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.
The surge in the marrow of his bones, the fulcrum on which his life balanced, as he pushed Ben Collins backward and the gun fell from his grip, hitting the rock.
A shot, ricocheting up. A sound that split the silence, that gave us all pause. A flock of birds rising at the same time as all our lives shifted—the tipping point. I saw it first in the widening of Ben Collins’s eyes. The desperate reach of his empty hands toward me. His feet stumbling once, twice, as the momentum carried him backward, into the air.
I watched. The color of his shirt, disappearing over the edge. And then nothing, nothing, nothing more. Just the sound of the water colliding with the rocks below.
And that was when I heard the scream.
And saw all the people of Littleport, gathered below on the beach, turn our way, to bear witness.
CHAPTER 30
In the distance, a buoy bell tolled. A hawk cried, circling above. The water crashed in a surge against the rocks. Time kept moving.
“It was an accident,” Parker said, sliding to the ground as the people came running.
All these accidents.
The fir
st officer arrived on the bluffs, racing from the road, calling for others to get back.
There were shouts from below, people wading into the water from the beach. But it was too late, and we all knew that.
“No one move,” the policeman said as he took in the scene. I recognized him then—Officer Paul Chambers, the other man who had interviewed us last year.
Officer Chambers looked at the house in the distance, the smoke rising. Then at Parker, heaving on the ground, holding his arm.
“He killed Sadie,” Parker said. “He was going to hurt Avery.” Looking at me, pleading. A negotiation, even then. “He had a gun. I had to do it. I had to stop him.”
Never had I felt such power, in the moments he held his breath, and everyone was watching. I did not confirm, I did not deny.
I felt Parker’s gaze on the side of my face. Heard his desperate whisper. Please.
“No more talking, Parker.” That was Grant, his voice cutting through the spectators’ in warning.
There were faces I knew in the crowd. The Sylvas, the Harlows, the Lomans—Grant was on his phone as Parker sat there, holding his arm. Connor pushed his way to the front of the group, but another officer had arrived, keeping everyone back. There were sirens. More shouts from below. A directive to move the cars, move the people—that emergency vehicles could not get through. Behind us, the smoke had reached the open balcony doors of the second floor, billowing out.
The Loman house was burning, someone was dead, and we were still on the ledge.
“You killed my parents,” I said. Loud enough that others could hear. Not only Officer Chambers but the people who had gathered, watching. Connor, Faith, Grant and Bianca.
Parker winced, shaking his head, though we both knew the truth.
“I know you did. And Sadie is dead because she found out, too.” All these people I’d lost could be traced back to him, and I wanted him to pay.
Parker kept shaking his head. He remained silent, as his father had likely instructed. Even as he was told to stand. Even as the handcuffs clinched behind his back. Parker’s eyes drifted side to side as he was led through the crowd, as if desperate for someone to fix this.
He went quietly, head lowered. A man, just like any other.
AT THE STATION, I gave them everything. But I had lost so much to both the fire and the sea.
The evidence had burned. My phone. The flash drive. It was all gone. But I’d copied the file of the flash drive to my laptop. And I’d transferred Sadie’s photos from her phone as well. Officer Chambers looked surprised at the mention of Sadie’s phone—it seemed that Ben Collins had kept this information to himself, never mentioning the discovery of the phone to anyone else.
I didn’t know whether it was enough, the things we had left.
AFTER, I STOOD IN the lobby of the police station with nothing. My car and my laptop would have to stay with them as evidence. I asked the receptionist to use the phone, but I couldn’t think of a single number by heart.
“Avery.” I turned at the sound of Connor’s voice. Saw the truck behind him through the glass windows, parked haphazardly, like he’d been waiting.
I didn’t ask where we were going as I buckled myself in—didn’t know where to go right then. But when Connor turned up the overlook, I knew.
He parked in the gravel lot of the B&B, turned off the engine. A box of my things was already on the front porch. Connor pushed his door open but paused before stepping out.
“End of the season, there’s always room.”
SUMMER
2019
First Day of Summer
Through the open windows, I could hear the waves crashing against the rocks. The wind blowing in off the coast, the leaves rustling overhead.
Sunlight flickered through the open curtains as the branches swayed above.
I took down the glasses, pulled out the bottles and the plates of food from the fridge. Shook out the cushions, dragged a few extra chairs around back. Getting everything ready.
They’d be arriving soon, up the drive of Landing Lane.
THE HOUSE COULD NOT be salvaged. It shouldn’t have been built in the first place. Sadie had hinted at this years ago: It wasn’t safe. Not something this size, that stretched beyond the easements. They’d paid around the permits the first time. It would not happen again.
There’s still a footprint, if you know where to look. Where the grass is a finer, paler green. A slight dip in the dirt where the pool used to be.
But from the guesthouse, it’s just a quirk of nature, a clearing of trees before the rocks. A stunning, unobstructed view that greets me each morning.
A reward, for a risk.
I HEARD, THROUGH OTHERS in town, that Parker had worked out a deal. Heard he was confined to house arrest. Heard he wore an ankle monitor. Heard he was removed from the company.
Most of these were probably rumors. All I cared was that he was gone. And that they would not be coming back.
In the winter, after I sold the plots on the overlook, I offered a low but fair price for this property. It’s not like anyone could rebuild up here. Only the guesthouse was set back per the guidelines. But that was all I needed.
I took this property for the view itself, looking out over all of Littleport and everything I’d ever known.
My one regret is I didn’t get to see Grant’s face when he realized what I had done.
IN THE WINTER OF last year, I’d sold everything I had to the Sylvas. A strip of plots up on the overlook that I’d been holding on to for myself. All hidden under the name of an LLC.
I’d started investing years earlier with the money from the sale of my grandmother’s house. Cash from the Lomans themselves when they bought my grandmother’s place. Bianca was the only one who ever asked where my money had gone. Grant, it seemed, wasn’t paying attention.
There was nothing in my contract with the Lomans that prevented me from setting out on my own. Making my own investments. So I took that first sum and invested it with a small group in a plot of land a few towns up the coast.
We’d flipped it, each took our share of the proceeds, kept moving.
I had an eye for it and the guts to do it. And apparently, those were the two main ingredients of success. To risk everything for a chance.
It was the start of a new season in Littleport, and we were here today to toast the beginning of something—a joint venture with Faith, renting out their new properties.
Greg Randolph had once called me Sadie’s monster, but he was wrong. If I were anyone’s monster, I supposed, I was Grant’s.
Taking everything he’d taught me, investing that initial money with no fallback. Risking everything, over and over, on investment properties in towns up and down the coast. Believing there was something that would keep people coming—the power of the ocean, the vastness of it, the secrets it promised—and they did.
It was reckless, maybe, with no fallback, and no promises.
But Littleport has always been the type of place that favors the bold.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to everyone who helped see this project from its earliest idea to the final book:
My agent, Sarah Davies, for all of the wonderful support, on this and every book.
My editors, Karyn Marcus and Marysue Rucci, for the sharp insight, guidance, and encouragement at every step along the way, from first idea to finished product. And to the entire team at Simon & Schuster, including Richard Rhorer, Jonathan Karp, Zack Knoll, Amanda Lang, Elizabeth Breeden, and Marie Florio. I’m so fortunate to get to work with you all!
Thank you also to my critique partners, Megan Shepherd, Ashley Elston, and Elle Cosimano, for all of your feedback and support.
And lastly, as always, to my family.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Megan Miranda is the author of the national best seller All
the Missing Girls and The Perfect Stranger. She grew up in New Jersey, graduated from MIT, and lives in North Carolina with her husband and two children. Follow @MeganLMiranda on Twitter and Instagram, or @AuthorMeganMiranda on Facebook.
www.meganmiranda.com
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