The Last House Guest(47)

I summarized the details, passed them along to Grant, didn’t say what I knew to be true: If it wasn’t me, it was Sadie—who was technically the person in charge. I was many things, but I wasn’t a thief. I would not lose everything I’d worked for because of her misplaced rebellion.

The fallout was handled behind closed doors, and I never asked Sadie about it. She shut me out when I tried to mention it. Back then I thought it was just her recklessness. Like her fixation on death—something to grab attention. She was always striving for an edge, seeing what she could get away with, never stopping to consider the collateral damage.

For a month afterward, she’d avoided me, not responding to my texts or my calls. Latched herself firmly on to a friendship with Luce. With Parker, they became an impenetrable group of three. One month and I’d been cast out of everything I’d known, as I had been once before. But I was older this time. I could see things three steps forward and back, and I knew exactly what Sadie would do when presented with each move.

I left her a note, an apology, beside a box of her favorite fudge. Positioned in the center of her desk, so I was sure she’d see them.

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

So she would know I wasn’t upset and didn’t think any worse of her. I understood her, of course I did. Any apology would need to come from me. I wasn’t even sure she knew how to apologize, how to feel it. But that was the thing about loving someone—it only counted when you knew their flaws and did it anyway.

The very next night, she sent me a text—Avie, we’re going out, come!—never mentioning what had happened, and I was back; everything was fine.

She’d knocked on my living room window—her face pressed up to the glass, her cheek and one hazel eye, crinkled from laughter. She reminded me of Sadie at eighteen, and maybe that was the point. I could hear Luce and Parker in the driveway.

Sadie had a bottle of vodka in her hand when I opened the door, and she pulled down a few glasses from my cabinet herself, poured at least two shots’ worth into each. “I thought we were going out,” Parker said, standing in the open doorway.

“We are. In a minute. Don’t just stand there,” she said, rolling her eyes so only I could see. Luce crossed the room, following orders, glass raised to her lips.

“Wait!” Sadie said, hand out, and Luce froze. “Wait for everyone.” We each picked up a glass. “Hear, hear,” Sadie said. She clinked her glass against mine. Her eyes were large and unblinking, and I believed I could see everything reflected inside, everything she never said.

“To us,” Luce said, and Parker repeated in echo. I could feel my heartbeat in my toes, my fingers, my head. Sadie stared back at me, waiting. The silence stretched, the moment intoxicating.

“There, there,” I said, and her smile cracked open.



* * *




THE NIGHT SHE DIED, she traipsed into my room without a thought, or so it seemed at the time. We’d been back to normal for two weeks, and I didn’t want to shake the foundation. If something was off, I’d been too focused on my work to notice.

But to Bianca, I had set everything in motion. I’d gotten Sadie fired. I had ruined her. Taken her job. Revealed her to her parents. Pushed her to this inevitable outcome.

Standing across from Bianca, I thought I finally knew the real reason Sadie had taken that money—not as a reckless act of rebellion at all. It was something she had said after I’d been welcomed back into her life, when we were all out at the Fold. From a corner of the bar, Parker had Skyped in to a board meeting he’d forgotten about, with a drink in his hand, laughing sheepishly.

Parker can get away with literally everything. I can’t even get away, Sadie had said. The closest she had come to mentioning the fallout of her missteps.

In retrospect, that was what I had missed. She wanted out. Out of the Lomans’ grip, out of her life, by any means possible. Out—into the directionless, limitless wild. So she stockpiled the money. And that wasn’t my fault at all. No, the blame could be traced back a few more steps.

“You did this,” I said, stepping toward Bianca, my voice rising. “I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her, growing up in this house.” The same way grief had taken hold of me years earlier. Except I wasn’t sinking but sharpening. Wasn’t chasing something at the bottom but letting something free instead.

I had been armed for attack with all the things Sadie had ever told me. Her whisper in my ear, one of the first things she’d said about her mother: All must worship at the shrine of Bianca Loman. “Why do you think she did it there?” I asked. “At the place you were so desperate to live? It wasn’t safe, isn’t that what Grant thought? Living so close to the bluffs? But you insisted.” Push and push until something shatters.

“And now look,” I went on. I was shaking, my expression ferocious in the mirror. Did Sadie’s parents ever see her for the person she was and not the one they expected her to be?

Bianca’s face did not change. A mask of fury. “Out,” she said. “I want you out.”

“Yeah, I’m going.” I edged by her, but she reached out to grab me, her cold fingers firm on my wrist, her nails grazing the surface, as if to let me know that she was only choosing not to draw blood.

“No,” she said, “I mean out of this family. Out of our house. You are no longer welcome at One Landing Lane.”