The Last House Guest(19)

Six years earlier, Sadie and I had stood side by side at a table much like this one, at my very first Plus-One party. We had slipped into an easy comfort after that day at the beach, spent the months that followed in a way that felt both inevitable and unsustainable, and the Plus-One was the perfect way to see it out.

One of Parker’s friends had leveled his finger at Sadie’s face and announced, You’ve been at my house. With my brother. The red had crept up her neck, but instead of pulling back, she leaned in to it. You’re right, I have. Can you blame me? I mean, look, I’m blushing right now, just thinking about it.

It made her bolder, the way she wore her embarrassment on her skin. She said there was no use hiding from herself when her face already gave everything away.

I watched the friend’s eyes trail after her the rest of the night. The thing about her back then was she was skinny in a childish way. Easy to overlook in a group photo. But even then she could have you in her thrall, quick as that.

Looking back, I realized that this was the thing I was most taken with—the idea that you didn’t have to apologize. Not for what you’d done and not for who you were. Of all the promises that had been opened up to me that first summer, this was the most intoxicating of all.

“Hey,” Greg said, looking around the room, his slack expression landing back on me. “Where’s Sadie?”

Greg Randolph, I knew from six years circling this world. From the secrets Sadie would share, the way she could sum everyone up in a sentence fragment. His home, in a mountain enclave called Hawks Ridge, was almost as stunning as the Lomans’. But the thing I remembered most clearly about her assessment of Greg Randolph was the first thing she’d ever said of him: A mean drunk, like his father. He used to be broad and muscular but was currently sliding toward soft, the edges of his face losing definition; dark slicked-back hair, a tan across the bridge of his nose that bordered on a burn. Over the years, he had not been quiet in his pursuit of Sadie, and she had not been quiet in her resounding rejection.

Since we were purging the truth here, I didn’t hold back. “On her way,” I said, “but still not interested in seeing you.”

There was muffled laughter around the island, but no one drank, and Greg’s dark eyebrows shot up—a quick burst of anger that he couldn’t hide. But he recovered quickly, his lips stretching into a knowing smile. “Oh, I’m fully aware. Last I saw your friend Sadie, she was getting off a boat with that local guy I just saw.” He jutted his chin toward the patio, but I didn’t see whom he meant. “It was just the two of them at sunset. Never thought she’d go for that sort of thing, but what do I know. Figured it was my turn to share. A shame for her to miss it.”

I frowned, and the man beside Greg said, “The one from the yacht club?”

Greg laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. The guy who runs the fishing charters, you know?”

Connor. He had to be talking about Connor. In truth, Connor did a lot more than that. He practically ran the day-to-day of his parents’ distribution company. Handled the books, took shipments from the docks, made sure the day’s catch made it to every restaurant in town, big or small. Brought the visitors out on charters during his downtime, after. But that wasn’t his main job.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Greg said, and I hated that he could read it in my face. He smiled, but my head was spinning. Connor. Sadie and Connor. It didn’t make sense, but that must’ve been why he was here tonight. Greg gestured to the next shot glass. “You gonna take this one for her?”

I pushed the glass closer to him. “Pass,” I said, going for indifference, channeling the way Sadie would shake him off.

“While we’re chatting,” Greg said, leaning an elbow on the island, sticky with alcohol, “I was wondering. Well, we were all sort of wondering. What is it that you do for the Lomans, exactly?”

He was so close, I could feel his breath on the exhale, sharp and sour. I recoiled on impulse from the stench, though he smiled wider, wrongly assuming he’d struck a nerve. I’d heard the rumors. That I was Grant’s mistress. Or Bianca’s. That I was in service to something dark and secret, something they tried to cover up by planting me right out in the open. As if the idea of generosity, of friendship, of a family that extended beyond the circumstances of your birth, was something too hard to fathom.

Jealousy, Sadie would say. An ugly, ugly thing. And then: Don’t worry, we’re the Breakers. They have to hate us.

“This isn’t how the game goes,” I said. Because I knew that defense only redoubled their curiosity.

Greg leaned toward me, almost losing his balance. Barely two hours into the party, and already he was sloppy drunk. “The game goes however I want it to go, friend.”

It occurred to me then that he never used my name. I wondered if he even knew it, or if this was all part of some power play to him. I backed away, spinning directly into Luce, her brown eyes unnaturally wide. She had a hand on my arm, colder than expected. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Something happened.”

“What? What happened?” But I was stuck in the previous conversation, my mind playing catch-up.

“The window.”

She dragged me through the kitchen to the corner of the living room. One of the windows facing the backyard beside the patio had been broken. No, it had been almost broken. The glass was in one piece, but it would have to be replaced. It looked like someone had taken a bat to it. I lowered my face so I was eye level with the point of impact, ran my fingers over the spiderweb of grooves radiating out from the center.