The Last House Guest(29)

His eyes didn’t move from the phone. “You just found it.”

“Yes.”

“One year later.” Incredulous, eyes narrowed, like I was playing a joke on him. How quickly his demeanor had changed. Or maybe it was me changing before him.

“It was at the bottom of a chest in the master bedroom. I found it when I was taking out the blankets to freshen up. I don’t know how long it’s been there, but she didn’t lose it when she died.” I swallowed, willing him to make the leap: that if they were wrong about this, they could be wrong about all of it.

He shook his head, still not touching the phone.

Once, several summers ago, Sadie had tried to get herself arrested. At least it seemed that way to me at the time. I’d taken her down to the docks at night, wanting to show her something. A world she never had access to herself, a way to prove my own worth. I knew how to get inside the dock office from when Connor used to do it—lifting the handle, giving the door a well-angled nudge at the same time—and then taking his father’s key from the back office inside, untying the boat and pushing it adrift before turning on the engine.

But someone must’ve seen us sneaking inside. I’d gotten as far as the front room when the flashlight shone in the window, and I darted in the other direction, toward the rarely used back door. Sadie had frozen, staring at the light in the window. I pulled her by the arm, but by then the officer was inside—I knew him, though not by name. Didn’t matter, because he knew mine.

He led us outside, back to his car. He didn’t ask me the question I’d grown to expect, about whom to call; he must’ve known the answer by then.

“What’s your name?” he asked Sadie, but she didn’t respond. Her eyes were wide, and she pressed her lips together, shaking her head. The man asked for her purse, which she had looped over her shoulder. He pulled out her wallet, shone the flashlight on her driver’s license. “Sadie . . .” and then he trailed off. Cleared his throat. Slipped the license back inside, returning her purse. “Listen, girls. This is a warning. This is trespassing, and the next time we catch you, you’ll be processed, booked, am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. The relief like that first sip of alcohol, warming my bloodstream.

He returned to his car, and Sadie stood there in the middle of the parking lot, watching him go. “What does a girl have to do to get arrested around here?” she asked.

“Change your name,” I said.

Her name carried weight. But she didn’t throw it around. She didn’t have to.

It occurred to me that as long as I was with her, I might be afforded that same protection.



* * *




HER NAME STILL CARRIED that weight, with her phone on the detective’s desk, that he still wouldn’t touch. Dead or not, there were things you had to be careful with around here. He picked up his office phone but hesitated first.

“I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Detective Collins finally said before waving me out of the room.

“What? What way?”

He shook his head. “Her note. That’s what it said.”





CHAPTER 10


I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.

I slammed on my brakes in the middle of Harbor Drive just as a woman stepped out into the crosswalk without looking. She stood in front of my car, staring back through the windshield. My hands were shaking on the wheel. There were mere inches separating us.

In the rearview mirror, I could still see the police station perched at the top of the hill. The woman in front of me raised her hand like a barrier between her and my car, mouthed Watch it, before moving on. As if I hadn’t noticed how close I’d come. As if she hadn’t yet processed how close she had come.

I saw Sadie then, standing at the edge of the cliffs. The blue dress blowing behind her in the wind, a strap sliding down her shoulder, the mascara running under her eyes, her hands shaking. Saw her turn around and look at me this time, her eyes wide—

Stop.



* * *




I HAD TO CALL someone.

Not the detective, who had just stared at her phone with such disbelief. Not Parker, who hadn’t told me he’d just retrieved Sadie’s personal items from the police. Not Connor, who had kept things from all of us with his silence—

My phone rang just as I was working it through. Another number not in my contacts. I wondered if it was Detective Collins already, telling me to come back. That they’d discovered something else in her phone, or they needed my help to tell them what something meant. I placed the call on speaker.

“Is this Avery?” It was a girl. A woman. Something in between.

“Yes, who’s speaking?”

“Erica Hopkins. From lunch.”

“Right, hi.”

She cleared her throat. “Justine wanted me to check in. We’ll need the piece for Sadie tomorrow—by afternoon at the latest.”

Yesterday felt like forever ago. “I can email you the piece tonight, but the photo will probably be a physical copy. I don’t have access to a scanner.” I would not contact Grant or Bianca to ask for a high-resolution image of their deceased daughter, though it would have to be one of theirs, something that once graced the walls of the Breakers. In truth, I could think of nothing more fitting.