Page 15 of The Last House Guest
He turned back around slowly. “I wouldn’t dare. What would be the point of that?”
I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his teeth were clenched together. But all I could remember was the list Detective Collins had put in front of me. The names. The times. And the fact that I couldn’t answer for Connor. “When did you get to the party that night?”
He shifted on his feet. “Why are you doing this?”
I shook my head. “It’s not a hard question. I’m assuming you told the police already.”
He stared back, eyes blazing. “Sometime after eight,” he said, monotone. “You were in the kitchen, with that girl—with Luce.” His gaze drifted to the side, to the kitchen. “You were on the phone. I walked right by you.”
I closed my eyes, trying to feel him there in my memory. The phone held to my ear, the sound of endless ringing. I had made only one call that night—the call to Sadie when she didn’t pick up.
“You know,” he continued, eyes narrowing, “I expected these questions from the police. Even from the Lomans. Butthis...” He trailed off. “She killed herself, Avery.”
Maybe the silence between us was better after all. Because the things we had to say were going to slide to places neither of us wanted to go.
He shook his head as if he realized the same thing. “Well, it’s been fun catching up.”
My arms were crossed over my chest as he made his way back outside to the delivery van in the drive. From the front door, I saw the sheer white curtains in the house across the street—Sunset Retreat—fall back into place. I could see the outline of a shadow there. A single figure, unmoving, watching as I locked the front door and made my way around the house toward the wooded path, disappearing into the trees.
The biggest danger of all in Littleport was assuming that you were invisible. That no one else saw you.
CHAPTER 7
Icouldn’t tell if Parkerwas back home, but I didn’t want him seeing me, stopping me, following me. I practically ran from my car into the guesthouse, locking the front door behind me. My hands were still shaking with misplaced adrenaline.
Sadie and I had the same model phone. My charger should work. I connected her phone to the wire on my desk and stared at the black screen, waiting. Pacing in front of the living room windows. Hearing her words again, the last thing she said to me:What do we think of this?
This time the scene shifted until I saw a different possibility: She’d been planning to meet someone. The pale skin of her shoulders, the nervous energy that I had mistaken for anticipation, a thrumming excitement for the party that night.
Now I was walking through another potential version of events.
Somewhere in my phone, I had a copy of that list, the one Detective Collins had written out for me last summer. I scrolled back in time until I found it, slightly blurred, my hand already pulling away as I took the photo just when the detective turned back. I had to zoom in to see it, twist it to the side, but there we were. The list of names:Avery Greer, Luciana Suarez, Parker Loman, Connor Harlow. Our arrival times written in my handwriting.
There was something the police had been looking for in here. A story that didn’t add up. I tore a blank sheet of paper from the notepad on my desk, copying the list—now complete with the information Connor had given me:
Me—6:40 p.m.
Luce—8 p.m.
Connor—8:10 p.m.
Parker—8:30 p.m.
I tapped the back of my pen against my desk until the rhythm made me anxious. Maybe Sadie and Connor had plans to meet up. Maybe when she told Parker not to wait for her, it was because Connor was supposed to give her a ride to the party.
I had no idea what she’d been up to earlier in the day while I was working. She was dressed and ready by the early afternoon, while I had been reconciling the rental property finances all day, caught up in the end-of-season work. Luce said she thought Sadie was packing. Parker said Sadie told him not to wait for her.
But somehow her phone had ended up at the rental house across town while her body was washing up on the shore of Breaker Beach. Was it possible that someone had hidden it inside the chest recently? Or had it been there ever since the night she died?
As soon as the display of her phone lit up, prompting the passcode screen, I pressed my thumb to the pad. The screen flashed a message totry again,and my stomach dropped.
Sadie and I had just come out of a rough spot in the weeks before she died. Until then, we’d had access to each other’s phones for years. So we could check a text, see the weather, take a picture. It was a show of trust. It was a promise.
It had never occurred to me that she might’ve locked me out when things turned cold.
I wiped my hand against my shirt and tried to hold perfectly still but could feel my pulse all the way to the tips of my fingers. I held my breath as I tried once more.
The passcode grid disappeared—I was in.
