The Last House Guest(21)

But I had stopped in the living room, stood before the picture hanging on the wall behind the sofa. Staring back at the family there. The mother and daughter, blond and slight; father and son, darker hair, matching eyes. A hand on the shoulder of each child. Four pieces of a set, smiling, with the dunes of Breaker Beach behind them. The closest I’d been to Sadie Loman. I’d stepped closer, seen the finer details: the crooked eyetooth that had yet to be fixed. I pictured her mother holding the curling iron to her otherwise pin-straight hair. The photographer smoothing out any imperfections so that her freckles faded away, into her skin.

Eventually, Connor had circled back, found me standing in front of that family portrait in their living room. He’d nudged my shoulder, whispered into my ear, Let’s get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.



* * *




NOW HE STOOD ON the other side of the room, and I still didn’t know what he was doing here. Why he was so interested in a break-in at a rental where nothing had been taken.

“Whoever it is, they came in through that window,” I said, shaking off the chill. “The lock doesn’t latch.”

His eyes met mine for a brief moment, like he was remembering, too. “You need the number for a window repair?”

“No, I got it.” I stared out the glass, picturing Connor’s face as it appeared that night, fractured in my memory. “Do you remember how it broke, the night Sadie died?”

He flinched at her name, then rubbed the scruff of his jaw to hide it. “Not sure. Just saw that girl standing on the other side, checking it out. Parker Loman’s girlfriend.”

“Luce,” I said. Every move I made that summer, it seemed that she was watching.

He shrugged with one shoulder. “She seemed upset, so I figured she did it, honestly. Why?”

“No reason. Just thinking about it.” Because Sadie’s phone was in my pocket and nothing made sense anymore. I was holding my breath, willing him to leave before he noticed my hands. How I had to press them to the sides of my legs to keep them from shaking. But Connor paced the room slowly, eyes roaming over the windows, the furniture, the walls.

“I remember that picture,” he said, pointing at the painting that hung from the wall.

It was my mother’s print, taken from Connor’s dad’s boat one evening, in the autumn before the car crash. We were in middle school, thirteen, maybe. Outside the harbor, she’d taken photo after photo of the coastline as evening turned to dusk turned to dark. The homes along the coast were no longer lit up and welcoming but appeared monstrous, darker shadows standing guard in the night. She kept taking pictures every time the light shifted, until the dark had settled, complete, and I couldn’t make out the shadows anymore, couldn’t tell sea from land from sky, and I lost all sense of orientation and vomited over the edge of the boat.

“I think the kids have had enough, Lena,” Mr. Harlow said with a laugh.

She’d tried to capture it in this painting, after endless drafts in her studio. The final product existed in shades of blue and gray, something between dusk and night. The gray of the water fading into the dark of the cliffs, disappearing into the blue of the night. As if you could take the image in your hand and shake it back into focus.

Years later, I’d had it reprinted, and I’d hung it from the living room wall of every home I oversaw. A piece of her in all the Loman homes, and nobody knew it but me.

Staring at her painting, I was overcome with the impulse to do it—to reach out and grab it. I wanted to take this moment and shake it into focus. Stretch a hand through time and grasp on to Sadie’s arm.

Until Sadie’s note was found, Detective Collins’s questions kept circling back to Connor Harlow, even though his alibi panned out. He’d been at the party; no one ever saw him leave. Still. He had been spotted with Sadie earlier that week. Sadie had told no one about it. As far as I knew, neither had Connor.

“Did you see her that night, Connor?” I asked as he was still facing away.

He froze, his back stiffening. “No,” he said, knowing exactly what I was referring to. “I didn’t see her that night, and I wasn’t seeing her at all. Which I told the police. Over and over.”

When Connor was angry, his voice dropped. His breathing slowed. Like his body was going into some sort of primitive state, conserving energy before a strike.

“People saw you two.” I remembered what Greg Randolph had said about Sadie and Connor on his boat. “Don’t lie for my benefit.” As if there was something remaining, seven years later, that he needed to handle with care.

He turned back around slowly. “I wouldn’t dare. What would be the point of that?”

I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his teeth were clenched together. But all I could remember was the list Detective Collins had put in front of me. The names. The times. And the fact that I couldn’t answer for Connor. “When did you get to the party that night?”

He shifted on his feet. “Why are you doing this?”

I shook my head. “It’s not a hard question. I’m assuming you told the police already.”

He stared back, eyes blazing. “Sometime after eight,” he said, monotone. “You were in the kitchen, with that girl—with Luce.” His gaze drifted to the side, to the kitchen. “You were on the phone. I walked right by you.”