The Last House Guest(13)

But that was the trick of the place—it lured you in under false pretenses, and then it took everything from you.

Sadie wrinkled her nose at the scene around the bonfire. “It’s going to rain, you know?”

I could feel it in the air, the humidity. But the weather had held, and that was half the fun. Like we were daring nature to do something. “Maybe,” I said.

“No, it is.” And as if she had control over the weather, too, I felt the first drop on my cheek, heavy and chilled. “Want to come back? We can make it if we run.”

I looked at the group of kids I’d gone to school with. Everyone casting glances my way. Connor sitting on a nearby log, doing his best to pretend I didn’t exist. I wanted to scream—my world shrinking as I watched. And this feeling I couldn’t shake recently, that all along I had just been passing through.

“You know, there’s a shortcut.” I pointed to the steps cut into the rocks, though from where we stood, you couldn’t make them out.

She raised an eyebrow, and I never figured out whether she’d known about the steps from the start or I’d opened up something new for her that night. But when I walked over to the steps, she followed, her hands gripping the rock holds after me. The rain started falling when we were on top of the bluffs, and I could see the commotion below in the glow of the bonfire—the shadows of people picking up coolers, running for the cars.

Sadie had a hand at my elbow as she took a step back. “Don’t hurt yourself,” she said.

“What?”

In the moonlight, I could only see her eyes clearly—large and unblinking. “We’re close to the edge,” she said. She peered to the side, and I followed her gaze, though it was only darkness below.

We weren’t that close—not close enough where a misstep could be fatal—but I stepped back anyway. She gripped my wrist as we ran for the shelter of her backyard, laughing. We collapsed onto the couch just under the overhang of the patio, the pool lit up before us, the ocean beyond. The windows were dark behind us, and she slipped inside briefly, returning with a bottle of some expensive-looking liquor. I didn’t even know what kind.

The perimeter of their yard was lit up in an amber glow, hidden lights around the black pool gate, so we could see the rain falling in a curtain, like it was separating here from there. “Welcome to the Breakers,” she said, placing her sandy feet up on the woven table in front of us. As if she had forgotten that I’d been working a party here just the week earlier.

I stared at the side of her face, so I could see the corner of her lip curled up in a knowing smile. “What?” she said, facing me. “Isn’t that what you call this place?”

I blinked slowly. I thought maybe this was the key to success: eternal optimism. Taking an insult and repurposing it for your own benefit. Taking everything, even this, and owning it. Looking again and seeing something new. And I felt, in that moment, completely sure of one single truth: My mother would love her.

“Yes,” I said, “it’s just—I’ve already been here before.”

Her smile grew until it reached her eyes, and her head tipped back slightly, almost like she was laughing. I felt her looking me over closely. If she recognized the sweater I was wearing, she didn’t say.

She raised the bottle toward me, then toward the ocean. “Hear, hear,” she said, tipping the bottle back, wiping her hand across her lips after.

I thought of Connor down at the beach, ignoring me. My grandmother’s empty house, waiting for me. The silence, the silence.

I took a long drink, my mouth on the cool glass, the edges of my nerves on fire. “There, there,” I said, and she laughed.

We drank it straight, watching the lightning offshore, close enough to spark something in the atmosphere. I felt like a live wire. Her fingers closed over mine as she reached for the bottle, and then I was grounded.



* * *




I IGNORED SADIE’S CLOTHES hanging in my closet, settling for my own business attire—dress pants and a white sleeveless blouse—because I couldn’t stomach the thought of Parker seeing me in his sister’s clothes.

I arrived at Bay Street first, because I was always early. A vestigial fear ever since I started working for Grant Loman, that he could fire me for any reason and all of this would be over.

When her parents first met me, I’d arrived as a series of failures: something Sadie had found on the beach and would hopefully get over just as quickly. They all must’ve thought I was a phase Sadie would outgrow. A finely tuned, controlled rebellion.

She’d sprung the meeting on me with no time to either prepare or back out. “I told them I was bringing a friend to dinner,” she said as we walked up the front steps later that first week.

“Oh, no, I don’t—”

“Please. They’ll love you.” She paused, cracked a smile. “They’ll like you,” she amended.

“Or vaguely tolerate me for your benefit?”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be for my benefit. Come on, it’s just dinner. Please, save me from the monotony.” That airy wave of her hand again. All this. My life.

“I don’t know anything about them,” I said, even though that wasn’t true.

She stopped just before the front door. “All you really need to know is that my dad is the brains of the operation, and my mom is the brawn.” I’d laughed, thinking she was joking. Bianca was petite, slight, with a childlike pitch to her voice. But Sadie just raised an eyebrow. “My dad said it wasn’t safe to build up here. And yet,” she said, gesturing as she pushed open the front door, “here we are. And she runs the family charitable foundation.” Her voice had dropped to a whisper then, while I was desperately trying to take everything in. “All must worship at the shrine of Bianca Loman.”