Page 3 of The Last House Guest
I would know the shape of him anywhere. Parker Loman.
CHAPTER 2
Jesus Christ,” I said,my hand fumbling for the rest of the light switches. “You scared me to death. What are you doing here?”
“It’s my house,” Parker answered. “What areyoudoing here?”
Everything was light then. The open expanse of the downstairs, the vaulted ceilings, the hallway spanning the distance between me and him.
“I heard something.” I held up the flashlight as evidence.
He tipped his head to the side, a familiar move, like he was conceding something. His hair had grown in, or else he was styling it differently. But it softened his edges, smoothing out the cheekbones, and for a second, when he turned, I could see the shadow of Sadie in him.
He shifted and she was gone. “I’m surprised you’re still here,” he said. As if their local business had continued to operate for the past year on momentum alone. I almost answered:Where else wouldI go?But then he grinned, and I imagined I must’ve shaken him pretty good, walking in his front door unannounced.
The truth was, I had thought about leaving multiple times. Not just here but the town itself. I’d come to believe there was some toxicity hidden at its core that no one else seemed to notice. But more than the business, more than the job, I had made a life for myself here. I was too tied up in this place.
Still, sometimes I felt that staying was nothing more than a test of endurance bordering on masochism. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to prove anymore.
I could feel my heartbeat slowing. “I didn’t notice a car,” I said, taking in the downstairs, categorizing the changes: two leather bags at the base of the wide staircase, a key ring thrown on the entryway table; an open bottle on the granite island, a mug beside it; and Parker, sleeves of his button-down rolled up and collar loosened like he’d just arrived from work, not sometime in the middle of the night.
“It’s in the garage. Just drove up this evening.”
I cleared my throat, nodded to his bags. “Is Luce here?” I hadn’t heard her name in a while, but Grant kept our conversations focused on the business, and Sadie was no longer here to fill me in on the personal details of the Lomans’ lives. There’d been rumors, but that meant nothing. I’d been the subject of plenty of unfounded rumors myself.
Parker stopped at the island, a whole expanse between us, and picked up the mug, taking a long drink. “Just me. We’re taking a break,” he said.
A break. It was something Sadie would’ve said, inconsequential and vaguely optimistic. But his grip on the mug, his glance to the side, told me otherwise.
“Well, come on in. Join me for a drink, Avery.”
“I have to be at a property early tomorrow,” I said. But my words trailed off with his returning look. He smirked, pulled a second mug out, and poured.
Parker’s expression said he knew exactly who I was, and there was no point in pretending. Didn’t matter that I was currently overseeing all of the family’s properties in Littleport—six summers, and you get to know a person’s habits pretty well.
I’d known him longer than that. It was the way of things, if you’d grown up here: the Randolphs, on Hawks Ridge; the Shores, who’d remodeled an old inn at the corner of the town green, then proceeded to have a series of affairs and now shared their massive plot like a child of divorce, never seen at the same time; and the Lomans, who lived up on the bluffs, overlooking all of Littleport, and then expanded, their tendrils spreading out around town until their name was synonymous with summer. The rentals, the family, the parties. The promise of something.
The locals referred to the Lomans’ main residence as the Breakers, a subtle jab that once bonded the rest of us together. It was partly a nod to the home’s proximity to Breaker Beach and partly an allusion to the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, a level of wealth even the Lomans couldn’t aspire to. Always whispered in jest, a joke everyone was in on but them.
Parker slid the second mug across the surface, liquid sloshing out the side. He was this haphazard only when he was well on his way to drunk. I twisted the mug back and forth on the countertop.
He sighed and turned around, taking in the living room. “God, this place,” he said, and then I picked up the drink. Because I hadn’t seen him in eleven months, because I knew what he meant: this place. Now. Without Sadie. Their enlarged family photo from years earlier still hung behind the couch. The four of them smiling, all dressed in beige and white, the dunes of Breaker Beach out of focus in the background. I could see the before and after, same as Parker.
He raised his mug, clanked it against mine with enough force to convey this wasn’t his first drink, just in case I hadn’t been able to tell.
“Hear, hear,” he said, frowning. It was what Sadie always said when we were getting ready to go out. Shot glasses in a row, a messy pour—hear, hear. Fortifying herself while I was going in the other direction. Glasses tipped back and the burn in my throat, my lips on fire.
I closed my eyes at the first sip, felt the loosening, the warmth. “There, there,” I answered quietly, out of habit.
“Well,” Parker said, pouring himself half a glass more. “Here we are.”
I sat on the stool beside him, nursing my mug. “How long are you staying?” I wondered if this was because of Luce, if they’d been living together and now he needed somewhere to escape.
“Just until the dedication ceremony.”
I took another sip, deeper than intended. I’d been avoiding the tribute to Sadie. The memorial was to be a brass bell that didn’t work, that would sit at the entrance of Breaker Beach.For all souls to find their way home,it would say, the words hand-chiseled. It had been put to a vote.
Littleport was full of memorials, and I’d long since had my fill of them. From the benches that lined the footpaths to the statues of the fishermen in front of the town hall, we were becoming a place in service not only to the visitors but to the dead. My dad had a classroom in the elementary school. My mom, a wall at the gallery on Harbor Drive. A gold plaque for your loss.
