The Last House Guest(28)

I’d fallen asleep watching television. I hadn’t even noticed something was wrong.

A policewoman placed a hand on my shoulder while I sat at the hospital, staring at the fizzing soda—Is there someone else we can call?

They’d tried the Harlows first, but it was Mrs. Sylva who came to pick me up. I’d stayed in a vacant room at the B&B until my grandmother was released the next night. She didn’t have a scratch on her, but her neck was in a brace from the impact of the tree, the front of the car crushed like an accordion. They’d thought she was dead at first. That was what the first officer on the scene said. It was in the article, how he stumbled upon the scene, new on the job, shaken by the horror of it all—his own jolt into reality, it seemed.

I read it only once. Once was more than enough.

The police said my father didn’t even hit the brakes until he was off the road, had probably drifted off, as my grandmother had in the backseat. I thought of that often at night, how we were all sleeping when it happened. How you can hurtle through darkness by momentum alone, without a single conscious thought, with no one to see you go.

Four years later, I’d been brought to the station after the fight with Faith. By then the only person left to call was my grandmother’s neighbor, Evelyn.

“Avery?” Detective Collins waited at the entrance to the hall behind me. He nodded as I stood. “Nice to see you again. Come on back.” He led me to a small office halfway down the hall and took a seat behind his desk, gesturing for me to take the chair across from him. His office was sparse, with nothing on the surface of the desk, and glass windows to the hall behind me. There was nowhere to look but right at him. “Is this about the dedication ceremony?” he asked, leaning back in his chair until the springs creaked in protest.

I swallowed nothing. “Yes and no.” I clenched my hands to keep them from shaking. “I wanted to ask you about Sadie’s note.”

He stopped rocking in his chair then.

“The note she left behind,” I clarified.

“I remember,” he said. He didn’t say anything more, waiting for me to continue.

“What did it say?” I asked.

After a pause, he sat upright and pulled himself closer to his desk. “I’m afraid that’s the family’s business, Avery. You might do better asking one of them.” As if he knew I’d already tried to find out and failed.

I looked at the walls, at his desk, anywhere but at his face. “I’ve been thinking about that night again. Is everyone sure the note was hers? I mean completely, totally sure?”

The room was so quiet I could hear his breathing, the faint ticking of his watch. Finally, he drew in a breath. “It’s hers, Avery. We matched it.”

I waved my hand between us. “To a diary, I heard. But, Detective, she didn’t have one.”

His eyes were focused on mine—green, though I’d never noticed before. His expression was not unkind, something bordering on sympathy. “Maybe you didn’t know her as well as you thought.”

“Or,” I said, my voice louder than I anticipated, “maybe the note was something else. Luciana Suarez was staying in the house, too. Or it could’ve been the cleaning company. Someone else could’ve left it.” They could’ve matched her handwriting in a rush because they wanted to. Making the pieces fit instead of the other way around.

I’d been too caught off guard by the news last year to ask questions. I’d been blindsided by the fact that I had misunderstood things so deeply. That there was something momentous I had failed to see coming once again.

He folded his hands slowly on the top of the desk, finger by finger. His nails were cut down to the quick. “Listen. It’s not just that the writing’s a match.” He shook his head. “It’s more like a journal—the inner workings of her mind. And it’s very, very dark.”

“No,” I said. “She didn’t mean it.” The same thing I had said to Parker. But wasn’t that the truth? The way she’d tallied the dangers off to me the day we met, as if she could see them, close to the surface, always ready to consume us. The casualness of death; something she was courting. Don’t hurt yourself, she’d said when I stood too close to the edge in the dark. As if, even then, she had imagined it.

He shook his head sadly. “Avery, you’re not the only one who missed something, okay? No one saw it coming. Sometimes you can only see the signs in hindsight.”

My throat felt tight. He reached across the table, his thick hand hovering near mine before pulling back. “It’s been a year. I get that. How things come back. But we’ve been through all of this. The case is closed, we gave Parker her old personal items today.” That must’ve been what Parker was looking at in his car when I surprised him in the garage—the items returned from the police station. “Everything fits. Write the article, come celebrate her life at the dedication, and move on.”

“Everything doesn’t fit,” I said. “She was supposed to meet us there. Something happened.” I reached my hand into my bag, placed her phone before him.

He didn’t touch it, just stared at it. A piece he had not anticipated. “What’s this?”

“Sadie’s phone. I found it today at the rental. The Blue Robin, where we all were the night she died.”