Page 51 of The Last House Guest
Every summer, year by year, I was all she needed. And then Luciana Suarez was there.
WHEN I JOINED THEfamily out back at the pool that first night as they toasted to summer, every time I looked across the way, I’d find Luce watching me back.
She told me she’d known Sadie and Parker for years, that their families had been friendly since they were teenagers, though none of them had gone to school together. As if to let me know that her relationship with the Lomans superseded my own, based purely on the factor of time.
Luce had just finished up her master’s degree when she arrived with the Lomans at the start of the summer. She’d put off the starting date of her new job until mid-September. She was moving anyway, she’d said. Out of graduate housing, closer to the hospital where she’d be working as an occupational therapist.
She’d told me everything I needed now. I only had to spend ten minutes looking through the staff directories of several local hospitals in Connecticut before I landed on her name—Luciana Suarez, office hours Monday to Friday, 8:30 to 4:30.
I mapped the hospital, found a nearby hotel, booked myself the cheapest room I could get in a hotel chain I was familiar with—all from the front seat of my car, which felt as permanent a place as any.
I didn’t even stop at the Sea Rose before heading out of town. All I had with me were the items in my purse—the paper with the list of names and account numbers, and Sadie’s flash drive. I left behind the boxes, the bags, my laptop, the keys. Maybe leaving was for the best, anyway.
I could imagine someone finding those items next season if I never returned. Wondering what had happened to me. The rumors about that girl who was obsessed with the Lomans. Who must’ve had something to hide.
The same way we had crafted a story about Sadie—a person who wanted to die.
It was a thought that had me calling Connor again—just so someone would know—but his phone kept ringing. I debated not leaving a message, knowing how it would look, but there was already evidence of the calls. Detective Collins had seen us together.
There was nothing incriminating about tracking down the truth.
“Hi. Didn’t see you on the docks this morning but wanted to let you know I’m heading out of town.” I didn’t know how much more to say—about the payment and the bank accounts on the flash drive in my purse. I didn’t know whether to trust my instincts or him. But Connor knew my grandmother. He knew my family. And he was always, always better at this part—at looking again and seeing something new. “I was trying to find out which bank the accounts were from.” I took a breath. “I discovered that one of the accounts,” I said, “belonged to my grandmother.”
And then I drove out of Littleport—through the crowded streets of the downtown, rising up and away from the harbor; winding through the mountain roads, the pavement cut like switchbacks in sections; through the greenery and the barren roadsides, nothing but trap shops and ice cream shops and gas stations with a single pump—until the highway.
I headed south, like everyone else leaving town, sat in the traffic heading back to the cities, until we connected with 95 and the roads opened up in Portland, highways splitting off in various directions, like a spiderweb.
It was dinnertime when I pulled in to the hotel parking lot in a town that looked like every other town I’d passed through on the way. Connor had left me a voicemail, which I listened to while sitting in the car, as if there were someone who might be eavesdropping.
“Just back at the docks and got your message. Call me when you get this. No matter what time.”
THE HOTEL ROOM WASstandard, simple, a box room like a thousand other box rooms all across the country. I had forgotten how everything about Littleport carried a reminder of where you were, even the motels up and down the coast, with the seashells and the candle votives floating in sand. Lobster traps refurbished to create benches and artwork. Nets and buoys decorating the lobbies of restaurants farther inland, even. Here, there was nothing but ivory walls and a generic flower painting.
Maybe this was how to do it. How to live a life of even-tempered safety. Where nothing harms you, but nothing thrills you. Where you have risked nothing.
It took this—stepping outside Littleport and looking back in—to see my home through the eyes of a stranger. To finally get a sense of my mother when she was my age. Not what made her stay but what made her stop in the first place.
In Littleport, we had become addicted to the extremes. No matter where you found yourself, you adapted to the highs or you adapted to the lows. Everything was temporary, and so was your place within it. We understood that. It was always there, in the force of the sea and the rise of the mountains. In the crowded chaos of summer and the barren loneliness of winter. The sweet sea roses dying, the quick foot of snow melting. Everything marked a passage of time and another chance for you within it.
I called Connor back once I was settled in my room. When he picked up, I heard noises in the background, like he was out somewhere. “Is this a bad time?”
The noises drifted away. “Just a sec,” he said. I heard the sound of a door squeaking closed.
“Are you out?” How could he disregard everything happening for a night out with friends right now? He’d told me to stop looking, and apparently, he’d gone right on with his life.
“No, I’m not out. I just got home. There was a party at the apartment next door. People out in the hall.”
“Oh.” I didn’t even know where he lived anymore.
“God, listen.” His voice dropped lower. “That detective was around the docks when I left, and then when I came back. He’s been there all day. And he asked if I’d seen you.”
“What did you say?”
“What do you think? I said no. But he saw us together yesterday and wanted to know what that was about. I told him, you know, old friends catching up. None of his business.”
I leaned back against the headboard, bent my knees, staring at my reflection in the mirror over the dresser across the way. “He thinks it’s someone at the party, Connor. That it’s one of us. And then I find my grandmother’s account listed on that flash drive, and I don’t know what to think.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
