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.”
Still angry, then. And now in the position to do something about it. “I know you were there last year. At the party. I know you got in a fight with him.” I stepped closer, around the kitchen island. “I know you broke the window.”
Faith took a step back, her hand going to her elbow on instinct. There was a scar there from the surgery. I stopped moving, and she eyed me carefully.
“I was angry,” she said, staring back unflinching. As if that feeling bonded us together. As if we were the same. “He’s an asshole, but you probably already know that.” She looked to the side. “We’re all supposed to know that, right? We’re supposed to know better.” Then she fixed her eyes on mine, and I understood. How you could get pulled into the orbit of one world, thinking you had a place in it, even if you weren’t fully part of it.
“What happened between the two of you?” I asked.
“Parker Loman happened. You should know, right? Waltzed into the bed-and-breakfast like he owned the place. I knew who he was, had seen him every year, but suddenly, he saw me.” She smiled at the memory. “That first summer, it was fun, keeping the secret. But then he showed up with her the next year.”
“Luce.”
She waved her hand, as if the name were inconsequential. Put a hand on her hip and leaned in to it. “He didn’t stop, you know. Kept telling me it was a mistake, bringing her to town. That he didn’t want her there anymore but couldn’t just send her home . . . He came to see me even then, that night. Dropped his supposed girlfriend at the party and came to see me.”
I could believe it. The way he’d stood over me in the bathroom with Luce somewhere outside. Sadie’s words—that he could and did get away with everything. How he needed it, the idolization of Parker Loman.
“So you were tired of being a secret?” I asked.
“I thought it would be fun to play the secret out in public. More at stake, you know? He got so mad when I said I’d see him at the party later. Like there were some rules that I didn’t know about. He thought he was calling all the shots. But he’s not. It’s not just his decision. We argued about it at my place, but then he said he had to go. Another car pulled into the lot of the B&B, and it spooked him. He said he didn’t want to be seen.” She shook her head. “Seriously, even the thought of being seen
with me was too much . . . Well, it didn’t seem so fun anymore.”
Parker Loman, living so many lives. His lies, then and now, so effortless. Did he know, all along, it had been her? Did he suspect her of sneaking around, causing damage to the properties, and was keeping quiet to save face? So he wouldn’t have to admit he had been seeing a local who had lost her mind?
“But you followed him,” I said. “To the party. Luce saw you there, you know.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Well. I didn’t go over right away. Spent some time stewing in my anger. But then, yes. I followed him. I knew where he was going. Where you all were. Though I didn’t expect Connor.” Her eyes widened. “This town convinces you all you’re better than you really are.”
“Faith,” I said, and she jarred back to reality. “You’ve been destroying his properties to get back at him?”
“I’m not that petty. A woman scorned. Really, Avery?” She strode through the foyer, threw open the front door, and gestured down the empty road. I stepped out front, looking into the trees, but I didn’t see anything. “Do you know what’s happening here while you act like Grant Loman’s little puppet? Do you know what’s happening to the rest of us as you watch him buy up more and more and more?”
I shook my head, because I didn’t. I knew Grant’s accounts deeply. Knew his hopes and aspirations for this place and my role within it. I knew people had been pissed when I’d sold my grandmother’s house to him, but I did not know what Faith was talking about.
“I finished my degree this May, and I come back home to work, and I discovered the B&B is totally in the red. Not just a little. Like unsalvageable. My parents took out a second mortgage for the expansion a couple years back, thinking they could recoup it with the new units. But we can’t. Not with all the other options out there.” She looked out the window. “We were supposed to expand here, did you know? We put a bid on these properties, were going to have this be an annex of the main building. But we didn’t get them. The properties are all under contract, some LLC.” Her upper lip pulled up past her teeth.
“I’m not working for them anymore. Believe me, I—”
“And you.” She stepped closer, fixing her anger on me. Walking down the front porch step, forcing me back in the process. “You, this complete fuckup . . .” She cringed, then shook her head to herself. “I’m sorry, but you were. This complete nobody. Now you’re running the show? When people like me, who do everything right, get the degree, serve their time—we come back here to nothing? Excuse me for doing something about it. I’m just trying to reclaim what’s mine.”
“By what?” And then I understood. She was trying to spook the visitors. Hit the Lomans’ bottom line where it hurt. Our bottom line, as far as she was concerned. I didn’t know whom she was angrier with—them or me. Or maybe everything was all tied up together, feeding off of one another. Me, the person who had hurt her physically; Parker, the one who had broken her heart; the Lomans, destroying her future. Everything broke here.
“Have you been up there? At the Lomans’?”
She threw her hands in the air, as if it were all so obvious. “I’m just trying to find something. Anything. I just want something I can use. I want them out of here.” She was trembling then. “I wanted you out of there. It isn’t fair.” Her voice broke on the last word.
The nights when the electricity had gone out and I’d believed myself alone. Footsteps in the sand, the back door left open, and the feel of someone in the house with me. The flashlight on the bluffs. “You could go to jail,” I whispered. “They could ruin you.” The truth, then. They could ruin anyone.
She sat down on the first step, looking down the undeveloped street, legs stretched out in front of her and crossed at the ankles. “Are you going to tell the police?”
I had come here to ask Faith about Sadie, thinking that if I looked her in the eye, I’d know. Instead, she was confessing to something else. Something perhaps unconnected. Meanwhile, I’d given the police the phone, told them everything I knew, and all it had done was turn their focus on me. I didn’t know what else I owed them. Or her.
“I don’t know,” I said. That, at least, was the truth.
“What about them, then?” she asked. “Are you going to tell the Lomans?”
“I’m not speaking to them right now. They’re not speaking to me. I don’t work for them anymore. I was fired.” I didn’t owe the Lomans anything. Maybe I never did.
Her eye twitched with some emotion I couldn’t understand. “I want him to know it was me,” she said.
She had no idea, the depths of my own anger. Or maybe she did. She tipped her head to the side, watching me closely.
“No one’s stopping you,” I said. “Do what you want. But the Lomans, they think they control everything. People, properties, this entire town. They think they’ve earned that right. They think they deserve to know everything. Maybe they don’t.”
If it were me, I’d let them wonder. Let them wake up to footsteps and not be sure. Let that fracture split their night, their lives.
“You need to leave,” I said. “You need to get out of here. Please, just stop. You almost . . . This place, it was full of gas. Someone could’ve gotten hurt.”
“No, no one was supposed to get hurt. Just—no one was even noticing. You didn’t, even, until the candles. No one was doing anything.”
A chill ran through me. All these invisible lives, hidden just out of sight. Even that night at the party, when she was right there, she remained out of frame, hidden behind shadows and broken glass.
“Did you see what happened that night?” I asked.
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. Then pressed her lips together. What did she think had happened? Did she, like the police, believe I could’ve been involved in Sadie’s death?
“No. Connor told me to leave. I wasn’t about to hang around after that.”
Had those been the footsteps I’d heard that night in the woods? When I called Sadie’s name? Forgetting how so many of us could move like a ghost, undetected and invisible—as we were taught to do.
Still, it was her word. Her word that she’d left the party, gone back home. I stared at her face, trying to see—
The sound of a car engine in the distance pulled my focus. I peered down the road but couldn’t see past the trees.
“Faith, let’s go back.” I pulled her by the sleeve, trying to get her to stand, but she was staring at my hand, clenched in the fabric of her shirt. “The police have been keeping an eye on the house across the street.” I nodded toward the Blue Robin. I wondered if it was the detective even now. If he would find us here and know.
She stood then, her gaze following mine down the road. “I don’t see anyone,” she said.
“Still. We need to go back.”
We walked quietly, side by side, around the side of the Blue Robin, back through the path of trees, like two friends. To anyone else, it probably looked like a friendly hike. I waited until we were out of view of the Blue Robin, until I was sure we were alone again, to ask. I kept my voice low. “None of this—the candles, the damage—it’s not about Sadie?”
She stopped walking for a second, before continuing. “Sadie? No. No. You thought I could hurt her?”
Could she? I closed my eyes and shook my head, but that was a lie, and she knew it. Anyone could do it. That wasn’t the question here. “If I was going to hurt someone,” she said, not breaking stride, “she would be the last Loman on my list.”
I had missed Faith. She was fierce and honest—how had I not seen her there, in the shadows? What was happening at the properties this year had all been about Parker and what the Lomans stood for—not Sadie.
As we emerged into the clearing of the parking lot, she headed toward the back of the house, overlooking the sea.
“Faith. Please. Hate them all they want, but they lo
st their daughter last year. Is that not enough?”
She looked off to the edge of the cliffs, but I knew how it could be—how you could become so lost in your own anger and grief and bitterness that you can barely see anything else. When she turned back, her eyes were watering, but I didn’t know if that was from the sting of the saltwater wind. “I know you were close to her, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry she’s dead.”
She walked back toward the house, and I headed for my car, the rest of the lot currently abandoned. But all I could think was that Parker’s car had been parked at the B&B the night Sadie died. He could’ve left, sneaked back home, and returned.
“Faith,” I called just before she disappeared from view. “You said a car pulled in to the lot that night, after Parker was here. Who was it?” I wondered if it was Connor who had parked there.
She shook her head. “I didn’t get a good look. There were two people, walking to the party. I only know that one of them was in a blue skirt. I could see it in the moonlight.”
Faith continued inside, the sound of her footsteps echoing on the wooden steps out of view.
I tried to think who had worn a blue skirt that night. Most people were in jeans, khaki shorts, a few sundresses with jackets over the top. It was impossible to remember what clothing people had worn. I could barely remember my own. There was only one person I knew by heart.
I closed my eyes and saw Sadie spinning in the entrance of my room. What do we think of this? Her blue dress, shimmering. You know you’ll freeze, right? Pulling on my brown sweater over the top.
Goose bumps rose in a rush.
From behind, from where Faith had stood, it would’ve looked like Sadie was wearing a skirt.
And suddenly, I saw Sadie take out her phone, seeing the message I sent: Where are you? And then: ???
I saw her with the clarity of a memory instead of my imagination. Saw it with a fervor that made it perfectly true. Frowning at her phone, sending me that message—the last one, the one I never received. The dots lighting up my phone:
The Last House Guest (ARC) Page 22