The Last House Guest(84)

I opened the folder, pulled out the article—so he would remember. Detective Collins had once told me that he knew who I was, what I’d been through—that it was a shitty hand to draw. He was older than me. He must’ve remembered this.

“Can I . . .” He cleared his throat, holding up my phone. “Can I hang on to this?”

I nodded, and he tucked my phone into his pocket, then pulled out a pack of cigarettes, sliding one out, a lighter in the other hand. “Bad habit, I know,” he said. His hand shook as he flicked the lighter twice before it caught. A slow exhale of smoke, eyes closed. “Sometimes it helps, though.”

I imagined the smoke soaking into the Lomans’ walls, the ornate carpet beneath our feet. How they’d hate it. I almost spoke, on instinct, and then stopped. Who cared?

In the article, there was a black-and-white picture of the road—how had I not seen it before, the same image Sadie had taken on her phone? The arc of trees, so different in the daylight—but it matched.

The article also had a picture of the wreckage left behind. The metal heap of a car crumpled against a tree. My heart squeezed, and I had to close my eyes, even after all these years.

I skimmed over sentences, paragraphs, until the part I remembered—that had been seared into my mind years earlier.

“The first officer on the scene gave a statement to the reporter,” I said. Reading the words that I’d wanted to forget for so long. “Here it is. ‘There was nothing I could do. It was just terrible. Horrific. I thought we had lost them all, but when the EMTs arrived, they discovered the woman in the backseat was still alive. Just unconscious.’ The loss will be felt by everyone in the community, including the young officer—”

I stopped reading, the room hollowing out. Couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say the words. Watched, instead, as everything shifted.

He raised his eyebrows, flicked the lighter again. Held it to the base of Parker’s medical paper, letting it catch fire and fall into the stainless-steel trash can.

I stared once more down at the article in my hand. The truth, always inches away, just waiting for me to look again.

The unfinished sentence, our paths crossing over and over, unseen, unknown. Officer Ben Collins.





CHAPTER 29


Smoke spilled from the top of the garbage can, the air dangerous and alive. “You knew,” I said, stepping back.

Detective Ben Collins stood between me and the doorway, not meeting my eye. Systematically dropping page after page into the trash. Each piece of evidence I’d given him, every piece of proof. One after another into the burning trash. He had my phone. My flash drive. The evidence of the payments—

The other payment, the one Sadie had found and copied, stored on the flash drive alongside the payment to my grandmother. That had gone to him. “The Lomans paid you off, too,” I said.

Finally, he looked at me. A man cut into angles, into negative space. “It was an accident. If it helps, he didn’t mean to do it. Some kid speeding past me, driving like a bat out of hell in the middle of the night. I didn’t know it was Parker Loman when I took off after him—he didn’t see the other car coming. The lights must’ve blinded them to the curve. Both of them ended up off the road, but the other car . . .”

“The other car—” I choked out. My parents. There were people inside. People who had been taken from me.

How long had he waited to call the EMTs after Parker Loman stepped from the car? Had Parker asked him to wait while he pressed his hand to the cut on his forehead, seeing what he had done? Or had Grant Loman called in, explained things, convinced him to let his son go—that there was nothing to be done now, no use ruining another life in the process—a plea but also a threat?

Had my parents bled out while he waited? Did they fight it, the darkness, while a young Ben Collins weighed his own life and chose?

The garbage can crackled, a heat between us as we stood on opposite ends of the desk.

“Avery, listen, we were all young.”

I understood that, didn’t I? The terrible choices we made without clarity of thought. On instinct, on emotion, or in a drastic move, just to get things to stop. To change.

“I think about it often,” he said. “I think we all do. And now we’re doing the best we can, all of us. It was terrible, but the Lomans have supported this town through thick and thin, giving back whenever they can. I made a decision when I was twenty-three, and I’ve been trying to make peace with it ever since.” He held one hand out to the side. “I’ve given everything to this place.”

His eyes were wide now, like he was begging me to see it—the person reflected in his eyes. The better person he had become. It was true, if I gave it any thought—he was always the person involved, who volunteered. Who organized the parades, the events. The person people asked to join committees. But all I could see was the lie. It had been built into the very fabric of who he was now.

“They’re dead!” I was yelling then. Finally, a place to direct my anger. Instead of sinking further into myself. Instead of succumbing to the spiral that caught me and refused to let go.

He flinched. “What do you want, Avery?” Matter-of-fact. Like everything in life was a negotiation.

I shook my head. He was so calm, and the crackle of the flames was eating away at the air, destroying everything again.