Page 20 of The Last House Guest
At the end, I had just a stack of boxes, all labeled by Sadie’s red Sharpie. The loopingSforSell,the slantingKforKeep. My life, restructured in her capable hands.
There were four boxes of my own things worth keeping. And one more that was stacked full of my parents’ things, my grandparents’ things. Wedding albums and mementos. Family pictures and a recipe book from my grandmother’s kitchen, a shoebox of letters from and to my grandfather when he was overseas. The file of paperwork shifting everything that once was theirs into my possession. Like I was moving not only me but my entire history. All the people who had brought me to this moment in time.
Now I pictured Sadie with the marker in her hand, the cap between her teeth.
The moment when she sat back and gazed around my empty, empty house. The lonely existence I was leaving behind for something new. Grant stood beyond the window, facing away, one hand on his hip, the other with a phone to his ear. Inside was only silence. Sadie looked momentarily stunned, her lips pressed together, as if the emotion might spill over at any second. It was like she was seeing me as someone else for the first time.This is going to be good, Avery.
And right then—with the house I’d been in danger of losing stripped down to its roots, feeling like I had finally fought my way out of something—I believed her.
IT HAD SEEMED SOgenerous of them at the time. But I’d spent the last year alone up here, with nothing but the ghosts for company. Sadie, lingering in my doorway the last time I saw her. My mother, whispering in my ear, asking what I see.
And so I’ve kept looking back, trying to find the place where everything veered off track. I start, every time, at the beginning:
I see Grant and Bianca, watching as Sadie brought me home. I imagine them asking around town, mentioning my name, hearing the stories, knowing everything there was to know. Witnessing the thread connecting me and Sadie becoming taut and strong. I wondered if they feared their daughter being dragged down into my world, just as I felt myself being pulled up into theirs. They must have understood that the only way to keep their daughter on track, under control, was to get me there, too.
That was what everyone missed when they wondered what I was doing in the Loman home. Their rumors were wrong, but so was my defense. I had seen it first as a generosity of spirit but then started to see it as an act of control. A true taste of what it was like to be Sadie Loman. A beautiful puppet on a string. Something that could’ve pushed her to the brink.
Buy your house and keep you here. Fund your education, direct you in kind. Employ you, monitor you, mold your path.
My home is your home. Your life is my life.
There will be no locks or secrets here.
CHAPTER 9
There was only onechange I made to Sadie’s phone before leaving. Only one thing removed, which I didn’t think anyone would notice.
In the settings, I deleted the extra thumbprint before shutting it down.
THE DRIVE TO THEpolice station was almost the same as the drive to the harbor. The fight against the gridlock of cars and pedestrians in the downtown section. The rubbernecking at the sight of the ocean and the village green. I had to pass straight through it all to reach the building on the rise of hill at the edge of the harbor.
I pulled into the parking lot overlooking the harbor below, all glass windows and smooth white stone.
I asked for Detective Collins at the curved front desk of the lobby, which was more fitting for a hotel than a police station. The woman behind the desk picked up the phone, gave my name, and asked me to wait, gesturing to the grid of chairs by the window. It was deceptive, the openness, the buzzing bright lights of the place—made you think you had nothing to hide.
I’d just taken a seat on the stiff cushioning when I realized she knew who I was without asking. Not that I should be surprised. My name had been known around here since I was fourteen, in one way or another.
There was an accident.
Such a simple, benign phrase for the upheaval of everything I’d ever known.
A dark road, a mountain curve, and my entire life had been changed in an instant while I slept. I’d been driven to the hospital, placed in a small waiting room. Given food I couldn’t touch, soda that fizzed against the back of my throat until I gagged. I’d sat there then, only half believing, trying desperately to remember the last interaction I’d had with my parents:
My dad calling down the hall,There’s leftover pizza in the fridge,my mom ducking into my room, one shoe on, the other in her hand,Don’t stay up too late. I’d given her a thumbs-up without removing the phone from my ear. Faith had been on the other end, and my mom, noticing, had mouthed,Bye.It was the last thing I could remember from either of them. They were heading for a gallery show a few towns away, bringing my grandmother as well.
I’d fallen asleep watching television. I hadn’t even noticed something was wrong.
A policewoman placed a hand on my shoulder while I sat at the hospital, staring at the fizzing soda—Is there someone else we can call?
They’d tried the Harlows first, but it was Mrs. Sylva who came to pick me up. I’d stayed in a vacant room at the B&B until my grandmother was released the next night. She didn’t have a scratch on her, but her neck was in a brace from the impact of the tree, the front of the car crushed like an accordion. They’d thought she was dead at first. That was what the first officer on the scene said. It was in the article, how he stumbled upon the scene, new on the job, shaken by the horror of it all—his own jolt into reality, it seemed.
I read it only once. Once was more than enough.
The police said my father didn’t even hit the brakes until he was off the road, had probably drifted off, as my grandmother had in the backseat. I thought of that often at night, how we were all sleeping when it happened. How you can hurtle through darkness by momentum alone, without a single conscious thought, with no one to see you go.
Four years later, I’d been brought to the station after the fight with Faith. By then the only person left to call was my grandmother’s neighbor, Evelyn.
“Avery?” Detective Collins waited at the entrance to the hall behind me. He nodded as I stood. “Nice to see you again. Come on back.” He led me to a small office halfway down the hall and took a seat behind his desk, gesturing for me to take the chair across from him. His office was sparse, with nothing on the surface of the desk, and glass windows to the hall behind me. There was nowhere to look but right at him. “Is this about the dedication ceremony?” he asked, leaning back in his chair until the springs creaked in protest.
