The Last House Guest(62)

It took over a month to get the results back, and by then I’d almost forgotten about it. Until she barged in and told me to check my email. Good news, I’m not dying. At least not of any of these eighteen conditions, she’d said. And surprise, I am very, very Irish. In case my sunburn led you to believe otherwise.

She watched over my shoulder as I checked, then showed me how she entered her info into a genealogy database. Maybe we’re distant cousins, she said. Waiting, holding her breath, while I did the same.

We weren’t.

I saw the reflection of her face in the screen of my laptop, the brow knitting together, the corners of her mouth turning down. But I was too preoccupied with the fact that my family tree branched outward suddenly. I was the only one left of the relatives I knew. My mother had cut off contact with her family before I was born, and they hadn’t even come to the funeral. But here, I saw something new stretched before me—the tie of blood, connecting me to a world of people out there whom I’d never known existed.

I didn’t realize then that Sadie had been expecting something different. That she wanted me to know the truth, and this was the way to do it. There would be no turning back then. No more secrets. Everything and everyone exposed.

But she’d been wrong.

I couldn’t reconcile the payment to my grandmother with anything that made sense. And there was a second payment to someone else who used the same bank.

The summer after her first year of college, Sadie had interned for her father—that was when I met her. She had been working in his office, in his accounts. Had she stumbled upon this and found me because of it?

What did she understand when she realized she was wrong after all?



* * *




HARBOR DRIVE WAS BUZZING with midmorning activity. It was the last Sunday before Labor Day weekend—and by the time I found a place to park, I probably could’ve walked from the Sea Rose.

Though the streets were crowded, everything felt vaguely unfamiliar. A sea of ever-changing faces, week by week, somehow shifting the backdrop with their presence. I wove through the crowd on the sidewalks, headed toward the docks, but saw a familiar figure standing still in the bustle of activity across the way. Dark pants and a button-down, sunglasses pulled over his eyes, feet shoulder width apart, head moving slowly back and forth—Detective Ben Collins was here.

I sucked in a breath, dipped into the first store on my right. The bell chimed overhead, and I found myself in the long, snaking line of Harbor Bean—the favorite coffee shop of locals and visitors alike. In the fall, the hours would shift and the prices would change. It was mostly a place for the visitors right now. None of us wanted to pay more than something was worth.

I peered over my shoulder as the line shifted forward, but I had lost sight of the detective through the front glass windows. There were too many people passing back and forth, too many voices, too much commotion. “Next?”

“Coffee,” I answered, and the teenager behind the counter raised an eyebrow. He tipped his head to the chalkboard menu behind him, but the script all blurred together. “I don’t care,” I said. “Just pick something with caffeine.”

“Name?” he asked, pen poised over a Styrofoam cup.

“Avery.”

His hand hovered for a second before he resumed writing, and I wondered if he’d heard something. Knew something.

“Well, hey there.” A woman’s voice from a table against the brick wall. It was Ellie Arnold, smiling like we were friends. She was sitting across from Greg Randolph, who grinned like he was in on some joke. There was a third man hunched over the table with his back to me.

The teenager handed me my credit card, and the third man stood as I approached. And then I understood: It was Parker Loman, empty cup in hand.

“Avery,” he said, and then continued past. As if I were an old plot point. As if I were just someone caught living on his property when I shouldn’t have been there; as if I weren’t his sister’s best friend, hadn’t worked with him for years; as if he hadn’t kissed me two nights earlier.

It was a skill of the entire family, creating the story and owning it. Sadie herself, welcoming me to the Breakers. And now Parker, probably spreading this new story about me. I wondered if everyone at the table, behind the counter, out on the docks, knew that I had just, an hour ago, been fired.

Still, I almost felt bad for him, thinking about what his own father said of him. Parker had been robbed of the chance to want something badly.

Ambition wasn’t just in the work. Ambition, I believed, was tinged with a sort of desperation, something closer to panic. Like a dormant switch deep inside that could be forced only by necessity. Something to push up against until, finally, you caught.

“Here, have a seat.” Greg Randolph pushed Parker’s now empty chair with his foot, the metal scraping against concrete. I perched on the edge, waiting for my order. “How’ve you been?” he asked, grin firmly in place. “I mean, since Friday.”

The teenager behind the counter called my name, and I excused myself for my drink. It was something mixed with caramel, steaming hot, a spice I couldn’t place. When I sat down again, I ignored his last question.

Greg gestured toward Ellie. “We were just talking about the party coming up the week after next. Will you be joining us at Hawks Ridge?” He tilted his head to the side, and I took a sip. The Plus-One party must be at his place this year. Hawks Ridge. A group of exclusive estates set on a rise of land closer to the mountains, with a distant view of the sea.