to hear what he was going to say.

  “Sleep it off, Parker.”

  He sighed. “Come with me tomorrow.”

  I froze, my hand on the granite counter. “Come with you where?”

  “This meeting with the dedication committee,” he said, frowning. “For Sadie. Lunch at Bay Street. I could use a friend there.”

  A friend. As if that’s what we were.

  Still. “All right,” I said, feeling, for the first time in almost a year, the familiar stirrings of summer. Bay Street sounded like a location selected by Parker, not by the committee. The Lomans had a table there, though technically, Bay Street did not have a reservation system. It sounded like somet
hing he would do to make them remember his place, and theirs.

  I thought there was a fifty-fifty shot he wouldn’t remember this conversation in the morning. Or would regret the invitation, pretend it didn’t exist.

  But if I’d learned nothing else from the Lomans, I’d at least learned this: Promises made without clarity of thought still counted. A careless yes and you were bound.

  OUTSIDE, IN THE DARK, I could hear the steady patter of rain picking up on the gutters. I ducked my head, ready to make a run for it. But in the beam of the flashlight, I saw what had drawn me here in the first place. The garbage can tucked into the alcove outside the mudroom entrance, tipped over, contents exposed. The gate of the tall white lattice fencing that kept it enclosed, now swinging ajar.

  I froze, flashlight scanning the trees, the edge of the garage. Another gust blew in with the rain, and the gate creaked once more, knocking against the side of the house.

  The wind, then.

  I’d fix it in the morning. The sky opened up. The storm was here.

  CHAPTER 3

  I was surfacing from a dream when the phone rang the next morning. It was an old dream: the feel of the rocking of the sea, everything unsteady, like I was inside one of my mother’s paintings—stranded in the chaos of the waves outside the harbor, looking in.

  The room was spinning when I opened my eyes, my stomach plummeting. It was the liquor in the middle of the night, the lack of sleep. I fumbled for my phone as I glanced at the clock—eight a.m. on the nose. I didn’t recognize the number.

  “Hello?” I tried to sound like I hadn’t been sleeping, but I was still staring up at the ceiling, trying to recover my bearings.