His throat moved as he swallowed, but he didn’t deny it. “The girl doing something up there.”
I looked to the side, to the covered windows and the dark night beyond. I didn’t understand why he was here, what he wanted. How many people knew I was hiding out here? Hadn’t I learned better than to think I was invisible by now?
“It wasn’t Faith,” he repeated.
“Yes, I know it wasn’t Faith. I know what that money was for now.” My hands tightened into fists. My entire adult life, built on a lie. On a horrific secret. Molded by people I thought had given me everything but instead had taken everything.
Connor stopped moving, watching me carefully. Maybe this was my downfall—always too trusting in the end; choosing someone else over the solitude. Yet again thinking people had anything but their own interests at heart. We were alone in this house, with no one else around. He had kept things from me already, and we both knew it. But Connor was here. And he’d come for me that night, a year ago, when Sadie had texted him from my phone. With him, there was always a push and pull. Logic versus instinct. I didn’t know which motive had brought him to my door in the middle of the night, but I’d learned long ago, it counted only when you knew someone’s flaws and chose them anyway.
“The Lomans, they paid off my grandmother after my parents died.”
He blinked, and I watched as his entire demeanor shifted. “What?”
I sucked in air, thought I was going to cry. Then I stopped trying to fight it, because what was the goddamn point? “They killed my parents. They were responsible somehow.”
Connor looked over his shoulder at the closed door, and I wondered if someone was walking past. “Who? How?”
I saw it then, back to the start, every moment with them—until it slipped, slowly and horribly, into focus:
The picture of Parker in the living room—his face youthful and unmarked. The way Sadie was teasing him about the scar last summer, not letting it go. The dark look he would give her, that Luce had noticed. Shaking and shaking until something broke free.
The double take when Parker saw me sitting in Sadie’s room the day we met—he knew who I was. Of course he did. Avery Greer, survivor.
“Parker,” I said quietly into the night. “It was Parker.”
The scar through his eyebrow, his own reminder. Not a fight but an accident—Sadie had just figured it out for herself. An accident that he had caused. But Parker Loman was untouchable. Somehow he had gotten away with it. One hundred thousand dollars—the price of my parents’ life. Given for our continued silence. One of two payments that Sadie had uncovered. I wasn’t sure whether the other payment was related—someone else who knew the truth—or whether the Lomans had covered up more than one horrible action.
Parker can get away with literally everything.
They would do anything to protect the king.
That was what we were worth to them. Two lives. Everything lost. The entire future of who I was supposed to be—just gone.
I was wrong. This place, it wasn’t the thing taking from me. It wasn’t the mountain road, the lack of streetlights, the brutal extremes. It was the people up on the bluffs, looking out over everything. Covering up for their own. How old must he have been—fourteen? Fifteen? Too young to be driving. Something he wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of, no matter what the excuse. Some laws could not be bent or skirted.
His question that night, as he stood over me at the party in the bathroom—did I think he was a good person. Needing me to absolve him in his own mind. No. No, there was nothing good about him. Nothing at his core but the belief that he was worth every little thing he had been given.
Instead of the simple truth, the only thing that mattered: Parker Loman had killed my parents.
“I’m supposed to meet up with Detective Collins tomorrow,” I said. “If I tell him, I can’t control where the investigation goes from there.” I said it like a warning. I said it to see what Connor would do or say. I wouldn’t be able to stop the police from looking at Connor or me.
Connor looked at the front door again, and I started to wonder whether there was someone else here with him. Or maybe I was just seeing the danger inside everyone, suddenly—all the things we were capable of. “Parker hurt Sadie?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I thought back to what Luce had said about the darkness between Sadie and Parker. Sadie had believed I was a secret, and I was. The reason they took me in, the reason it was the right thing to do—the reason Parker did the double take the first time he saw me. He knew exactly who I was. And she finally saw him for the truth.
I didn’t know who had hurt Sadie or why. Only that she had uncovered the secret at the heart of both of our families, and now she was dead. Taken from the party back to her home in my car.
All of us were there that night. It could’ve been anyone.
Suddenly, I needed Connor to leave. I needed to sort out my thoughts, to protect myself. I crossed my arms.
He shifted on his feet. “Are you going to the dedication tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes. You?”
“Everyone’s going,” he said, holding my gaze.
I shook my head, looked away. “I’ll talk to you then.” A set of headlights cut through the front curtains before continuing on. “You need to go,” I said.
“You can come with me. It’s a one-bedroom apartment, but I can sleep on the couch—”
But I knew exactly what I needed to do. I couldn’t take down the Lomans on words alone. You couldn’t fight that sort of power with nothing but belief. You needed proof.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at the dedication, Connor,” I said, opening the front door. Holding my breath. With Connor, I realized, I was always waiting to see what he would do.
He turned at the entrance, to say something. Then thought better of it. He peered down the dark road, eyes narrowed. “You’re not supposed to be here, are you.”
I didn’t answer, closing the door slowly as he backed away. Through the gap in the curtains, I watched him walk to his truck, a shadow in the night. And then I watched the brake lights fading into the distance until I was sure he was gone.
WITH MY NEW UNDERSTANDING of my past, Littleport in the dead of night became something else. No longer were these the winding roads of single-car accidents, of a lack of streetlights, of drifting off the road while you slept. But a town where the guilty roamed, unapologetic. It was a place that made killers of men.
I was on edge, continually checking my rearview mirror, trying to remain unseen as I drove back to the Blue Robin.
Here, I believed, was the scene of the crime. Not the Lomans’ house, or the bluffs, or the beach, as the police had declared last year. But here, on the other side of town.
After I told the police, they would have to search this place, rope it off, close it to civilians. And I needed proof to back up the story I believed.
I used the light from my phone to illuminate the path in front of me as I walked from the driveway to the front door. Up here, with all the undeveloped land, every gust of wind turned threatening, and I kept casting the beam of light into the trees, down the empty road, until I was safely alone inside the house. And I didn’t turn on the lights. In case someone was watching. I could feel them each in a shadow of my memory: Faith, the police, Parker at the edge of the garage. There were so many people who saw things, who knew things. Now Grant and Bianca were here, too, and I knew, just as Luce did—they would do anything to protect the king.
I moved by memory, my hand trailing the couch, the chair, the kitchen counter, as I walked by. The beam kept low and away from the windows. My mother’s painting on the wall, her voice in my ear: Look again. Tell me what you see.
This was the trick, I understood. Not to change the angle or the story, or to take a step forward or back—but to change yourself. I remembered that n
ight, standing behind my mother while she took the pictures on the Harlows’ boat that would ultimately lead her to this. The piece she tackled over and over, like there was something she was chasing. Now I saw everything out of frame, everything that slipped this painting into context—the boat she was standing on, the fact that Connor and I were playing a game of I Spy behind her. The stark clarity of that moment, while the shadows before us kept fading, disappearing into the night. As if the life she was living and the life she was chasing were one and the same all this time.
I backed away from it now, heading toward the closed door at the end of the hall. Luce and I had tried the handle that night, but it had been locked. I’d slammed my hand on the wood then—hoping it had made whomever was inside jump.
Now the door creaked open, shadows of furniture looming in the darkness. With the curtains pulled closed here, I finally flipped the light switch, illuminating the white bedspread, the dark wooden chest, blankets piled beside it. The lid creaked open and I peered inside—the scent of pine, of old quilts and dusty attics.
This had been open, I remembered, when I came over the day after the party to clean. Had her phone been here even then?
Next the bed, running my hand over the soft material. I walked the wood floors, the hardwood popping, past the closet, to the bathroom.
There was a high window over the toilet to let in light, but it didn’t open. A long mirror trimmed in white. A vanity raised off the tile on boxy wooden feet. We’d cleaned the floor of water, Parker and I, after Ellie Arnold came in here with her friends to warm up. The water had been everywhere, grimy towels left behind in the corners.
I ran my fingers across the granite surface of the vanity now, the swirling marble, gray and white. The hard corners. I dropped to my knees, remembering how wet the floor had been that night—the towels heaped in the corner that I’d put in a plastic bag.
The next day, I’d run them through the wash with bleach, to get them clean.
I peered under the vanity at the darker, untouched grout—harder to clean and see. I stood again, leaning my weight into the side of the vanity, until it scratched against the tile, away from the wall. I kept pushing, inch by inch, until it was wedged against the shower, my breath coming too fast. The space left behind was fully exposed, the dirt and debris, and the darker grout, stained from water left sitting.
I dropped to my knees, ran my fingers over the chalky residue.
A corner stained rust brown. A spot missed. I rocked back on my heels, a chill rising, and scrambled out of the room, seeing everything clearly this time.
A fight behind a locked door; the phone knocked from her hand, the surface fracturing. A struggle taking her farther from the door, from the exit. A push in the bathroom. Falling, hitting her head. The blood pooling. Someone else trying to clean, desperately. Taking the spare towels and wiping up the mess. Needing to move her.
Searching through her purse, finding the keys. Peering out the window above the toilet, pressing the buttons on her key—seeing my car light up across the way.
Grabbing a blanket from the chest to cover her. Losing her phone in the process, in the chaos. Where it fell to the base and remained—waiting to be found.
Wrapping her up. God, she was so small. Peeking out into the hall and flipping the power at the circuit breaker. But who?
Had it all been to cause a scene in the dark? A distraction while someone had carried a dying or unconscious Sadie to the car?
If so, I had covered it up, all of it, when I’d come back the next day. Running the evidence through the washer with bleach, ordering a window replacement, closing the wooden chest—and leaving her phone inside. I had erased her, piece by piece, until she became invisible. And I needed to pull her back into focus.
My hand shaking, I used the camera on my phone to take pictures of everything: the spot behind the vanity with the rust-colored stain of blood, the chest of blankets, the hallway circuit breaker, the distance from there to the front door. Gathering proof of it all before I was barred from this place. The story I could see, that only I bore witness to—the ghost of her moving in the gaps between my memories.
I could see it all playing out. Three steps back, three steps forward. A girl in blue, spinning in my room, to a flash of color in the sea, a pale leg caught on the rocks—hanging on until she was found.
ON THE WAY BACK, I veered away from the harbor—away from the coast. Toward the mountains instead. Found myself winding down a small back road that I hadn’t traversed in years.
It was a long half-paved road, forking off into packed-dirt driveways leading to older homes, surrounded by trees.
I slowed until I was in front of the last house on the street: a ranch home tucked out of sight from the road, the ground covered in pockets of grass and dirt. The Harlows still lived next door, an outside light just visible through the trees. I parked my car at the wide mouth of my old driveway, under the low branches of a knotted tree.
The details weren’t visible in the dark, so I could only imagine the colored pottery on the front porch, the hand-painted Welcome sign that once hung from the door. The wooden chairs that had been built by my mother, the dull green paint chipping, and a low table between them.
I could picture my mom reading on the front porch. My dad with a drink and her feet in his lap. Both of them peeking up every few moments to check on me.
My own life had forked in the dead of night, right here.
But this—this was the life that should’ve been mine. My dad, catching me around the waist as I ran inside—You’re a mess, he’d say, laughing. My mom, shrugging, So let her be.
Memories and imagination. All that remained of the life that was taken from me.
I MUST’VE DRIFTED TO sleep in the car—the buzz of my phone jarring me awake in a panic.
I took a moment to reorient myself, curled on my side in the driver’s seat. In the daylight, this home was no longer my home. Wind chimes in place of colored pottery, the hand-painted Welcome sign replaced with a wreath of woven vines. Bright blue metal chairs on the front porch, pops of color in the mountain landscape.
My phone buzzed again—two texts from Ben Collins.
Pick you up in a half hour.
Still need your address.
A man exited the front door, walking down the porch steps, heading for the car parked at the side of the house—but he stopped when he saw me. Changing directions, heading this way.
I responded to Detective Collins: Sorry, something came up. Meet you at the ceremony.
The man walked slowly up the drive, and I lowered the window, a thousand excuses on my tongue.
“We just moved in,” he said with a smile. He was maybe the age of my dad when he died. But he always seemed younger in my memory. “It’s not on the market anymore.”
I nodded. “I used to live here when I was a kid. Sorry. I just . . . wanted to see how it looked now.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Beautiful, isn’t it? Lot of history to the place.”
“Yes. Sorry to bother you. I was just in the area . . .”
The sun caught off the wind chimes over their porch, and he rocked back on his heels. I rolled up the window, starting the car.
Parker had taken everything from me, and I still couldn’t prove it was him. But I knew there was one more place to look, and there would be only one last chance to do it.
My heart pounded against my ribs. It was time to go. Sadie’s dedication would be starting soon.
Everyone would be there.
CHAPTER 28
I was four blocks away from Breaker Beach and barely able to find a spot. Everyone was here, I was right. The dedication would be starting soon. I took the first spot I found, then stopped inside the Sea Rose to gather everything I had—all the evidence that had led me to this point. Keeping everything in one place so I could present it all t
o Detective Collins after the dedication.
Slinging my bag across my chest, I headed toward the ceremony.
I SAW THEM ALL. People spilling out from Breaker Beach into the parking lot, standing on rocks behind the dunes. Cars double-parked in the street, a bottleneck of vehicles and spectators. It was a Tuesday morning, and people had given up their time, their work, their business for this. It was a show of support for a girl larger than life. It was the only thing left to give.
A crowd had gathered near the entrance to the beach, the bell at the center, words hand-chiseled in brass.
I saw Bianca standing beside Grant on a raised platform, stoic, head down. Grant’s hand was at the small of her back, and Parker stood behind them both, scanning the crowd.
The Randolphs, the Arnolds, they were all there, near the front. I kept moving through the sea of people blocking off the road. As I passed, I saw the Sylvas, the Harlows, families I’d known forever, here to pay tribute—another person lost to Littleport. The committee stood in a row behind the makeshift podium, Erica beside Detective Ben Collins, his sunglasses over his eyes, both solemn and still.
The commissioner stepped forward, and the microphone sent her voice crisp and clear. “Thank you for joining us this morning, as we celebrate the life of Sadie Janette Loman, who left a mark on this town and all who knew her.”
People bowed their heads, the low murmur of voices falling to silence.
Forgive me, Sadie.
I continued on, pushing past the edge of the crowd—rounding the curve and heading up the incline of Landing Lane.
The Last House Guest (ARC) Page 25