The Last House Guest(40)

The cliffs, it began.

The road.

The bottle in the medicine cabinet.

The blade.

The writing was so angry, the pen leaving deep indentations in the page; I could’ve felt the emotion in the words, running my fingers over the lines in the dark. I turned the page, my hand shaking. There were more lists, page after page of them, just like this. The times death was right there, within reach. The times death had come so close.

Walked to the edge, balanced there.

Top of the lighthouse, leaning forward.

Woke up on the beach gasping for air, dreamed the tide had risen.

Slip of the blade. The blood in my veins.

I tried to see this as the police would, reading these pages. Pictured Sadie doing these things, writing these things. Staring at her veins, like Parker had told me. Listing the ways she could die.

I hadn’t seen this journal in years. Not since that winter. When the spark of spring never caught, and summer rolled in just the same as winter, empty and endless. It was the story of grief, of disappointment, of a soul obliterated.

It was the story of who I had been until the moment I met Sadie Loman, and I chose her. My life in her hands, restructured, recast. No longer adrift or alone.

This was my journal from a time in my life I would have rather forgotten—but which had colored everything that followed. When I had sunk beneath the surface and all I wanted was to slide deeper into it, like there was something I was chasing, waiting at the bottom. You could tell where I had been by the destruction in my wake.

Within these pages, I could see exactly where I’d lost Connor, where I’d lost Faith, and where I’d lost myself.

When had Sadie found this? I couldn’t remember where I had kept it. It had maybe been in my closet, at my grandmother’s place. It had been forgotten after I’d met Sadie and a new world had opened up to me. The world, through her eyes.

I wondered if Sadie had found it when she and Grant were helping me move. Even so, I didn’t understand why she’d kept it.

But the police had found it in her room and decided a person like this, she would do it. It was very, very dark. That’s what the detective had told me. A person like this, they believed, didn’t want to live. She existed in the darkness and would step off the edge.

This journal, sad and angry, was just a moment in time. Looking back at these pages, I knew that I had been trying to find my way through it.

Only now that I was past it did I see how close I truly came. The darkness that I was ready to dive headfirst into.

I kept looking at all the places death might be lurking. In so many lists, I ended with the blade. I remembered, then, the feeling of my blood pulsing underneath my skin. The image of a car crash, bodies versus metal and wood. The pressure of the blood in my grandmother’s skull. Staring at my veins, at the frailty of them, so close to the surface.

The blade, the blade, I kept coming back to the blade.

The sharp glint of silver. The empty kitchen. The impulse and chaos of a single moment.

I hadn’t anticipated the amount of blood. The sound of footsteps. I couldn’t get it to stop.

I hid in the bathroom, pressing the toilet paper to the base of my hand.

Thinking, No No. Until Sadie slipped inside.

You’re lucky, she’d said. You just missed the vein.



* * *




I BARELY SLEPT. FEELING so close to the person I’d been at eighteen. Like my nerves were on fire.

At the first sign of light, I took my car down through town, at the hour when it was just the fishermen at the docks and the delivery trucks in the alleys. I drove up the hill, past the police station, up past the Point Bed-and-Breakfast, to where I could see the flash of the lighthouse beckoning, even in daylight. And then I turned down the fork in the road, heading for the homes on the overlook.

Most of the Loman rental properties were located along the coast. A view drove up the cost of rent nearly twofold—even more if you could walk to downtown. To compensate, the homes on the overlook were more spacious, typically renting out to larger families. And with school starting up soon, these were usually the first homes to go vacant.

I had all the keys with me, each labeled with a designated number that corresponded to a specific property. By this point, I knew them all by heart.

Someone had broken in to the home called Trail’s End last week at the edge of downtown, smashing a television. Someone had sneaked inside the Blue Robin up here, looking for something. And someone had lit the candles at the Sea Rose, down by Breaker Beach.

I was starting to see the pattern not as a threat to the Lomans but as a message.

Someone knew what had happened that night. Someone had been at that party and knew what had happened to Sadie Loman.

As I drove up the lane of the overlook, I saw a dark car parked in front of the Blue Robin, lingering at the curb.

A shadow sitting inside. Eyes peering in the rearview mirror.

I parked behind it, waiting, my own car idling in a dare. Until Detective Ben Collins emerged from the car. He walked in my direction, frowning.

“Funny seeing you here,” he said as I exited the car.

“I have to check the properties each weekend. Before the new families arrive,” I said.

“Someone staying here next week?” he asked, thumb jutting at the Blue Robin.

“Yes.”

“No.” He shook his head. “Move them. We’re gonna need to see inside.”