The Last House Guest(57)

The sound of laughter from the window over the sink made me bolt upright and freeze. But the footsteps continued past. Another group cutting through from the bar after being out near Breaker Beach.

“Avery? You there?”

I kept my eyes on the dark window. “I’m here. Maybe I can track it, see why this was important?”

A pause. “I think you should stop,” he said.

“What?” She had hidden this on an island, paid Connor to bring her there, and now she was dead. And Connor thought this was the place to stop?

“Payments? Avery, come on. Every family has secrets. And that’s one family I don’t want to touch. She’s dead, and we can’t change that.”

But it wasn’t just that she was dead. If she had fallen, yes. If she had jumped, even, yes. But there was a third option, and it was the only one I could believe anymore. “Someone killed her, Connor. And I think the police suspect one of us. Are you just going to sit there and hope for the best?” Silence, but he didn’t object. “That person is still here. That person was at the party with us.” My breath caught—couldn’t he see? We were living with evil. Someone who was still out there.

Even tonight, just outside our reach. The flashlight on the bluffs. Shutting down the electricity at night. He was a shadow behind the window. Watching me to see what I’d do. Or maybe: to see what I knew.

I double-checked the locks around the house, the phone pressed to my ear, glad I’d parked a few blocks away.

“Where are you?” he asked, voice flat.

I paused. It didn’t seem like he wanted to help. It seemed like he wanted to talk me out of something. “I’ll call you when I know more.”

I saved the file to my laptop, then rifled through my purse for the closest piece of paper—the list with all of our names and the times we arrived at the party. And then I flipped it over and copied the account details down. I spent the next several hours staring at those numbers. Willing them to mean something. I knew only that the information must’ve come from somewhere in the Loman house, and Sadie did not feel safe leaving it there.

I fell asleep on the couch, the sound of footsteps periodically passing through the night. A side of Littleport I’d never known. A side of Sadie, too.

Something new I’d just uncovered, even after all this time.





CHAPTER 20


I woke to the sound of gravel footsteps outside again, and it took a moment to remember where I was. To place the furniture with the room, the window with the light slanting in through the curtains.

The footsteps receded—someone walking to the beach, maybe. Heading in the opposite direction from last night.

I had fallen asleep on the couch, the open laptop, already low on charge, draining while I slept. I fumbled my way through the dim room, finding my bag with the cable to recharge it. While it was charging on the kitchen table, I cracked open the window so I could smell the ocean on a gust of wind. The phone buzzed from somewhere in the couch cushions, and I took my time finding it, expecting Connor again.

But it was Grant’s name on the display. Like he could sense me opening that file last night.

“Grant, hi,” I said as a greeting.

“Good morning, Avery,” he said, his voice the same monotone as always, businesslike and unreadable. So that I was constantly trying to please him, to see my worth reflected in his expression. “Not too early for a call, then?”

“No, not at all,” I said, my eyes focusing on the nearest clock. There, over the kitchen sink—frozen in time at noon.

“Tell me what’s been happening.”

“Well,” I began, “like my email said, there’ve been some petty break-ins, not anything major. A television that needs to be replaced at Trail’s End, and a new window at Blue Robin. But there was a gas leak at Sunset Retreat, and I’m worried it’s all related.”

He didn’t respond, and I cleared my throat, waiting.

“Have you called the police?” he asked.

“Well, I had to. I called 911 when I smelled the gas, and the fire crew came straight up.” A pause. “It wasn’t safe.”

“I see. And what did they say?”

“A loose connection behind the oven. We should replace that, obviously.”

“Obviously,” he repeated.

He waited to see if I’d say more, but I knew this was a tactic—silence and waiting for someone else to fill it, to reveal the things they’d wanted to keep hidden. I’d learned a lot from Grant over the years, nearly everything I knew about the business and how to conduct myself within its boundaries—the rules both spoken and unspoken.

He once told me I had something his own children lacked. The secret to success that eluded even Parker, he said, was that you had to take great risks for great rewards. That to change your life, to truly change it, you had to be willing to lose.

Parker will be good at the job, he explained. He’ll keep the company strong. He’s good at working with what we have. He understands the game, the ins and outs of it all. But what he gambles, he hasn’t built on his own. Your risk must come at some counterbalance. Neither of my children is truly willing to take the risks.

Because, I thought then, they already had everything.

“You mentioned the main house,” he said now. “Something about the electricity?”