The Last House Guest(26)

She never saw the threat of death in the things that could truly harm us: drinking to excess so close to the water, the cars we got into, the people we barely knew. The way we pushed each other to more and more until something had to give, and the thing that finally gave was the season, and she was gone, and the winter cool slowed everything: my heart rate, my breathing, time. Until it grew unbearable in the other extreme, and every day was waiting for the spark of spring, the promise of summer on the horizon once more.

Parker called it obsession, but it wasn’t.

I saw obsession in the stacks of paintings in my mother’s studio; in the boats setting out on the ocean before dawn, day after day. Obsession was the gravity that kept you in orbit, a force you were continually spiraling toward, even when you were looking away.

“Just because you talk about it doesn’t mean you want to do it,” I finally replied. The other possibility was too painful: that she had been crying out for help, and we had merely stood back and watched.

Parker took a deep breath. “She would stare at her veins sometimes . . .” He cringed, and I could feel my own blood pulsing there. “You didn’t know what was going on under the surface.” He shook his head. “When you take everything together, it’s the thing that makes the most sense.”

“But how are they sure the note was even hers?”

“They matched her handwriting.” He pushed himself off the porch step, pulling out his house keys.

I was wrong about the phone signifying something dangerous, then. The phone was not where it should’ve been, but there were other ways it could’ve gotten to the house in the last eleven months. Maybe Sadie had dropped it on her way to the edge or left it behind, beside her gold shoes. Maybe someone had gone back for her that night when I had not. Who found the phone and took it in an impulsive move. Something worth protecting inside, to keep hidden.

Knowing what I knew now about Connor’s photo, his name in her phone, I wondered if it had been him all along. If he’d somehow ended up with her phone and panicked, knowing what might lay inside. Losing or leaving it in the chaos of that night, when the police arrived. If that was why he had shown up at the Blue Robin after I was there today. If he’d heard about the break-in and been worried.

There were ways, after all, to capture someone without putting them in jail. A civil case for wrongful death. I’d heard about that on the news before—the people who pushed someone to suicide, convinced them to do it, or pressed them to see no other option, taken for all they were worth by the family left behind.

There were many forms to justice. Something more satisfying than an immobile brass bell with a melancholy phrase—everything about it so far from the person Sadie had been.

I pictured her hastily writing a note. Balling it up. Staring out the window. Her jaw hardening.

Sadie didn’t handwrite many things. She kept notes on her phone, sent texts and emails. Always had her laptop open on her desk.

“Parker,” I said as the key slid into the lock. “What did they match it to?”

His hand froze. “Her diary.”

But I shook my head again. Nothing made sense. “Sadie didn’t keep a diary.”

The door creaked open, and he stepped inside, turning around. “Obviously, she did. Obviously, there’s plenty you didn’t know. Is it such a surprise that she wouldn’t reveal the contents of her diary to you? She didn’t tell you everything, Avery. And if you think she did, you sure do have a high opinion of yourself.”

He shut the door, made a show of turning the lock after, so I could hear the thunk echo inside the wooden frame.

And to think I’d almost shown him Sadie’s phone.



* * *




PARKER NEVER WANTED ME here. He made that clear, both verbally and not, after the decision had already been made. Grant had wanted my grandmother’s property, which I was in danger of losing anyway. The mortgage had been paid down with my parents’ small life insurance payout—not enough to live on but enough to gift me the security of a place to call my own. So the remaining monthly payments weren’t the primary problem. It was all the accompanying costs—the insurance, the taxes, the appliances. It was the last of my grandmother’s medical bills and every responsibility suddenly falling in my lap. But still, it was home. And I had nowhere else to go. The visitors had priced us all out of our own homes, so the best I could hope for would be an apartment, alone, miles from the coast.

Others had also offered to buy the home—the other residents of Stone Hollow didn’t want the land to go to rentals—but the Lomans were offering me something else. To step into their world, live on their property, become a part of their circle. So I sold my house, and therefore my soul, to the Lomans.

When Grant offered to let me use their guesthouse, I said I’d need that part in writing—experience had turned me wary of taking anyone at their word, despite their best intentions—and he tipped his head back and laughed, just like Sadie would do. You’re going to be okay, kid, was what he said to me. It was the smallest sort of compliment, but I remembered the warmth that swept through me then. This belief that I would, that he could see it in me, too.

But I could hear them arguing about it later, after Grant drew up the papers. Parker’s voice was too low to hear clearly, but I heard Sadie calling him selfish, and Grant’s steady voice explaining what was to happen, no room for questions. It is fair, and it’s the right thing to do. The house is never used. Grow up, Parker.