Page 54 of The Last House Guest
Wasn’t I? Wasn’t that what I was here for? “You knew better than me how they were.” I cleared my throat. “You saw how all of them were.” I was too close to see clearly. And, as she’d told me the day we met, she’d known them longer.
“I did.”
“I think Sadie wanted to get out of there. I think she found something out about her family.” I glanced to the side, leaving my part out of it—that whatever she had found wasn’t tied only to her family but to mine. The theft, the payments—how it was all connected, and I was a part of it.
“I don’t know that she wanted to leave, exactly,” Luce said. “I think she just wanted to be seen, like Parker was. He needs it, you know, from everyone around him. The idolization of Parker Loman.” She rolled her eyes. “But Sadie was never having it.”A little star protégé. A junior asshole.“Her teasing, it got under his skin. I’d never seen Parker’s look turn so dark as when Sadie pushed him. It was always something. She kept teasing him about his scar. I didn’t think it was that big a deal. We were all young once.” She touched her eyebrow, shrugged. “But she wouldn’t let up. Said,Oh, tell Luce about your wild youth. Parker gets away with everything. What was it again, a fight with two guys? A fight over some girl?He would stay silent, but she’d keep pushing. Say something like,Parker, your next line is: ‘You should see the other guy.’ Or do I have it wrong? Come on, tell us.Or,The sins of his youth. Locked away forever.”
I could see Sadie doing it, the expression on her face. Digging and digging until something snapped.Parker can get away with anything.She hated him. Of course she did. The life she could never have, even growing up in the same house, with the same parents, the same opportunities.
“Why did you break up, then? Were you afraid of him?”
“No, I wasn’t afraid. I waspissed.” She looked to the side and sniffed. “It’s embarrassing. That night. The window. Remember?”
I held my breath. Held perfectly still.
“I was inside looking for Parker. But I finally saw him through the window. I smiled. I remember, Ismiled.” She shook her head to herself. “Until I saw that his hands were out. He was talking to another girl, trying to get her to calm down. And the look on her face... I know that look. Anger, yes, but also heartbreak. And then she picked up one of those standing pillars around the patio and swung it at his head.” Luce swung her arms as if holding a bat—demonstrating or remembering. My mouth dropped open.
Her mouth quirked into a smile. “That was my look, too. He ducked out of the way, but it hit the glass, and, well, you saw. She meant to do it. She was going to hurt him. She was so, so angry... Later, when I confronted him, he claimed it was over long ago. That she couldn’t let it go. But come on.” She flexed her fingers. “I wanted the truth. No more lies. You don’t wait until the very last day of summer and attack someone about something that happened ayearago. She was so angry, angry enough to hurt him right then.” Her throat moved. “That whole place... it’s like you walk into it, and it’s a world unto itself. Nothing else exists. Time stops. You think you can doanything...” Then she refocused on me. “You didn’t know? I really thought everyone was in on the joke but me.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.” I had no idea what Parker did when he was off alone.
“Parker begged me to leave her out of it. And I only did because I didn’t believe then that he could’ve hurt Sadie. We were together most of the night, and then there was that note... I didn’t believe he’d really hurt her. But I don’t know anymore. The more time that passes, looking back?” She shook her head.
But I was barely listening. I was picturing the girl out back with a pillar held like a bat. Running through a list of faces I’d seen at the party. Rumors I’d heard or imagined about Parker. “The other girl, did you know her name?”
“No. But I knew who she was. I’d seen her before. Curly hair, sort of brownish red. Worked at that bed-and-breakfast, the one we went to for brunch sometimes.” She choked on her own laugh. “He brought me right there during the summer, paraded me around, the sick fuck. I figured, after, that’s why he wanted to park there. That’s what took him so long to show up at the party. So he could see her first.”
I stepped back just as the door swung open. An older woman in a floral dress stood there, half in the entrance, door balanced on her hip. She looked between us. “Is everything okay?” She must’ve sensed it in the air, the tension, the danger of this moment. A name tag was clipped to the front of her dress. The secretary, then.
“I have to go,” I said.
“Avery?” Luce’s voice faded away as the door swung shut behind me. I moved fast, practically running down the hall. I pushed through the closest exit, into the crisp morning end-of-summer air, sucking in a deep breath.
Goddamn Connor. He knew. The girl he was arguing with in the shadows—the one who’d swung a pillar at Parker. I saw them through the cracks in the window, near the edge of the yard—her face just out of frame. He saw it happen, and he lied. Choosing his allegiance, then and now.
I could see her perfectly, that girl in the shadows. Knuckles white. I pictured the look in her eyes as she stumbled backward. Could see it clearly, in a way I never could before. Fear, yes, but anger, too.
Faith. It had been Faith.
CHAPTER 24
Isat in the caroutside the hospital, my hands shaking. Pulling out that sheet of paper with our names, unfolding it again. Adding one more name to the end of the list:
Faith—9 p.m.
She’d been there. Sometime after Parker arrived but before the window was broken.
I could barely focus on the drive home, feeling nothing but a white-hot rage surging through my bones.
If the case was reopened, like I believed, the police were looking at a person who had been at the party. They were looking at that list of names again.
But there was one more name. A name the police didn’t even know about. Someone who wasn’t even supposed to be there.
CONNOR KEPT CALLING WITHa frequency that I found alarming. I had watched each call come through, listened to each ring until it went to voicemail. But then it would start up again a few moments later, and I began to worry that something had happened. Sadie’s dedication was the next day. I wondered if the investigation had changed anything. The next time the phone started up, I answered on speaker. “Hello?”
“Where are you,” he said by way of greeting.
“On my way back. Is everything okay?” The coastal highway was much emptier heading north on a Monday, so much different from the Sunday commute out of town.
