The Last House Guest

by Megan Miranda

  “Yes,” he said, moving closer to the desk. “And I saw you heading this way earlier. You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing in here?”

  I was breaking and entering, and he’d found me. He knew what I’d been looking through and where to find me. Cornered me and caught me red-handed.

  “Wait,” I begged, hands held out in front of me. “Just wait, please.” I had to show him right then, before he could change his mind, bring me in, call the Lomans, and I’d never stand a chance. The Lomans could ruin anyone. “I have to show you something.” I rifled through my bag, pulled out everything I’d brought with me. Trying to clear some space on the desk. “Here’s what I sent you,” I said, holding out the medical form for Parker. “See?”

  His forehead was scrunched in concentration as he read the document. “I don’t know what I’m looking at here.”

  “This is evidence that Parker was hurt the same time my parents died in a car accident.”

  He stared at me, green eyes catching the light from the window. I couldn’t read his expression, whether he believed me, whether he was putting things together himself.

  “Sadie,” I said, handing him the flash drive, my throat scratching on her name. “She found evidence that her family paid off my grandmother after my parents’ accident. One hundred thousand dollars. It’s here.”

  He took it from me, frowning. Turning it over in his hand.

  “I have more,” I said. I had everything. I tallied the evidence, pushed the folder I’d brought across the desk in his direction. The matching account number from my grandmother’s checkbook. It had to be enough. “There’s proof that my grandmother paid down her mortgage with this money right after they died. And,” I said, taking out my phone, my hand shaking, “proof that Sadie was hurt at the party last year. Detective, she was there.” I pulled up the photos I’d just taken, handed him my phone, the words tumbling out too fast. Trying to walk him through the course of events—the bloodstain from the bathroom, my belief that someone had taken her from the house, wrapped her in a blanket, lost her phone in the process.

  “They used my car. My trunk,” I said, a sob caught in my throat. “The crime scene was there. Not here. She didn’t jump.”

  The corners of his mouth tipped down, and he shook his head. “Avery, you have to slow down.”

  But that wasn’t right. I had to speed up. Sadie didn’t want a fucking bell, a sad quote. She wanted this. To be seen. To be avenged. And he wasn’t paying attention. What did I need to do to get him to see?

  He stared at the photos on my phone, his hand faintly shaking as well, like I’d transferred my fear straight to him. His eyes drifted to the window behind me, and I knew what he was thinking—the Lomans would be back soon.

  He had to believe me before they arrived.

  “There have to be people in the department who remember the accident,” I said. “Who know something. It was a long time ago, but people remember.” It was horrific, that was what the first officer on the scene said. I had the article with me in that folder on the desk. “Maybe we can talk to the person who was first on-scene. Maybe there’s some evidence that didn’t make sense.” Another piece of proof to link the cases together.

  I opened the folder, pulled out the article—so he would remember. Detective Collins had once told me that he knew who I was, what I’d been through—that it was a shitty hand to draw. He was older than me. He must’ve remembered this.

  “Can I . . .” He cleared his throat, holding up my phone. “Can I hang on to this?”

  I nodded, and he tucked my phone into his pocket, then pulled out a pack of cigarettes, sliding one out, a lighter in the other hand. “Bad habit, I know,” he said. His hand shook as he flicked the lighter twice before it caught. A slow exhale of smoke, eyes closed. “Sometimes it helps, though.”

  I imagined the smoke soaking into the Lomans’ walls, the ornate carpet beneath our feet. How they’d hate it. I almost spoke, on instinct, and then stopped. Who cared?

  In the article, there was a black-and-white picture of the road—how had I not seen it before, the same image Sadie had taken on her phone? The arc of trees, so different in the daylight—but it matched.

  The article also had a picture of the wreckage left behind. The metal heap of a car crumpled against a tree. My heart squeezed, and I had to close my eyes, even after all these years.

  I skimmed over sentences, paragraphs, until the part I remembered—that had been seared into my mind years earlier.

  “The first officer on the scene gave a statement to the reporter,” I said. Reading the words that I’d wanted to forget for so long. “Here it is. ‘There was nothing I could do. It was just terrible. Horrific. I thought we had lost them all, but when the EMTs arrived, they discovered the woman in the backseat was still alive. Just unconscious.’ The loss will be felt by everyone in the community, including the young officer—”

  I stopped reading, the room hollowing out. Couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say the words. Watched, instead, as everything shifted.

  He raised his eyebrows, flicked the lighter again. Held it to the base of Parker’s medical paper, letting it catch fire and fall into the stainless-steel trash can.

  I stared once more down at the article in my hand. The truth, always inches away, just waiting for me to look again.

  The unfinished sentence, our paths crossing over and over, unseen, unknown. Officer Ben Collins.

  CHAPTER 29

  Smoke spilled from the top of the garbage can, the air dangerous and alive. “You knew,” I said, stepping back.

  Detective Ben Collins stood between me and the doorway, not meeting my eye. Systematically dropping page after page into the trash. Each piece of evidence I’d given him, every piece of proof. One after another into the burning trash. He had my phone. My flash drive. The evidence of the payments—

  The other payment, the one Sadie had found and copied, stored on the flash drive alongside the payment to my grandmother. That had gone to him. “The Lomans paid you off, too,” I said.

  Finally, he looked at me. A man cut into angles, into negative space. “It was an accident. If it helps, he didn’t mean to do it. Some kid speeding past me, driving like a bat out of hell in the middle of the night. I didn’t know it was Parker Loman when I took off after him—he didn’t see the other car coming. The lights must’ve blinded them to the curve. Both of them ended up off the road, but the other car . . .”

  “The other car—” I choked out. My parents. There were people inside. People who had been taken from me.

  How long had he waited to call the EMTs after Parker Loman stepped from the car? Had Parker asked him to wait while he pressed his hand to the cut on his forehead, seeing what he had done? Or had Grant Loman called in, explained things, convinced him to let his son go—that there was nothing to be done now, no use ruining another life in the process—a plea but also a threat?

  Had my parents bled out while he waited? Did they fight it, the darkness, while a young Ben Collins weighed his own life and chose?

  The garbage can crackled, a heat between us as we stood on opposite ends of the desk.

  “Avery, listen, we were all young.”

  I understood that, didn’t I? The terrible choices we made without clarity of thought. On instinct, on emotion, or in a drastic move, just to get things to stop. To change.

  “I think about it often,” he said. “I think we all do. And now we’re doing the best we can, all of us. It was terrible, but the Lomans have supported this town through thick and thin, giving back whenever they can. I made a decision when I was twenty-three, and I’ve been trying to make peace with it ever since.” He held one hand out to the side. “I’ve given everything to this place.”

  His eyes were wide now, like he was begging me to see it—the person reflected in his eyes. The better person he had become. It was true, if I gave it any thought—he was always the person involved, who volunteered. Who organized the parades, the events. The pe
rson people asked to join committees. But all I could see was the lie. It had been built into the very fabric of who he was now.

  “They’re dead!” I was yelling then. Finally, a place to direct my anger. Instead of sinking further into myself. Instead of succumbing to the spiral that caught me and refused to let go.

  He flinched. “What do you want, Avery?” Matter-of-fact. Like everything in life was a negotiation.

  I shook my head. He was so calm, and the crackle of the flames was eating away at the air, destroying everything again.

  I needed to get out of this room, but he was blocking the way.

  He stepped to the side, and I instinctively moved back, toward the wall. “We’ll talk to Grant, work something out. Okay?” he said.

  But he had it wrong. Of course he couldn’t do that.

  “Sadie,” I said, finally understanding. Her flaw was my own—she’d trusted the wrong person. My life was her life. She must’ve taken this same path, landed at his name—and believed he would tell her the truth. “You killed her,” I whispered, hand to my mouth at the truth, at the horror.

  He had been the man who had brought her to the party. The man no one had seen.

  His eyes drifted shut, and he winced. “No,” he said. But it was desperate, a plea.

  I could see it playing out, what she would do—three steps back, finding Ben Collins in the article, just like I had done. Asking him to pick her up, directing him to the party. Sadie, empowered by what she’d uncovered, believing she had everyone right where she wanted them—for one final, fatal strike. She’d hidden away the money trail; all she needed was him. The money she had stolen from the company—for this. For him. Never seeing the danger in the places where it truly existed. “All she wanted from you was the truth,” I said.

  He blinked twice, face stoic, before speaking. “What good would that do now? I’d be burying all of us. And for what? We can’t change the past.”

  For what? How could he ask that? For justice. For my parents. For me.

  To say the truth—that Parker had been responsible for the death of my parents. Because inside that family was a perpetual power struggle, and Sadie must’ve finally seen a way to bring down her brother. A calculated, fatal move.

  But something else had happened behind that locked door during the party. She had misjudged him. Had she pled her case, offered the money, believing he was on her side—before he struck? Or had they argued, the danger slowly shifting from words to violence, until it was too late?

  “The blood in the bathroom. You hurt her,” I said in a whisper. Not a car inadvertently driving another off the road. But hands and fists on flesh and bone.

  “She slipped,” he said. “It was an accident,” he repeated. “I didn’t know what to do, and I panicked. None of it would bring her back.”

  But his words were empty, hollow lies. Sadie was breathing. He had to have known she was breathing. Otherwise, why bring her to the cliffs? The water in her lungs, the fact that it could look like a suicide, the placement of her shoes—the last step of his cover-up. His cool, crisp mind, planning to end one life in order to save what was left of his.

  Had the Lomans turned him into a killer years ago? Making him complicit, shifting the line of his own morality until he could justify even this?

  He flipped the flash drive into his palm again, tucked it in his pocket. “She told me there was someone else who had the proof. I always thought it was you.”

  Only it hadn’t been me. It was Connor, though he didn’t know it. That must’ve been why Sadie had wanted him at the party, had brought them both there. Safety in knowledge, in numbers. In a crowd.

  There was nothing left on the desk but the article about my parents’ accident. Like he was erasing all traces of Sadie once more.

  “She was awake,” I said. “She tried to get out of the trunk. I have proof.” Something he could not destroy in this room.

  Everything changed then. His face, the smoke, the crackle of flames.

  “Your trunk,” he said, monotone. “The phone you found, the person you were fighting with, evidence in your trunk. The daughter of the family who just fired you. You do not want to do this, trust me.” As if I were a nothing. Powerless, then and now. The person he would blame. The person who would pay.

  Now I understood why he kept questioning us about the party. Looking for who might’ve seen him or Sadie. Who might’ve seen him bringing her limp body out front. Who could’ve seen him throwing her from the bluffs, or returning my car after, or walking back for his own in the lot of the B&B.

  And then I was there. He saw me on the cliffs while he was “finding” her shoes. His prints would be on them if he was the one who found them. He’d said the same thing about me when I’d brought him Sadie’s phone.

  That was why he had asked me, over and over, about that night. Why he’d watched me so closely during the interview, looking for what I was hiding. He was terrified that I knew more than I was saying.

  The last piece of the puzzle. The unspoken question he was asking that night: Had I seen him?

  “Just tell me what you want,” he said, reaching for the article on the desk.

  “Stop,” I said, and I grasped for it myself—such a stupid thing to cling to. I could find another one in print or in records. But it was the fact that something was being taken from me again, without my permission.

  I had the paper in my grip, but he lunged in my direction, grabbing my arm.

  Crystal-clear.

  This man had killed Sadie for knowing the truth. I would not get a chance to prove my innocence, to present my side of the case. He had killed to protect himself—nothing more. And now I was the threat.

  I jerked back, his fingers slipping away, and raced around the desk for the door. He lunged in my direction again, knocking the garbage can, the papers tumbling out in a trail of embers and flame. Catching on the ornate rug. His eyes widened.

  I ran. Stumbling out of the room with Ben Collins steps behind me. He called my name, and the smell of smoke followed. He’d catch me too easily on the stairs—the open, airy spiral. I dove into the nearest room, slammed the door behind me.

  Sadie’s room.

  There were no locks. And nowhere to hide, everything designed to show the clean lines of the place. The bare wood floor under the bed. The open space. No place for secrets here.

  The fire alarm started blaring, an even, high-pitched cry.

  Maybe the fire department would come. But not soon enough.

  I pulled open her glass balcony doors, let the fabric billow in. It was too far to jump. The only room you could jump from safely was the master bedroom, with the slope of grass beneath their balcony—which Connor, Faith, and I had climbed through years ago.

  It was all I could do to flatten myself against the wall by her bedroom door before it flew open again. Ben Collins walked straight for the open doors to the patio, leaning over—peering out. And I took that moment to dart down the hall in the other direction.

  He must’ve heard my steps—everything echoed here—because he called my name again, his voice booming over the sound of the fire alarm.

  But I was at the other end of the hall, smoke spilling out of the office between us.

  Slamming the door to the master bedroom, I raced for the balcony. One leg over the railing, hanging from my fingertips, imagining Connor below, my feet on his shoulders. A six-foot drop. I could do it.

  I heard the door open as I let go, the impact from the ground jarring me. I stumbled, then righted myself and ran for the cliff path. I was already calling for help, but my pleas were swallowed up by the crash of the waves.

  “Stop!” he called, too close—close enough to hear not only his words but his footsteps. “Do not run from me!”

  Witnesses. All I could think was witnesses. Sadie had been behind a locked door, inside a locked trunk. No one had been there to see her go.

  I was not a criminal running from the cops. I was not what his story would make
me.

  The outline of a man emerged near the edge of the cliff path, and I almost collided with him before he came into focus. Parker. “What’s going—”

  I reeled back, and Detective Collins froze, mere steps away from the both of us. The water crashed against the rocks behind us. The steps down to Breaker Beach were so close, within sight—

  “He killed her!” I yelled. I wanted someone else to hear, someone else to see us.

  “What?” Parker was looking from me to the detective, back to the house—where the blare of the fire alarm just barely reached us.

  “She knows about the crash,” Detective Collins said, breathing heavily. Deflecting, refocusing. I looked between the two of them, wondering if I had only doubled the danger. What each would do to keep his secrets. The detective’s hands were on his hips as he strained to catch his breath, his arms pushing his coat aside, revealing a gun.

  Parker turned to me, his dark eyes searching. “An accident,” he said, the words barely formed. Barely falling from his lips. The same thing Detective Collins had said, that Parker’s parents must’ve said—the lines Parker clung to. Still, I noticed, the thing he didn’t say. Neither he nor his sister ever capable of an apology.

  Parker looked at the detective. “You told her?”

  “Sadie knew,” I said before he could answer. No one had told me. Sadie had led me there. My steps in her steps. But now it was just the three of us here, and the violent sea below, all the terrible secrets it kept. “She found out the truth, and he killed her.”

  The detective shook his head, stepping closer. “No, listen . . .”

  Parker blinked as a wave crashed below. “What did you say, Avery?”

  But I never got the chance to respond.

  The detective must’ve seen it in Parker’s eyes, the same as me. The sudden burst of rage, the anger gathering, until something else was surging through his blood. Detective Collins reached for his gun just as Parker lunged.

  I couldn’t say who moved first. Which was the action and which the reaction. Only that Parker was on him in the moment his gun was in his hand—but he never got a grip on it, never pointed it wherever it was intended to go.