Page 23 of The Last House Guest
Though the house itself did not belong to me, I knew no one would dare touch this box. For all the times that Sadie had reached into my closet, she’d never placed her hands on this.
I lifted my parents’ wedding album, my grandmother’s letters, placing them carefully aside. Until I’d unearthed the small shoebox underneath.
Inside were the photos of Sadie that once were scattered around the Loman house. Replaced each year with a new set. But Bianca had added them without removing the previous photos, stacking them one on top of the next in their frames, so they remained as one. Like layers of paint, slowly growing in thickness, until I’d removed the older images for my own safekeeping.
The surfaces were damaged slightly, adhered to the newer versions, the corners crimped and discolored from the frames. Where there once were childhood portraits, there were graduation pictures. Where there once were graduation pictures, there were vacation shots—Sadie at the Eiffel Tower, Sadie in red snow gear with mountains behind her, Sadie sitting beside Parker somewhere tropical, with the ocean behind them.
I sorted through these forgotten pictures now, trying to find the right fit for the piece. God, she would hate this. In each photo, she was either too young-looking or too happy. Too disconnected to the purpose of the article. They would want something to appeal to everyone, insider and outsider alike. She had to appear both approachable and untouchable.
In the end, I settled on her college graduation picture. She held the diploma in her hand, but her head was tipped back slightly, like she was starting to laugh. It was perfectly Sadie. And it was perfectly tragic.
This photo captured the beginning of something. It was on the nose, but it would cut hard. The beginning of a laugh, of her life. Something that I now felt had been taken from her.
And then I placed the rest of the photos back inside the box, hidden within the closet, where they would remain alongside all the other people I had lost.
SADIE JANETTE LOMAN TObe honored in Littleport memorial
My fingers tapped against the edge of the keyboard, waiting for the words to come. I stared at the photo of her in the graduation gown, the blue sky behind her over the dome of the building.
Sadie Loman may have spent nine months out of the year in Connecticut, but Littleport was her favorite place in the world.
She’d told me that the first time we met. And now she was about to become a part of its history.
For a small town, we had a long past that lived in our collective memory. It was a place filled with ghosts, from old legends and bedtime stories alike. The fishermen lost at sea, the first lighthouse keeper—their cries in the night echoed in the howling wind. Benches in memory of, in honor of; boxes moved from home to home. We carried the lost with us here.
It was a place for risk-takers, a place that favored the bold.
I was trying to find a place for Sadie in this history. Something to be part of.
She was bold, of course she was. But that wasn’t what people wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that she loved the ocean, her family, this place.
What I would say if I were telling the truth:
Sadie would hate everything about this. From the bell, to the quote, to the tribute. She’d sit on the rocks, looking down on the beach where we would all be gathered, holding a drink in her hand and laughing. Littleport was unsympathetic and unapologetic, and so was she. As much a product of this place as any of us.
She might demand that she be forgiven. She might compensate for a perceived wrong with an over-the-top counterbalance. She might know it, deep inside, when she had gone too far.
But Sadie Loman would never apologize. Not for who she was and not for what she’d done.
I’M SORRY. I WISHit didn’t have to be this way.
Two simple sentences. The note they found. Crumpled in the trash.
What was the chance that all of this was a mistake? That the police, and her family, had seen one thing and believed another?
What were the odds that Sadie had chosen those very same words, the ones I had used earlier that summer—the ones I had written myself, folded in half, and left on the surface of her desk for her?
CHAPTER 11
Friday morning, quarter toeleven, and Parker’s car was still at the house. At least I assumed it was. I hadn’t seen it pull out from the garage, and I’d been watching for it since I woke up.
He could be walking, though, down Landing Lane to the entrance of Breaker Beach. I wouldn’t be able to see if he’d left on foot from the guesthouse. I opened the living room windows surrounding my desk and tried to listen, so I’d hear a door closing or his footsteps on the gravel, disappearing down the road.
I’d pushed back a meeting with the general contractor for one of the new homes until Monday. I’d canceled the window replacement for the Blue Robin, telling the vendor we’d have to reschedule. My email sat unanswered; phone calls went unreturned. I did not want to be distracted and miss my chance.
By eleven, I still hadn’t heard him, and I started to wonder if he’d been home at all this morning. But at five after the hour, I finally heard the garage door sliding open, the faint turnover of an engine, the wheels slowly easing down the driveway before fading in the distance.
I waited another five minutes just to make sure he was gone.
