The Last House Guest(8)

“We are older,” I said, which made Parker smile.

“Should we retire to the sitting room, then?” he said, but I couldn’t tell whether he was making fun of himself or me.

“Gonna use the bathroom,” I said. I needed the time. Parker had a way of looking at you like you were the only thing in the world worth knowing. Before Luce, I’d seen him use it a dozen times on a dozen different girls. Didn’t mean I’d never thought about it.

I walked down the hall to the mudroom and the side door to the outside. The bathroom here had a window over the toilet, uncovered, facing the sea. All of the windows facing the water were left uncovered to the view. As if you could ever forget the ocean’s presence. The sand and the salt that seemed to permeate everything here—lodged in the gap between the curb and the street, rusting the cars, the relentless assault on the wooden storefronts along Harbor Drive. I could smell the salt air as I ran my fingers through my hair.

I splashed water on my face, thought I caught a shadow passing underneath the door. I turned off the faucet and stared at the knob, holding my breath, but nothing happened.

Just a figment of my imagination. The hope of a long-ago memory.

It was a quirk of the Loman house that none of the interior doors had locks. I never knew whether this was a design flaw—a trade-off for the smooth antique-style knobs—or whether it was meant to signify an elite status. That you always paused at a closed door to knock. If it inspired in people some sort of restraint; that there would be no secrets here.

Either way, it was the reason I’d met Sadie Loman. Here, in this very room.



* * *




IT WAS NOT THE first time I’d seen her. This was the summer after graduation, nearly six months after the death of my grandmother. A slick of ice, a concussion followed by a stroke that left me as the last Greer in Littleport.

I had ricocheted through the winter, untethered and dangerous. Graduated through the generosity of makeup assignments and special circumstances. Become equally unpredictable and unreliable in turn. And still there were people like Evelyn, my grandmother’s neighbor, hiring me for odd jobs, trying to make sure I got by.

All it did was bring me closer to more of the things I didn’t have.

That was the problem with a place like this: Everything was right out in the open, including the life you could never have.

Keep everything in balance, in check, and you could open a storefront selling homemade soap, or run a catering company from the kitchen of the inn. You could make a living, or close to it, out on the sea, if you loved it enough. You could sell ice cream or coffee from a shop that functioned primarily four months of the year, that carried you through. You could have a dream as long as you were willing to give something up for it.

Just as long as you remained invisible, as was intended.



* * *




EVELYN HAD HIRED ME for the Lomans’ Welcome to Summer party. I wore the uniform—black pants, white shirt, hair back—that was meant to make you blend in, become unnoticeable. I was sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, wrapping the base of my hand in toilet paper, silently cursing to myself and trying to stop the blood, when the door swung open and then quietly latched again. Sadie Loman stood there, facing away, with her palms pressed to the door, her head tipped down.

Meet someone alone in a bathroom, hiding, and you know something about her right away.

I cleared my throat, standing abruptly. “Sorry, I’m just . . .” I tried to edge by her, keeping close to the wall as I moved, trying to remain invisible, forgettable.

She made no effort to hide her assessing eyes. “I didn’t know anyone was in here,” she said. No apology, because Sadie Loman didn’t have to apologize to anyone. This was her house.

The pink crept up her neck then, in the way I’d come to know so well. Like I’d been the one to catch her instead. The curse of the fair-skinned, she’d explained later. That and the faint freckles across the bridge of her nose made her look younger than her age, which she compensated for in other ways.

“Are you okay?” she asked, frowning at the blood seeping through the toilet paper wrapped around my hand.

“Yeah, I just cut myself.” I pressed down harder, but it didn’t help. “You?”

“Oh, you know,” she said, waving her hand airily around. But I didn’t. Not then. I’d come to know it better, the airy wave of her hand: All this, the Lomans.

She reached her hand out for mine, gesturing me closer, and there was nothing to do but acquiesce. She unwound the paper, leaning closer, then pressed her lips together. “I hope you have a tetanus shot,” she said. “First sign is lockjaw.” She clicked her teeth together, like the sound of a bone popping. “Fever. Headaches. Muscle spasms. Until finally you can’t swallow or breathe. It’s not a quick way to die, is what I’m saying.” She raised her hazel eyes to mine. She was so close I could see the line of makeup under her eyes, the slight imperfection where her finger had slipped.

“It was a knife,” I said, “in the kitchen.” Not a dirty nail. I assumed that was what tetanus was from.

“Oh, well, still. Be careful. Any infection that gets to your bloodstream can lead to sepsis. Also not a good way to go, if we’re making a list.”

I couldn’t tell whether she was serious. But I cracked a smile, and she did the same.