The Last House Guest Read online

  I felt myself becoming something in his grip. A slice here, a piece deemed unnecessary and tossed aside. Until you were left with only the things worth keeping. A brutal efficiency he applied to projects and people alike.

  At the end, I had just a stack of boxes, all labeled by Sadie’s red Sharpie. The looping S for Sell, the slanting K for Keep. My life, restructured in her capable hands.

  There were four boxes of my own things worth keeping. And one more that was stacked full of my parents’ things, my grandparents’ things. Wedding albums and mementos. Family pictures and a recipe book from my grandmother’s kitchen, a shoebox of letters from and to my grandfather when he was overseas. The file of paperwork shifting everything that once was theirs into my possession. Like I was moving not only me but my entire history. All the people who had brought me to this moment in time.

  Now I pictured Sadie with the marker in her hand, the cap between her teeth.

  The moment when she sat back and gazed around my empty, empty house. The lonely existence I was leaving behind for something new. Grant stood beyond the window, facing away, one hand on his hip, the other with a phone to his ear. Inside was only silence. Sadie looked momentarily stunned, her lips pressed together, as if the emotion might spill over at any second. It was like she was seeing me as someone else for the first time. This is going to be good, Avery.

  And right then—with the house I’d been in danger of losing stripped down to its roots, feeling like I had finally fought my way out of something—I believed her.

  * * *

  IT HAD SEEMED SO generous of them at the time. But I’d spent the last year alone up here, with nothing but the ghosts for company. Sadie, lingering in my doorway the last time I saw her. My mother, whispering in my ear, asking what I see.

  And so I’ve kept looking back, trying to find the place where everything veered off track. I start, every time, at the beginning:

  I see Grant and Bianca, watching as Sadie brought me home. I imagine them asking around town, mentioning my name, hearing the stories, knowing everything there was to know. Witnessing the thread connecting me and Sadie becoming taut and strong. I wondered if they feared their daughter being dragged down into my world, just as I felt myself being pulled up into theirs. They must have understood that the only way to keep their daughter on track, under control, was to get me there, too.

  That was what everyone missed when they wondered what I was doing in the Loman home. Their rumors were wrong, but so was my defense. I had seen it first as a generosity of spirit but then started to see it as an act of control. A true taste of what it was like to be Sadie Loman. A beautiful puppet on a string. Something that could’ve pushed her to the brink.

  Buy your house and keep you here. Fund your education, direct you in kind. Employ you, monitor you, mold your path.

  My home is your home. Your life is my life.

  There will be no locks or secrets here.

  CHAPTER 9

  There was only one change I made to Sadie’s phone before leaving. Only one thing removed, which I didn’t think anyone would notice.

  In the settings, I deleted the extra thumbprint before shutting it down.

  * * *

  THE DRIVE TO THE police station was almost the same as the drive to the harbor. The fight against the gridlock of cars and pedestrians in the downtown section. The rubbernecking at the sight of the ocean and the village green. I had to pass straight through it all to reach the building on the rise of hill at the edge of the harbor.

  I pulled into the parking lot overlooking the harbor below, all glass windows and smooth white stone.

  I asked for Detective Collins at the curved front desk of the lobby, which was more fitting for a hotel than a police station. The woman behind the desk picked up the phone, gave my name, and asked me to wait, gesturing to the grid of chairs by the window. It was deceptive, the openness, the buzzing bright lights of the place—made you think you had nothing to hide.

  I’d just taken a seat on the stiff cushioning when I realized she knew who I was without asking. Not that I should be surprised. My name had been known around here since I was fourteen, in one way or another.

  There was an accident.

  Such a simple, benign phrase for the upheaval of everything I’d ever known.

  A dark road, a mountain curve, and my entire life had been changed in an instant while I slept. I’d been driven to the hospital, placed in a small waiting room. Given food I couldn’t touch, soda that fizzed against the back of my throat until I gagged. I’d sat there then, only half believing, trying desperately to remember the last interaction I’d had with my parents:

  My dad calling down the hall, There’s leftover pizza in the fridge, my mom ducking into my room, one shoe on, the other in her hand, Don’t stay up too late. I’d given her a thumbs-up without removing the phone from my ear. Faith had been on the other end, and my mom, noticing, had mouthed, Bye. It was the last thing I could remember from either of them. They were heading for a gallery show a few towns away, bringing my grandmother as well.

  I’d fallen asleep watching television. I hadn’t even noticed something was wrong.

  A policewoman placed a hand on my shoulder while I sat at the hospital, staring at the fizzing soda—Is there someone else we can call?

  They’d tried the Harlows first, but it was Mrs. Sylva who came to pick me up. I’d stayed in a vacant room at the B&B until my grandmother was released the next night. She didn’t have a scratch on her, but her neck was in a brace from the impact of the tree, the front of the car crushed like an accordion. They’d thought she was dead at first. That was what the first officer on the scene said. It was in the article, how he stumbled upon the scene, new on the job, shaken by the horror of it all—his own jolt into reality, it seemed.

  I read it only once. Once was more than enough.

  The police said my father didn’t even hit the brakes until he was off the road, had probably drifted off, as my grandmother had in the backseat. I thought of that often at night, how we were all sleeping when it happened. How you can hurtle through darkness by momentum alone, without a single conscious thought, with no one to see you go.

  Four years later, I’d been brought to the station after the fight with Faith. By then the only person left to call was my grandmother’s neighbor, Evelyn.

  “Avery?” Detective Collins waited at the entrance to the hall behind me. He nodded as I stood. “Nice to see you again. Come on back.” He led me to a small office halfway down the hall and took a seat behind his desk, gesturing for me to take the chair across from him. His office was sparse, with nothing on the surface of the desk, and glass windows to the hall behind me. There was nowhere to look but right at him. “Is this about the dedication ceremony?” he asked, leaning back in his chair until the springs creaked in protest.

  I swallowed nothing. “Yes and no.” I clenched my hands to keep them from shaking. “I wanted to ask you about Sadie’s note.”

  He stopped rocking in his chair then.

  “The note she left behind,” I clarified.

  “I remember,” he said. He didn’t say anything more, waiting for me to continue.

  “What did it say?” I asked.

  After a pause, he sat upright and pulled himself closer to his desk. “I’m afraid that’s the family’s business, Avery. You might do better asking one of them.” As if he knew I’d already tried to find out and failed.

  I looked at the walls, at his desk, anywhere but at his face. “I’ve been thinking about that night again. Is everyone sure the note was hers? I mean completely, totally sure?”

  The room was so quiet I could hear his breathing, the faint ticking of his watch. Finally, he drew in a breath. “It’s hers, Avery. We matched it.”

  I waved my hand between us. “To a diary, I heard. But, Detective, she didn’t have one.”

  His eyes were focused on mine—green, though I’d never noticed before. His expression was not unkind, something borderin
g on sympathy. “Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought.”

  “Or,” I said, my voice louder than I anticipated, “maybe the note was something else. Luciana Suarez was staying in the house, too. Or it could’ve been the cleaning company. Someone else could’ve left it.” They could’ve matched her handwriting in a rush because they wanted to. Making the pieces fit instead of the other way around.

  I’d been too caught off guard by the news last year to ask questions. I’d been blindsided by the fact that I had misunderstood things so deeply. That there was something momentous I had failed to see coming once again.

  He folded his hands slowly on the top of the desk, finger by finger. His nails were cut down to the quick. “Listen. It’s not just that the writing’s a match.” He shook his head. “It’s more like a journal—the inner workings of her mind. And it’s very, very dark.”

  “No,” I said. “She didn’t mean it.” The same thing I had said to Parker. But wasn’t that the truth? The way she’d tallied the dangers off to me the day we met, as if she could see them, close to the surface, always ready to consume us. The casualness of death; something she was courting. Don’t hurt yourself, she’d said when I stood too close to the edge in the dark. As if, even then, she had imagined it.

  He shook his head sadly. “Avery, you’re not the only one who missed something, okay? No one saw it coming. Sometimes you can only see the signs in hindsight.”

  My throat felt tight. He reached across the table, his thick hand hovering near mine before pulling back. “It’s been a year. I get that. How things come back. But we’ve been through all of this. The case is closed, we gave Parker her old personal items today.” That must’ve been what Parker was looking at in his car when I surprised him in the garage—the items returned from the police station. “Everything fits. Write the article, come celebrate her life at the dedication, and move on.”

  “Everything doesn’t fit,” I said. “She was supposed to meet us there. Something happened.” I reached my hand into my bag, placed her phone before him.

  He didn’t touch it, just stared at it. A piece he had not anticipated. “What’s this?”

  “Sadie’s phone. I found it today at the rental. The Blue Robin, where we all were the night she died.”

  His eyes didn’t move from the phone. “You just found it.”

  “Yes.”

  “One year later.” Incredulous, eyes narrowed, like I was playing a joke on him. How quickly his demeanor had changed. Or maybe it was me changing before him.

  “It was at the bottom of a chest in the master bedroom. I found it when I was taking out the blankets to freshen up. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but she didn’t lose it when she died.” I swallowed, willing him to make the leap: that if they were wrong about this, they could be wrong about all of it.

  He shook his head, still not touching the phone.

  Once, several summers ago, Sadie had tried to get herself arrested. At least it seemed that way to me at the time. I’d taken her down to the docks at night, wanting to show her something. A world she never had access to herself, a way to prove my own worth. I knew how to get inside the dock office from when Connor used to do it—lifting the handle, giving the door a well-angled nudge at the same time—and then taking his father’s key from the back office inside, untying the boat and pushing it adrift before turning on the engine.

  But someone must’ve seen us sneaking inside. I’d gotten as far as the front room when the flashlight shone in the window, and I darted in the other direction, toward the rarely used back door. Sadie had frozen, staring at the light in the window. I pulled her by the arm, but by then the officer was inside—I knew him, though not by name. Didn’t matter, because he knew mine.

  He led us outside, back to his car. He didn’t ask me the question I’d grown to expect, about whom to call; he must’ve known the answer by then.

  “What’s your name?” he asked Sadie, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide, and she pressed her lips together, shaking her head. The man asked for her purse, which she had looped over her shoulder. He pulled out her wallet, shone the flashlight on her driver’s license. “Sadie . . .” and then he trailed off. Cleared his throat. Slipped the license back inside, returning her purse. “Listen, girls. This is a warning. This is trespassing, and the next time we catch you, you’ll be processed, booked, am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. The relief like that first sip of alcohol, warming my bloodstream.

  He returned to his car, and Sadie stood there in the middle of the parking lot, watching him go. “What does a girl have to do to get arrested around here?” she asked.

  “Change your name,” I said.

  Her name carried weight. But she didn’t throw it around. She didn’t have to.

  It occurred to me that as long as I was with her, I might be afforded that same protection.

  * * *

  HER NAME STILL CARRIED that weight, with her phone on the detective’s desk, that he still wouldn’t touch. Dead or not, there were things you had to be careful with around here. He picked up his office phone but hesitated first.

  “I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Detective Collins finally said before waving me out of the room.

  “What? What way?”

  He shook his head. “Her note. That’s what it said.”

  CHAPTER 10

  I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.

  I slammed on my brakes in the middle of Harbor Drive just as a woman stepped out into the crosswalk without looking. She stood in front of my car, staring back through the windshield. My hands were shaking on the wheel. There were mere inches separating us.

  In the rearview mirror, I could still see the police station perched at the top of the hill. The woman in front of me raised her hand like a barrier between her and my car, mouthed Watch it, before moving on. As if I hadn’t noticed how close I’d come. As if she hadn’t yet processed how close she had come.

  I saw Sadie then, standing at the edge of the cliffs. The blue dress blowing behind her in the wind, a strap sliding down her shoulder, the mascara running under her eyes, her hands shaking. Saw her turn around and look at me this time, her eyes wide—

  Stop.

  * * *

  I HAD TO CALL someone.

  Not the detective, who had just stared at her phone with such disbelief. Not Parker, who hadn’t told me he’d just retrieved Sadie’s personal items from the police. Not Connor, who had kept things from all of us with his silence—

  My phone rang just as I was working it through. Another number not in my contacts. I wondered if it was Detective Collins already, telling me to come back. That they’d discovered something else in her phone, or they needed my help to tell them what something meant. I placed the call on speaker.

  “Is this Avery?” It was a girl. A woman. Something in between.

  “Yes, who’s speaking?”

  “Erica Hopkins. From lunch.”

  “Right, hi.”

  She cleared her throat. “Justine wanted me to check in. We’ll need the piece for Sadie tomorrow—by afternoon at the latest.”

  Yesterday felt like forever ago. “I can email you the piece tonight, but the photo will probably be a physical copy. I don’t have access to a scanner.” I would not contact Grant or Bianca to ask for a high-resolution image of their deceased daughter, though it would have to be one of theirs, something that once graced the walls of the Breakers. In truth, I could think of nothing more fitting.

  “We’ve got a meeting at the dedication site with Parker Loman tomorrow around eleven. Right at the entrance of Breaker Beach. Want to meet us there with the photo?”

  Somewhere in that house were Sadie Loman’s personal items, just returned to Parker from the police station. Parker had said he’d be working from home today, and I could see the lights from the upstairs office from their drive.

  Tomorrow, around eleven, he would be out. The house
would be empty.

  “Why don’t you stop by after,” I said, edging the car to the other side of the garage. “I’ll meet you at their guesthouse. Just send me a text to let me know when you’re on your way up.”

  Inside their house was that journal, given back to Parker. The item they used to determine the presumed last words of Sadie Loman. The thing they rested their case on.

  And I needed to see it.

  Something had worked its way inside, dark and sinuous. Like I had just set something in motion that I now had no power to stop.

  * * *

  BACK INSIDE THE BEDROOM of the guesthouse, I opened the closet door, pulling out the single box that had never been unpacked—marked K for Keep, in Sadie’s handwriting. The rest I had steadily unpacked with time, the few things of my own worth bringing. But this was the box that held my parents’ things, my grandmother’s things.

  Though the house itself did not belong to me, I knew no one would dare touch this box. For all the times that Sadie had reached into my closet, she’d never placed her hands on this.

  I lifted my parents’ wedding album, my grandmother’s letters, placing them carefully aside. Until I’d unearthed the small shoebox underneath.

  Inside were the photos of Sadie that once were scattered around the Loman house. Replaced each year with a new set. But Bianca had added them without removing the previous photos, stacking them one on top of the next in their frames, so they remained as one. Like layers of paint, slowly growing in thickness, until I’d removed the older images for my own safekeeping.

  The surfaces were damaged slightly, adhered to the newer versions, the corners crimped and discolored from the frames. Where there once were childhood portraits, there were graduation pictures. Where there once were graduation pictures, there were vacation shots—Sadie at the Eiffel Tower, Sadie in red snow gear with mountains behind her, Sadie sitting beside Parker somewhere tropical, with the ocean behind them.