I’m already here.
SUMMER
2017
The Day After the Plus-One Party
I didn’t sleep. After I returned to the guesthouse, I sat by the window, numb, waiting for something to make sense. But the world had shifted, and nothing registered. Time kept jolting in fragments. I’d seen, from the window, Grant and Bianca return in the middle of the night. I watched various police cars come and go before daybreak. But my mind kept circling back, picturing Sadie standing in my doorway. Hearing her calling my name, an echo in my memory.
I saw the two men coming before they knocked, saw them quietly speaking to each other as they approached.
The police. Here to question me about the night before. About Sadie.
WE SAT AT MY kitchen table, four chairs pulled around the clean white surface. I took a seat across from Detective Ben Collins and Officer Paul Chambers, as they introduced themselves—though I heard the detective call the younger man Pauly when they were taking out their notepads.
“Avery, I know this must feel unnecessary,” Detective Collins said. “Cruel, even, given the circumstances.” His voice dropped lower, as if someone else might be listening. “But it helps to go over things right away, before people forget. Or before they talk to others and the stories start to mix.” He waited for me to respond, and I nodded. “Yesterday, when did you last see Sadie?” he asked.
My eyes drifted to the hallway, to my open bedroom door. I knew the answer, but my thoughts lagged behind, as if they had to travel through some other space first. “Around noon, maybe. She came over when I was still working.”
He nodded. “Did she tell you anything about her plans for the rest of the day?”
I pictured her spinning in my doorway. Grabbing my sweater. Her hands fidgeting with the ends of her hair. “She didn’t say anything, but she was supposed to meet us there. We go to the party every year.” What else could she be getting ready for, if not that?
“So she never said she’d be at the party.”
She hadn’t, but it was just assumed. Wouldn’t she have told me otherwise? “She told Parker not to wait for her.” My voice sounded raspy, even to me. “That’s what Parker said.”
“And you? Did she tell you not to wait, too?”
I shook my head. “She knew I was going early, to open up the house and set things up. But she always came to the Plus-One party. I texted her. See?” I held out my phone so he could see the sent messages—the lack of response. “She was texting me back. I saw the dots.” Officer Chambers took down my number, made note of the time and content of my messages.
“How many drinks had you had by then?” Detective Collins asked.
“Two,” I said. Three.
They shared a quick look. “Okay. We haven’t been able to locate her phone yet. It appears it was on her when she . . .” Here, he trailed off, but I leaned closer, trying to understand. When she fell? Jumped? Was pushed?
Officer Chambers jotted something down. But the detective was the only one asking questions. “How was she acting, last you saw her?”
I closed my eyes, trying to see. To give them something, anything. As if I could pull her back here with words alone. The way she’d spun on her feet. Rolled her eyes. Pieced through my closet. Shrugged on my sweater, her energy spilling over—“Like Sadie,” I said. Like everything was fine. Like I’d see her again soon.
He leaned back in my wooden chair, and it creaked. I tried to read his notes, but they were tilted out of my field of vision. The only sound was of our breathing.
“You, Luciana, and Parker each arrived at the party separately,” he said. “How did that go again?” Like he’d already heard this from someone and I was just confirming the details.
“I was there first. Luciana arrived next. Parker arrived last.”
Here, a pause. “And Connor Harlow? We heard he was at the party.”
The feel of my hand trailing down his arm, leading him to the bedroom.
A nod. “Connor was there, too.”
Detective Collins tore off a sheet of paper in the silence, jotted down a list of names, asked me to fill in the arrival times: Avery Greer, Luciana Suarez, Parker Loman, Connor Harlow.
I estimated as well as I could, then paused at the last name. I frowned at the page, my eyes unfocused and burning with fatigue. “Connor was there before Parker. I’m not sure when,” I said.
Detective Collins twisted the paper back his way, eyes skimming the list. “That’s a big gap between you and the next person.”
“Yes, I was setting up. The first-timers, they always come early.” There was something in his eyes I couldn’t read, a line I’d just drawn—and we were on opposite sides. I cleared my throat. “I brought over the liquor. Opened up the house. It’s my job, overseeing the Lomans’ properties.”
“So you’ve said. How did you get there last night?” he asked.
“I took my car,” I said. The trunk was full of the box of liquor, the leftovers from the pantry.
“And where is that car now?” He made a show of looking around the house, as if it might be hidden away somewhere.
I let out a shaky breath. “When the police showed up at the party, I left with Parker. I wasn’t thinking. I just followed him out. My car was blocked in by that time anyway, at the house across the street.” I looked out the front window, toward my empty spot. “I guess it’s still there.”
He put down his pen, eyes focused intently on mine, as if there were a hole in my story and he was about to pry it open. But then he continued on. “After the officers arrived at the party and you returned here with Parker . . .” He looked down at his notes. “Parker and Luciana went inside the main house. And you?” He peered up, already knowing the answer. He was the one who found me, after all.
“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. “Park
er, 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 like 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 a
fter 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?
The Last House Guest (ARC) Page 23