The Last House Guest

by Megan Miranda

  “I don’t know that she wanted to leave, exactly,” Luce said. “I think she just wanted to be seen, like Parker was. He needs it, you know, from everyone around him. The idolization of Parker Loman.” She rolled her eyes. “But Sadie was never having it.” A little star protégé. A junior asshole. “Her teasing, it got under his skin. I’d never seen Parker’s look turn so dark as when Sadie pushed him. It was always something. She kept teasing him about his scar. I didn’t think it was that big a deal. We were all young once.” She touched her eyebrow, shrugged. “But she wouldn’t let up. Said, Oh, tell Luce about your wild youth. Parker gets away with everything. What was it again, a fight with two guys? A fight over some girl? He would stay silent, but she’d keep pushing. Say something like, Parker, your next line is: ‘You should see the other guy.’ Or do I have it wrong? Come on, tell us. Or, The sins of his youth. Locked away forever.”

  I could see Sadie doing it, the expression on her face. Digging and digging until something snapped. Parker can get away with anything. She hated him. Of course she did. The life she could never have, even growing up in the same house, with the same parents, the same opportunities.

  “Why did you break up, then? Were you afraid of him?”

  “No, I wasn’t afraid. I was pissed.” She looked to the side and sniffed. “It’s embarrassing. That night. The window. Remember?”

  I held my breath. Held perfectly still.

  “I was inside looking for Parker. But I finally saw him through the window. I smiled. I remember, I smiled.” She shook her head to herself. “Until I saw that his hands were out. He was talking to another girl, trying to get her to calm down. And the look on her face . . . I know that look. Anger, yes, but also heartbreak. And then she picked up one of those standing pillars around the patio and swung it at his head.” Luce swung her arms as if holding a bat—demonstrating or remembering. My mouth dropped open.

  Her mouth quirked into a smile. “That was my look, too. He ducked out of the way, but it hit the glass, and, well, you saw. She meant to do it. She was going to hurt him. She was so, so angry . . . Later, when I confronted him, he claimed it was over long ago. That she couldn’t let it go. But come on.” She flexed her fingers. “I wanted the truth. No more lies. You don’t wait until the very last day of summer and attack someone about something that happened a year ago. She was so angry, angry enough to hurt him right then.” Her throat moved. “That whole place . . . it’s like you walk into it, and it’s a world unto itself. Nothing else exists. Time stops. You think you can do anything . . .” Then she refocused on me. “You didn’t know? I really thought everyone was in on the joke but me.”

  “No,” I said. “I didn’t know.” I had no idea what Parker did when he was off alone.

  “Parker begged me to leave her out of it. And I only did because I didn’t believe then that he could’ve hurt Sadie. We were together most of the night, and then there was that note . . . I didn’t believe he’d really hurt her. But I don’t know anymore. The more time that passes, looking back?” She shook her head.

  But I was barely listening. I was picturing the girl out back with a pillar held like a bat. Running through a list of faces I’d seen at the party. Rumors I’d heard or imagined about Parker. “The other girl, did you know her name?”

  “No. But I knew who she was. I’d seen her before. Curly hair, sort of brownish red. Worked at that bed-and-breakfast, the one we went to for brunch sometimes.” She choked on her own laugh. “He brought me right there during the summer, paraded me around, the sick fuck. I figured, after, that’s why he wanted to park there. That’s what took him so long to show up at the party. So he could see her first.”

  I stepped back just as the door swung open. An older woman in a floral dress stood there, half in the entrance, door balanced on her hip. She looked between us. “Is everything okay?” She must’ve sensed it in the air, the tension, the danger of this moment. A name tag was clipped to the front of her dress. The secretary, then.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Avery?” Luce’s voice faded away as the door swung shut behind me. I moved fast, practically running down the hall. I pushed through the closest exit, into the crisp morning end-of-summer air, sucking in a deep breath.

  Goddamn Connor. He knew. The girl he was arguing with in the shadows—the one who’d swung a pillar at Parker. I saw them through the cracks in the window, near the edge of the yard—her face just out of frame. He saw it happen, and he lied. Choosing his allegiance, then and now.

  I could see her perfectly, that girl in the shadows. Knuckles white. I pictured the look in her eyes as she stumbled backward. Could see it clearly, in a way I never could before. Fear, yes, but anger, too.

  Faith. It had been Faith.

  CHAPTER 24

  I sat in the car outside the hospital, my hands shaking. Pulling out that sheet of paper with our names, unfolding it again. Adding one more name to the end of the list:

  Faith—9 p.m.

  She’d been there. Sometime after Parker arrived but before the window was broken.

  I could barely focus on the drive home, feeling nothing but a white-hot rage surging through my bones.

  If the case was reopened, like I believed, the police were looking at a person who had been at the party. They were looking at that list of names again.

  But there was one more name. A name the police didn’t even know about. Someone who wasn’t even supposed to be there.

  * * *

  CONNOR KEPT CALLING WITH a frequency that I found alarming. I had watched each call come through, listened to each ring until it went to voicemail. But then it would start up again a few moments later, and I began to worry that something had happened. Sadie’s dedication was the next day. I wondered if the investigation had changed anything. The next time the phone started up, I answered on speaker. “Hello?”

  “Where are you,” he said by way of greeting.

  “On my way back. Is everything okay?” The coastal highway was much emptier heading north on a Monday, so much different from the Sunday commute out of town.

  “I was worried. You said you would call, and you didn’t.”

  “Sorry. I started driving straight after talking to Luce.”

  A pause. “What did she tell you? What did you find out?”

  No longer curiosity but a test, and I couldn’t tell where his allegiance remained. “Oh, I’m sure you already know.”

  A stretch of silence, everything unraveling between us in the gap. “No.”

  “You didn’t know Faith was the girl who broke the window?” I came up fast on the car ahead of me, veered around it without pausing. I had to slow down, calm down, but my fingers tightened on the wheel. “You didn’t know she was fighting with Parker Loman and took a swing at him?”

  “No. No. I mean, I saw her there. I knew she was upset. I knew she was there to confront Parker, but I told her to leave. I sent her home. Jesus, she was furious with me, probably still is. Accused me of being a traitor. She didn’t know why I was there.”

  “Well, you missed it. The fight. She was pissed and took a stone pillar to his head. She missed Parker and hit the window instead.”

  “Listen, Faith wouldn’t hurt someone . . .”

  His words trailed off, and in the gap of silence, I laughed. “But I would, isn’t that what you mean?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “She swung it at his head.”

  “The window wasn’t even broken, right? She probably didn’t swing it that hard. Maybe she just wanted to scare him. Let him know she was upset.”

  “Give me a break, Connor.” As if that were the narrative he wanted to believe about both Faith and himself. That he had not latched himself on to two girls from his youth, each of whom had the power to harm, to rage. Because what did it mean for him that he saw something in the both of us that he liked—that he loved?

  “You don’t know her anymore, she’s . . .”

  “She’s what?”
>
  “Smaller, somehow. Like she surrendered and gave up.”

  “That doesn’t sound like Faith.” Not the girl I used to know, sneaking in houses with me, speaking her mind, fearing nothing—the perpetual bounce in her step. But I remembered how she looked when I saw her at the B&B the week before, quiet and reserved. The clipped words, the fake amicability.

  But she could harm. Oh, she could harm.

  Bend until you find that point. When you’re low and sinking faster, and so you do something, anything, in a drastic move, just to get it to stop. The fuck you rising to the surface. The scar from Parker’s fight. The violent shrug of Connor’s arm. My hands connecting with Faith’s shoulders. The surge as I felt our shift in balance—the fulcrum on which so many lives were balanced.

  “Listen, I’m out making a few deliveries, but let me talk to her first. Let’s get together. Let’s—”

  “No, Connor. No.” I would not wait for Connor. Detective Collins clearly had the two of us in his crosshairs. Connor had told me as much—that the detective was asking questions, not only about Connor but about me. And I’d just discovered that Connor’s allegiance did not lie with me. If I wanted the truth, I’d have to get there myself, before it was too late. “I’ll know the truth when I ask her. I’ll know.” Same as how Connor and I could still read each other even after all these years. The things we wanted to keep hidden but couldn’t. Faith couldn’t lie to me. If I asked her, if she’d hurt Sadie—I’d know.

  “And then what?” Connor asked.

  I didn’t know. Couldn’t answer honestly. Faith or Sadie. My past or my present. “Promise me you’ll let me talk to her first.”

  “We’re too old for promises, Avery.” He hung up, and I pressed my foot on the gas, picking up speed as I veered off the highway.

  * * *

  I WASN’T PAYING ATTENTION as I eased my foot off the gas, coasting back down the mountain roads toward the sea. Didn’t see the approaching hairpin turn and braked too late—the momentum swinging the back of my car off the edge of the pavement, the entire car teetering slightly left. My stomach dropped, and I jerked up the emergency brake. My hands shook, my pulse raced, and it took until the surprise of another car—a honk as it swerved past—before I could focus again.

  How easy that would’ve been, I realized. Death never something I had to look for but something that sneaked up when I wasn’t watching. How easy it must’ve been for my father, drifting asleep on the mountain road, my mother beside him, my grandmother in the back. The dark road, the dark night. Honestly, I was surprised it didn’t happen more often.

  It was a miracle, it seemed, that so many of us made it this far and kept going.

  I took a few deep breaths, then drove back toward the downtown of Littleport. In the distance, the sun hit the surface of the water, and my stomach dropped. I passed the turn for Hawks Ridge on my left, with its stone pillars and iron gates. Then a road to the right—forking off toward the place I grew up, with the one-level homes that backed to the woods, and a view of the mountains. In front of me, the road sloped toward the sea and the center of downtown.

  The streets weren’t as congested as they were on the weekend, and I could pick out a few familiar faces as I passed. I knew Detective Collins was somewhere out here, looking for me. Waiting for me. Because he believed that I had wanted to be part of Sadie Loman’s world, and that when she was set to cast me out of it, I wanted her dead.

  They knew what I was capable of when I was angry.

  The sea in the distance looked calm. I steered the car back up the incline, past the police station on top of the hill, toward the Point in the distance, and the lighthouse.

  The lot was half full, and my wheels slowed on the gravel drive. As I exited the car, I could hear the crash of the waves against the cliffs beyond the wooden fence. The shocking power of the ocean. A reminder that one place could become both a nightmare and a dream.

  Watching a family empty their luggage from the car beside me, I almost missed it: a woman walking from behind the B&B into the woods. Down the path I’d raced the year before.

  It was the speed at which she moved that made me follow her. That hair, wild and untamable, piled in a ponytail high on the top of her head. The quick glance over her shoulder, like she didn’t want to be seen.

  I kept my distance, following the path, but I couldn’t keep her in view without being noticed. And by the time I reached the backyard of the Blue Robin—the high row of hedges surrounding the pool, the flash of the blue siding from the house, peeking out from over the top—I had lost her.

  I stood still and listened for signs of her; for anything.

  A flutter in the trees. Leaves blowing across the ground in a quick gust of wind. A crash of waves in the distance.

  And then: the sound of a door opening.

  I stepped around the corner of the Blue Robin just in time to see the door closing in the house across the street. I stood there, staring. She was inside Sunset Retreat.

  It wasn’t because of a broken window, a missing latch. That wasn’t how she’d been getting inside.

  She already had the key.

  CHAPTER 25

  I waited across the street, pressed against the side of the Blue Robin, watching. Trying to understand. Faith had been at the party last year, had gotten into a fight with Parker. Now she was inside one of the Loman properties. I tried to match this information to the ghost of the girl I used to know.

  I remembered Connor and Faith and me inside the empty Loman house together. The way she’d opened all the cabinets, peering inside—all of us taking stock of the life that wasn’t ours. Detective Collins was right—there was someone who had grown obsessed over the years. Who had watched and found a crack—a way into that life. Only it wasn’t me.

  I hadn’t set foot inside Sunset Retreat since I’d discovered the gas leak. This soon after, I wasn’t sure if it was safe yet.

  I crept across the street, keeping to the trees when I could, and stood on my toes, peering in the front window. Behind the gauzy curtains, Faith was running her hands along the surfaces, opening the cabinets, just like she had all those years ago. She was both different and familiar. Smaller, yes, like Connor had said—quieter in her actions. And yet still the same Faith who was bold enough to sneak into a house that was not hers, run wild through town, like she was part of the product of this place. Invisible, now, as we were taught to be.

  I kept watching as she pulled something down from a cabinet. My forehead pressed to the glass before I could understand what she was doing—the matchbook in her hand.

  No. No. Her name on my lips, stuck in my throat. The push and pull. Stay or run. “Faith!” I called, my eyes wide and tearing, but she didn’t look up.

  I pounded on the glass just as she struck the match, but the spark didn’t take. She saw me then, but her face didn’t change. She took out a second match, and I hit the window again. “Stop! Wait!” All I could think of was the smell of gas.

  She looked right at me as she struck the match, and I flinched. The flame caught, and she held it between her fingers, staring my way. I was holding my breath, shoulders braced. But nothing happened as she brought the match slowly down to a candle.

  “Faith,” I called again, but I knew I was muffled behind the glass, my expression softened and obscured. I pounded on the glass again with both hands. “Get out.”

  She didn’t listen, but she didn’t stop me when I raced up the front porch, letting myself in behind her. I stood in the doorway, fists clenched, leaning back—as if the extra distance could protect me. “Blow it out,” I said, but she just stood there, watching me. “There’s gas. There was. A gas leak—”

  “Heard that was fixed,” she said, blowing out the match. The candle flickered on the counter.

  I lunged past her, practically running across the room, and blew out the candle myself. My hands were trembling. “There could’ve been an explosion. A fire. Faith, you could’ve . . .” I shook my head, once
more hearing Sadie’s voice. Tallying all the ways I might die.

  Faith blinked slowly, taking me in. “The gas was turned off. It’s perfectly safe.”

  And then we were standing face-to-face, the rising smoke between us. Her face was more angular—sharp nose, high cheekbones, a chin that narrowed to a point. The years had chiseled her out, turning her serious and determined.

  “Did you call the police?” she asked calmly, evenly. She didn’t try to run. Now that she’d been caught, she didn’t even make any excuses. It was as if she’d been waiting for me to walk in the front door.

  But I was shaken, too much adrenaline coursing through my veins and nowhere for it to go. “Jesus, Faith, what are you doing in here?”

  She shrugged, then took a slow, resigned breath. “I don’t know. I like to come here sometimes. It’s peaceful. A quiet street.”

  “You have a key?”

  She rolled her eyes. “You tell the visitors to leave the key in the mailbox. Nobody comes for hours. Not the best business practice, Avery. Can you blame me? I wouldn’t be surprised if there were others. You know how people get in the winter.” She stared directly into my eyes, daring me to deny it. Reminding me that I once was one of them, and she knew exactly what we’d done together.

  I was thinking about the other properties, the signs of someone else. Not just the gas leak here but the shattered screen of the television at Trail’s End; the evidence of someone inside the Blue Robin; the candles lit all around the Sea Rose. How many more were there? “You made a copy of other keys, too, didn’t you?”

  She shrugged again. “Sure, why not?”

  I pushed open the kitchen windows, just in case. To me, this place would always be dangerous. “Is this because of Parker?” I asked.

  Her eyes narrowed, the skin pulling tight around the edges. Her teeth snagged at the corner of her lip, but she shook her head. “Fuck him.”