The Last House Guest (ARC) Read online

Footsteps echoed from the hall above, and I looked up on instinct, catching nothing but shadows at the top of the curved double staircase.

  The main house was enormous and had expanded steadily with time; I used to think it was a castle. There were arched doorways, hidden window seats, closets within closets. A wooden rail along the cliffs out back made of raw lumber. Balconies looming dangerously close to the edge of the overlook, saltwater mist perpetually coating the railings. Faith had lived there, too, up on the top floor, a converted attic space where we all passed around a bottle for the first time in middle school.

  For a second I remembered Connor as he was back then, how he could never seem to stand still. How he could disappear while you were turned away, only to walk in the door just when you noticed he was gone. This feeling that he was living an entire second life in the pause, while the rest of us were stuck in slow motion.

  Mr. Sylva’s gaze followed mine to the staircase landing, and as the footsteps retreated, he leaned closer, lowering his voice. “The Donaldsons have already settled in. Seemed a bit shaken, to be honest. What happened up there, Avery?” He jutted his chin to the side, in the direction of the rentals on the overlook. They were within walking distance, though not plainly in sight.

  “Don’t know,” I said, peering up at the empty, shadowed hall once more. “I’m off to take a look.”

  THE DONALDSON FAMILY HAD been staying at the Blue Robin, the location of the last Plus-One party. This wasn’t the first time I’d been back since then, but I never lingered for long. I kept my walk-throughs brief and efficient between visitors. There was too much, otherwise, to remind me.

  This wasn’t the scene of Sadie’s demise, so the police had left it well enough alone. But it would always be the place I’d been the last time I could imagine her alive. Where I was waiting for her final message, the last thing she wanted to tell me:

  No one understands.

  I’ll miss you.

  Forgive me.

  I would never know exactly what she had wanted to say. Though the police had tried to find her phone, the GPS had been deactivated for as long as I’d known her—a leftover suspicion from her teen years that her parents were tracking her, watching her every move. The phone had been offline when the police tried to reach it, most likely lost to the sea when she jumped.

  There was a path that wove through the trees from the B&B to the overlook, passing right behind the Blue Robin. I could take my car just as easily, looping back down the drive to the next turnoff, but I didn’t want to alert anyone that I’d be coming; I didn’t want anyone to notice my car and ask what was going on.

  I walked the same path I’d raced down nearly a year earlier, following Parker and Luce. Racing toward something we had no ability to stop. In hindsight, I knew that Parker shouldn’t have been driving. None of us should have. The night had blurred edges, as parties often did for me. Bits and pieces came back to me in surprising flashes during the questioning, morphing into a stilted time line of things I had said or done, seen or heard.

  Standing on the front porch now, I could almost feel the people on the other side—the heat, the laughter—before everything had turned.

  The Donaldsons had followed protocol, leaving the house key in an envelope inside the mail drop beside the front door. Not the most secure method, I knew, but it was all part of the act. Part of the story we told about this place. There were a lot of obvious dangers in Littleport, despite the claims we made to the contrary for the tourists. A safe place, we told them, and technically, if you looked at the crime statistics, that was true.

  But there were other dangers. A car on a dark, winding road. A slick of ice on the sidewalk. The edge of the cliffs, the current, the rocks.

  The mountains and the water; the cold in the winter; the complacency of the summer.

  The near-misses that were never reported: the hikers who went missing (found two days later), the woman who fell into a gorge (she managed to call for help, but she was lucky she had her phone), the kayakers who got pulled in by the lobstermen, one after the other, all season long, misjudging the current and panicking.

  And there were more, the ones we pretended didn’t exist.

  The house still smelled of breakfast when I stepped inside. They’d left their dishes in the sink, soaking in the water, even though they were supposed to load up the dishwasher before the cleaning company came in.

  I couldn’t see it at first, the signs of someone else, like Detective Collins had said. The chairs off center in the dining room, probably from the Donaldson family. Same with the dirty fingerprints on the surfaces and the corner of the living room rug, flipped up and inverted.

  But then the smaller details came into focus: the upside-down cushion on a couch, like someone had removed the cushions and replaced this one the wrong way. The legs of the dining room table no longer lining up with the indentations on the throw rug beneath. I didn’t think the Donaldsons would’ve had any cause to rearrange the furniture.

  I circled the house, running my fingers along the windowsills, the doorframes, checking the locks. Everything seemed secure. I stopped at the second window facing the back, a little sleeker than all the others. It had been replaced sometime after the Plus-One party, because there was a spiderweb of cracks running through it. An accident the night of the party, the risks of inviting a cross section of the population into your home.

  I had ordered the replacement window myself. Now I ran my fingers around the edges, slightly thinner, with a sleeker lock. It was in the locked position. But it was a newer model than the other windows, the latch so narrow I wasn’t sure it fit properly. I lifted from the base, and the glass slid up with no resistance, lock or not. I cursed to myself. At least I didn’t have to worry about someone with a key.

  In the meantime, I needed to confirm that nothing of ours had been taken; we didn’t use much of value to decorate the rentals, but best to do a quick check anyway. With the way the cushions were turned up, it seemed like whoever had been in here was looking for hidden valuables. In a place without a safe, that’s what the guests are known to do: put laptops between the mattress and box spring. Leave jewelry in the bottom of drawers, stowed under clothes.

  The door to the master bedroom at the end of the hall was closed, but I figured that was where anything of value would’ve been hidden—where someone would’ve gone looking.

  As soon as I opened the door, I got a whiff of sea salt and lavender. A candle left burning on the white wooden dresser. Forgotten when the Donaldsons checked out. There weren’t any rules expressly forbidding it, but it made me second-guess having candles in the house. I blew out the flame, the wisp of black smoke curling in front of the mirror before disappearing.

  The drawers had each been emptied of any clothes inside, and there was nothing left behind on the bathroom surfaces. The queen-size bed was unmade, with just the white quilt crumpled at the base. I opened the chest at the foot of the bed, where we kept extra blankets, and the scent reminded me of my grandmother’s old attic, stale and earthy. A spider scurried across the top blanket, and I jumped back, goose bumps forming on my arms. These blankets had probably remained untouched all season. They needed to be run through the wash, the entire chest cleaned out with furniture polish and a vacuum—there was one last family scheduled for next week.

  I scooped out the stack of blankets and quilts, holding my breath, and something caught my eye in the bottom corner.

  It was a phone. At first I assumed it had been left behind by the Donaldsons, hidden away just like I would’ve done. But the front screen was cracked in the upper-left corner, and it appeared dead, probably lost and forgotten by a family who’d been here earlier in the season. I went to slip it into my pocket, but a streak of red on the corner of the simple black case caught my eye. Nail polish, I knew. From the beginning of last summer, when she’d been texting before her nails were dry.

 
Attempting to wipe it off had only made it worse. Gives it character, she said.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, my hand shaking.

  I knew I was holding Sadie Loman’s phone in my hand.

  SUMMER

  2017

  The Plus-One Party

  9:00 p.m.

  This was a mistake.

  I stood on the front porch of the Blue Robin, watching as people emerged from the surrounding trees in groups of two and three, carrying drinks, laughing. Traipsing through the wooded lots from their cars, some not bothering with the front door, coming in through the patio instead. I hoped the sound of us would get swallowed up by the sea.

  The party was supposed to be at the Lomans’ house this year, but Sadie was dead set against it. She and Parker had been arguing about it, Parker saying it was only fair, as if he were accustomed to playing by the rules, and Sadie appealing to his sense of control: You really want them in our house? Going through our things? In our rooms. Come on, you know how it can get.

  Parker had tried to address each point, which was how he worked, in business and in life: So, Avery can help keep an eye on things. So, we’ll make the bedrooms off-limits.

  Oh? she had said, her eyes wide and mocking. There are no locks, so how are you planning to enforce that, exactly? With a barricade of furniture? Are you going to fight them if they disobey?

  You’re being ridiculous, Parker had said, turning away, which was the wrong move.

  I felt my shoulders tensing as Sadie sucked in a breath, leaned toward him. Fine. You go ahead and tell Dad his desk was defaced by a drunken local. You can tell Bee someone vomited in her kitchen.

  He laughed. Jesus, no one’s going to deface a fucking desk, Sadie. Stop acting like everyone’s trash. And really, he said, eyes leveling on her, nothing worse than you’ve already done.

  It was then that I stepped in. We could have it at one of the rentals, I said. Both of the homes on the overlook will be vacant that week.

  Sadie nodded, her face visibly relaxing, fists unclenching. I could see the idea taking hold in Parker, his jaw shifting around as he mulled it over. Sunset Retreat, he said, it has more space.

  But I shook my head. No one knew these properties better than I did. No, I said, the Blue Robin has more privacy. No one will notice us there.

  BUT NOW, STANDING ON the front porch while the party hit full swing, I wasn’t so sure about that. Cars lined the street in both directions, which was probably some fire code violation with the lack of street space left behind. I craned my neck to see my car, which I’d parked at the edge of the short driveway of Sunset Retreat across the way, facing out, to keep other cars off the property. Someone had already blocked me in, parking on an angle directly in front of the entrance to the drive.

  Between the trees and the dark, I couldn’t even see how far the line of cars stretched. There were no streetlights up here yet—just the porch light above me and the occasional headlight shining down the stretch of pavement whenever a car turned in.

  “Everything okay?” Parker stood behind me in the open doorway. He frowned, peering over my shoulder into the darkness.

  “Yes, everything’s fine.” There was a list of things I could worry about: the number of people who were still arriving, the amount of liquor, the fact that, though I’d removed the fragile decorations, I had not thought to pull out the throw rugs from under the furniture, and those would be harder to replace.

  But tonight I did not have to be myself. Tonight was for forgetting.

  I FOLLOWED PARKER INSIDE, lost him in the mass of bodies in the kitchen. Found myself in the middle of a familiar game.

  The music had turned, something frenetic, and no one was dancing or swaying to the beat. But there was a group hovering around the island, a cluster of shot glasses on the surface between them.

  I wedged my way into the group. “Hear, hear,” I said, picking one up, smiling.

  “Just in time,” the man beside me said. I recognized him vaguely, but he was a little younger, and I’d long since given up memorizing the names of the newer visitors. “I was just about to tell everyone about Greg and Carys Fontaine,” he continued.

  Greg slammed his glass down, mouth agape.

  “Don’t try to deny it,” the other man said, wide smile. “I saw you. Down at the Fold.”

  Greg shook his head and smiled then, before downing the next shot. Moving on.

  It was a purging of secrets, of trysts and regrets. A game with no rules and no exit strategy but to drink some more. A secret told or one exposed, and you would drink. And then later, you would make some new ones.

  Round and round they went. I barely recognized the bulk of the names by now.

  Six years earlier, Sadie and I had stood side by side at a table much like this one, at my very first Plus-One party. We had slipped into an easy comfort after that day at the beach, spent the months that followed in a way that felt both inevitable and unsustainable, and the Plus-One was the perfect way to see it out.

  One of Parker’s friends had leveled his finger at Sadie’s face and announced, You’ve been at my house. With my brother. The red had crept up her neck, but instead of pulling back, she leaned in to it. You’re right, I have. Can you blame me? I mean, look, I’m blushing right now, just thinking about it.

  It made her bolder, the way she wore her embarrassment on her skin. She said there was no use hiding from herself when her face already gave everything away.

  I watched the friend’s eyes trail after her the rest of the night. The thing about her back then was she was skinny in a childish way. Easy to overlook in a group photo. But even then she could have you in her thrall, quick as that.

  Looking back, this was the thing I was most taken with—the idea that you didn’t have to apologize. Not for what you’d done and not for who you were. Of all the promises that had been opened up to me that first summer, this was the most intoxicating of all.

  “Hey,” Greg said, looking around the room, his slack expression landing back on me. “Where’s Sadie?”

  Greg Randolph, I knew from six years circling this world. From the secrets Sadie would share, the way she could sum everyone up in a sentence fragment. His home, in a mountain enclave called Hawks Ridge, was almost as stunning as the Lomans’. But the thing I remembered most clearly about her assessment of Greg Randolph was the first thing she’d ever said of him: A mean drunk, like his father. He used to be broad and muscular but was currently sliding toward soft, the edges of his face losing definition; dark slicked-back hair, a tan across the bridge of his nose that bordered on a burn. Over the years, he had not been quiet in his pursuit of Sadie, and she had not been quiet in her resounding rejection.

  Since we were purging the truth here, I didn’t hold back. “On her way,” I said, “but still not interested in seeing you.”

  There was muffled laughter around the island, but no one drank, and Greg’s dark eyebrows shot up—a quick burst of anger that he couldn’t hide. But he recovered quickly, his lips stretching into a knowing smile. “Oh, I’m fully aware. Last I saw your friend Sadie, she was getting off a boat with that local guy I just saw.” He jutted his chin toward the patio, but I didn’t see whom he meant. “It was just the two of them at sunset. Never thought she’d go for that sort of thing, but what do I know. Figured it was my turn to share. A shame for her to miss it.”

  I frowned, and the man beside Greg said, “The one from the yacht club?”

  Greg laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. The guy who runs the fishing charters, you know?”

  Connor. He had to be talking about Connor. In truth, Connor did a lot more than that. He practically ran the day-to-day of his parents’ distribution company. Handled the books, took shipments from the docks, made sure the day’s catch made it to every restaurant in town, big or small. Brought the visitors out on charters during his downtime, after. Bu
t that wasn’t his main job.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Greg said, and I hated that he could read it in my face. He smiled, but my head was spinning. Connor. Sadie and Connor. It didn’t make sense, but that must’ve been why he was here tonight. Greg gestured to the next shot glass. “You gonna take this one for her?”

  I pushed the glass closer to him. “Pass,” I said, going for indifference, channeling the way Sadie would shake him off.

  “While we’re chatting,” Greg said, leaning an elbow on the island, sticky with alcohol, “I was wondering. Well, we were all sort of wondering. What is it that you do for the Lomans, exactly?”

  He was so close, I could feel his breath on the exhale, sharp and sour. I recoiled on impulse from the stench, though he smiled wider, wrongly assuming he’d struck a nerve. I’d heard the rumors. That I was Grant’s mistress. Or Bianca’s. That I was in service to something dark and secret, something they tried to cover up by planting me right out in the open. As if the idea of generosity, of friendship, of a family that extended beyond the circumstances of your birth, was something too hard to fathom.

  Jealousy, Sadie would say. An ugly, ugly thing. And then: Don’t worry, we’re the Breakers. They have to hate us.

  “This isn’t how the game goes,” I said. Because I knew that defense only redoubled their curiosity.

  Greg leaned toward me, almost losing his balance. Barely two hours into the party, and already he was sloppy drunk. “The game goes however I want it to go, friend.”

  It occurred to me then that he never used my name. I wondered if he even knew it, or if this was all part of some power play to him. I backed away, spinning directly into Luce, her brown eyes unnaturally wide. She had a hand on my arm, colder than expected. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Something happened.”

  “What? What happened?” But I was stuck in the previous conversation, my mind playing catch-up.