The Last House Guest

by Megan Miranda

  “I went out back.”

  “Why?”

  Because I was drawn there. Could sense it before I saw it. Her life was my life. “The police at Breaker Beach,” I said. I looked to Officer Chambers, wondering if he had been one of the people there waving us past, but he kept his eyes down. “There was a cop blocking us from getting any closer. But there’s a way down from above. I wanted to see.”

  “And did you? Did you see?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  He leaned closer, dropped his voice, like this part was off the record, just between us. “You looked panicked when I saw you there.”

  “I was. She’s my best friend. I didn’t believe it. But . . .”

  “But?”

  “Her shoes. I saw her shoes. And then I knew.” My hands started trembling, and I squeezed them tight, to try to get them to stop.

  As he was staring at me, my eyes drifted to the windows to my right. Through the trees to the view of the ocean, the terrifying vastness of it. The converging currents and endless depth; the secrets it held.

  “Okay,” he said, leaning back. “Let’s go through the night again.” As he spoke, he looked down at the list I’d given him. “Parker and Luciana were together most of the party.” He raised his eyes to me to confirm. There was no point, then, in mentioning the fight upstairs. Or the time I was alone with Parker. They drove over together. They left together. They were together most of the night.

  I nodded. “Are you looking at the party?” I asked. I didn’t understand why the details mattered. She hadn’t been there. The party had been on the other end of town.

  “No, we’re looking here,” the detective said. Officer Chambers peered around my living room as if there might be some clue that he had missed. “The house, to the cliffs, down to Breaker Beach. That’s the scene. The reason I’m asking you about the party”—he leaned forward—“is to find out whether anyone was missing.” He picked up his pen, raised an eyebrow. “So. Can anyone vouch for you the entire time, Avery?”

  I shook my head, confused, desperate. “Parker, Luce, there was a houseful of people. They saw me. I was there.”

  “You could’ve left. They can’t account for every single moment.”

  “But I didn’t. And I told you, she was messaging me. She was fine.”

  “What about Connor Harlow?”

  “What about him?”

  “Would you know his state of mind last night?”

  His shirt sliding over his head. Guiding me to the bed—

  “I wouldn’t know anything. Me and Connor don’t speak anymore.”

  “But you saw him there.”

  Connor’s face, inches from my own. The feel of his hands on my hips.

  “Yes,” I said. “I saw him.”

  “Was he there the whole time?”

  The power of this moment, constricting the air. No one could be sure, really, who was there and who had gone. A party like that, you could only say the thing you hoped others would say for you. A deep-buried instinct to protect your own. “Yes. None of us left.”

  * * *

  LATER THAT MORNING, AFTER the police had returned to the main house, I saw a figure standing at the edge of the garage, staring at a phone.

  I opened my door, called her name in a voice that was almost a whisper. “Luce?”

  She startled, then turned my way, and I walked out to meet her. Up close, her eyes were bloodshot, her face gaunt and makeup-free.

  “I have to get out of here,” she said, shaking her head. Her hair was pulled back tight, severe. “I don’t belong here right now. I’m trying to . . .” She tapped at her phone, exasperated. “I’m trying to find a way to get to the bus station. If I can get to Boston, I can make it home.”

  It was then I saw that she had a bag in her other hand, her grip tight on the tan leather handles. Her eyes searched mine as if I might have the answers.

  “I’d take you myself, but I don’t have my car. It’s still at the overlook.” I swallowed. “Maybe you can take Parker’s car. Since Grant and Bianca are here now.”

  Her eyes widened. “I am not asking him that right now.” She looked over her shoulder at the house and shuddered. “I don’t belong there. It’s not my place. It’s—”

  “Okay, come in. Luce, come on.” A hand at her elbow to get her inside. I led her there, into the living room.

  She sat on the couch, her back inches off the cushions, hands folded carefully over her knees, luggage on the floor in front of her. I gave her the number of a car service she could try; she was clearly rattled, unable to focus enough to find this information herself.

  “Stay here. I’m going for my car. If you’re still here when I’m back, I’ll drive you to the bus myself.”

  She nodded, staring at nothing.

  It was the last time I saw her.

  I started walking. Down Landing Lane, past Breaker Beach, where there were cop cars blocking the lot, the whole area roped off. I kept walking into the town center, where a solemn, shell-shocked air had settled over everything, like a thick fog.

  My throat tightened, and I bent over on the sidewalk, hands on my knees.

  “Avery?” A man turned from the back of his SUV at the curb. Faith’s father, securing a crate of coffee into the back of his vehicle, trunk open. “You okay, there?”

  I stood and wiped my knuckles across my cheeks. “I left my car,” I said, my voice stuck against my windpipe, like I was choking. “At the party last night.”

  He looked over his shoulder, up the road, in the direction of the party. “Well, come on, I’ll take you there.”

  His car smelled of coffee grinds and fresh laundry, the world continuing on with or without Sadie. We drove up Harbor Drive, past the police station at the top of the hill. “Terrible news, about the Loman girl. I heard you were close.”

  I could only nod. Couldn’t think about Sadie in her blue dress, standing at the edge. Barefoot, listening to the violence of the sea below.

  He turned the car toward the Point, then cleared his throat. “Do you have a place to stay?”

  “Yes,” I said, not understanding the question. Before realizing, without Sadie, the entire foundation of my life was about to shift.

  “Well,” he continued, “you let us know. End of season, you know we have the room, should you need it.”

  I turned to take him in—the deep lines of his weatherworn face, the longer, graying hair pushed back like he was facing the wind, and the sharp angle of his nose, like Faith’s. “I don’t think Faith would like that,” I said.

  “Well,” he said, turning past the bed-and-breakfast, heading for the homes up on the overlook, “that was a long time ago.”

  “It was an accident,” I said.

  He didn’t respond at first. “You scared us all then. But you came out the other side okay, Avery.” He pulled onto Overlook Drive, where the Blue Robin was located.

  “This is good,” I said as my lone car came into view. I wanted to be alone. Not think too hard about what I had done and what I had meant to do. What I was capable of when the bonds that held me in check were released.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  He gestured down the tree-lined road, from here to Sunset Retreat and the Blue Robin. “These all gonna be rentals, then? Every one of them? They’re gonna keep building?”

  “Not right away. But yes, that’s the plan.” I stepped out of the car. “Thank you for the ride.” He nodded but kept his gaze down the long lane of uncleared lots.

  I walked down the street, imagining the stream of people heading toward the party the night before—and then racing out, after the police arrived. I’d missed whatever happened in the aftermath, but it was obvious that people had left in a rush. The tire marks in the place where the grass met the road. The trash and debris left behind on the shoulder. An empty bottle. A pair of broken sunglasses.

  My car was in the driveway of Sunset Retreat, facing out. But it looked l
ike someone had driven across the yard: tire tracks revved all the way down to the dirt below. I imagined a bottleneck of vehicles and someone impatient, driving around everyone else.

  The front door of the Blue Robin across the way was ajar, a darkness beckoning.

  I stepped across the threshold, taking it all in. The air pulsed, like the house was alive.

  There were half-empty bottles on the counters, the ticking of a fan set too high, the stench of sweat and spilled liquor. And the candles, burned down to the wick, wax pooling at the base. Most had extinguished themselves, but there was one burning by the back window, set just below the web of cracks. I blew it out, watching as the smoke drifted upward, seeing the night fragmented through the glass.

  Upstairs, there were several jackets remaining on the bed in the first room. And a shoe, of all things.

  My fingers twitched with misplaced energy. There was too much out of my control. Too much I could never change.

  I pulled out my phone and called the cleaning company. Told them to come as soon as they could and to send me the bill directly; I didn’t want this to go to the Lomans right now. I didn’t want them seeing it, the reckless mess we were making as their daughter was dying.

  Downstairs, I threw the bathroom towels into the washer, dark with grime. But that was the benefit of white towels, white sheets—the open, airy feel of a place, the cleanliness. It was an easy illusion to maintain with a half-cup of bleach.

  In the bedroom, the chest with extra blankets was open, but nothing seemed missing or used—just a stack of folded quilts—so I eased it shut.

  And then, feeling more myself the more I took control, I found the number for the window company and left a message. That we would need a replacement for a damaged window at 3 Overlook Drive, and to call me when they needed access to measure.

  After, I pulled the front door shut but didn’t lock it—I didn’t have the keys. I’d have to come back and check up on things after the cleaning.

  I walked across the street to my car, and my eyes burned. Every place I stepped, everything I saw, was a place that Sadie would never be and never see. Even my car felt vaguely unfamiliar to me now. The granules of sand below the driver’s seat, which had been there for who knew how long—but all I could see was Sadie, brushing off her legs after a bonfire at Breaker Beach. The papers stuffed into the door compartment, and I pictured her balling up a receipt, stuffing it out of sight. My sunglasses wedged into the visor, and I saw her lowering the shade to check the mirror, saying, God, could I be any paler?

  I couldn’t shake the scent of the house as I drove. The liquor, the sweat, something almost animal about it. So I kept the windows down, let the fresh air of Littleport roll in.

  I drove in the opposite direction, toward the winding mountain roads, where the sun cast a pattern through the trees as the wind blew, like an incoming eclipse.

  SUMMER

       2018

  CHAPTER 26

  I was standing outside the bed-and-breakfast after Faith disappeared inside. I was glued to my spot, trying to process what she’d just told me. Another car had turned up the night of the party—and Sadie had been inside.

  Sadie had been right here a year earlier, stepping out of a car in the parking lot of the B&B, walking the path to the party. I looked into the trees down the path, imagining her ghost.

  * * *

  I DROVE BACK TOWARD the Sea Rose, needing to be alone, to think. Everything I’d believed about that night was wrong. Could everything I’d thought about Sadie be wrong, too?

  Over the years, our lives had become so tangled, pieces of each other indecipherable. The details blurring and overlapping. My home was her home, keys on each other’s rings, her thumb pressed to the front of my phone, the same tattoos—or was it a brand?

  And yet how had I missed that she was there? She had arrived at the party. But somehow she’d ended up back on the cliffs behind her house, washing up on Breaker Beach. How?

  I edged the car away from downtown, looping around the side roads to avoid the traffic, before cutting back toward the coast and the Sea Rose. All along, the night played over in my mind. The things I had told the police and the things I hadn’t.

  Faith taking a swing at Parker outside, breaking the window. Connor arguing with Faith in the shadows after, by the time Luce came to find me. The bedroom door had been locked. I’d wanted to find the tape in the bathroom to secure the window, but someone else had been in there. I’d slammed my hand on the bedroom door, but no one answered.

  Had Sadie been in that room when I’d pounded on the door? I’d found her phone in the house—in that very room. Maybe no one had moved it there. Maybe it was Sadie all along who had lost it. Placed it. Hidden it.

  But that didn’t make sense. How had no one seen her leaving? No one had seen her at all, not that they were saying. Someone would’ve noticed her—how could you not? Greg Randolph, surely. And we would’ve seen her if she’d left through the back patio, walking down the path, heading toward the B&B parking lot.

  But. The lights had gone out, the commotion on the patio. Ellie Arnold falling—or pushed—into the pool. She insisted she was pushed. She was adamant about it, furious that we didn’t believe her.

  We had all moved to the back of the house then. Had been drawn to the scream, the chaos, like moths to a flame.

  Had Sadie sneaked out the front while we were distracted?

  I tried to picture it. Someone needing to get her out of the house. Looking frantically for the best option. The back door, no longer a choice. The car at the B&B, too far. What would they do? A faceless person looking through the bathroom cabinets, the dresser drawers—for anything. Looking through her purse, seeing the keys there. Finding mine instead.

  The tire tracks in the grass I’d seen the next day when Faith’s father dropped me off—because my car had been blocked in.

  I sucked in a breath. She had been there. What if she’d been in this very car.

  I pulled over abruptly, at the curve of the road heading back into town, staring at the passenger seat. Looking for signs of injury. I ran my hands over the beige upholstery—worn and weary. I jerked up the emergency brake and looked under the seat. There was nothing but dirt, sand, debris—a year of memories.

  But I remembered the next morning, when I’d returned for the car. How I’d sat in the seat, feeling a vague unfamiliarity to it. I’d thought, at the time, that it was my entire world, my perspective shifting at the loss of Sadie. But now . . .

  My head spun, and I turned the car off. I walked around back, hands trembling, and slipped the key into the trunk lock. A dim light flicked on, and I peered into the empty space.

  It smelled faintly of fabric, of gasoline, of the sea.

  My hands shook as I ran my fingers across the material. The dark felt was slightly matted, covered with fragments of fibers. It had pulled away from the edges, peeling at the corners, from both time and use.

  I took a deep breath to steady myself. Maybe this was just my imagination going three steps too far—forward and back.

  I pulled up the flashlight of my phone and shone it into the back corners of the trunk—but it was completely empty. There was a darker spot in the corner, closer to the front, on the right. Just a slight discoloration—I ran my fingers across it but couldn’t be sure of what it was. Vodka, beer—half-empty bottles that could’ve spilled the night of the party. Or a leaking grocery bag in the months that followed. The car was old. It could’ve been anything.

  I set the phone down so I could get a closer look, and the light shone up at the surface, catching on a groove on the underside of the metal roof. At the opposite end, on the left. I ducked my head underneath, ran my fingers over it. A dent, some scratches. Another dent beside it. My knuckle fit in the groove. I ran my hands against the cool underside of the trunk. A web of scratches near the seam.

  It could be anything. It could be nothing. My mind, like Sadie’s, picturing all the ways death could
be so close. My fingers smoothed back the felt peeling away from the corner, and a glint of metal caught in the beam of the flashlight at the corner. I leaned closer, body half tilting into the trunk as I picked it up.

  It was a small piece of metal. Probably lost from a bag. Gold, and spiraled, and—

  I dropped the metal. Stepped back. Looked again.

  Her gold shoes that had been in the box of evidence—missing a piece of the buckle. I’d thought because they’d been worn down, the holes of the strap pulling, the stitching showing, the bottoms scuffed. But the missing piece of her buckle—here, in the trunk of my car.

  I looked at the indentations and scratches again.

  Like she’d kicked her shoes against the roof of the trunk. Over and over again.

  Oh God. Oh God oh God. I dropped the light, dropped my hands to the bumper to steady myself.

  Sadie had been in this trunk, alive. Sadie had been here, trying to fight. Trying to live.

  I slid to the ground. The cool pavement beneath my knees, my hands braced on the bumper, the bile rising in my throat. The only light on the dark road was from the trunk, a sickly yellow, and I couldn’t get a full breath. Sadie. Sadie had been there. Inches away at the party. And she had been here. In my car, waiting for me to find her. To save her.

  The scratches on the trunk—she had wanted to live. All those years courting death, joking about it, and she had fought it. Given it everything she had. Sadie, who I once believed could overcome anything.

  I couldn’t breathe. Just a wheeze as I struggled for air.

  The headlights from another car shone down the road, and I pulled myself up on the bumper to steady myself. The wheels came to a stop behind me, and the car door opened, but the engine continued running, the lights illuminating the empty road.

  “You okay there?” A man’s voice.

  I turned to face him, but I had to raise a hand to shield my face from the blinding light, and my eyes watered, picturing Sadie. Sadie alive and then dead. Somewhere between here and there.