The Last House Guest

by Megan Miranda

  But there were other dangers. A car on a dark, winding road. A slick of ice on the sidewalk. The edge of the cliffs, the current, the rocks.

  The mountains and the water; the cold in the winter; the complacency of the summer.

  The near-misses that were never reported: the hikers who went missing (found two days later), the woman who fell into a gorge (she managed to call for help, but she was lucky she had her phone), the kayakers who got pulled in by the lobstermen, one after the other, all season long, misjudging the current and panicking.

  And there were more, the ones we pretended didn’t exist.

  The house still smelled of breakfast when I stepped inside. They’d left their dishes in the sink, soaking in the water, even though they were supposed to load up the dishwasher before the cleaning company came in.

  I couldn’t see it at first, the signs of someone else, like Detective Collins had said. The chairs off center in the dining room, probably from the Donaldson family. Same with the dirty fingerprints on the surfaces and the corner of the living room rug, flipped up and inverted.

  But then the smaller details came into focus: The upside-down cushion on a couch, like someone had removed the cushions and replaced this one the wrong way. The legs of the dining room table no longer lining up with the indentations on the throw rug beneath. I didn’t think the Donaldsons would’ve had any cause to rearrange the furniture.

  I circled the house, running my fingers along the windowsills, the door frames, checking the locks. Everything seemed secure. I stopped at the second window facing the back, a little sleeker than all the others. It had been replaced sometime after the Plus-One party, because there was a spiderweb of cracks running through it. An accident the night of the party, the risks of inviting a cross section of the population into your home.

  I had ordered the replacement window myself. Now I ran my fingers around the edges, slightly thinner, with a sleeker lock. It was in the locked position. But it was a newer model than the other windows, the latch so narrow I wasn’t sure it fit properly. I lifted from the base, and the glass slid up with no resistance, lock or not. I cursed to myself. At least I didn’t have to worry about someone with a key.

  In the meantime, I needed to confirm that nothing of ours had been taken; we didn’t use much of value to decorate the rentals, but best to do a quick check anyway. With the way the cushions were turned up, it seemed like whoever had been in here was looking for hidden valuables. In a place without a safe, that’s what the guests are known to do: Put laptops between the mattress and box spring. Leave jewelry in the bottom of drawers, stowed under clothes.

  The door to the master bedroom at the end of the hall was closed, but I figured that was where anything of value would’ve been hidden—where someone would’ve gone looking.

  As soon as I opened the door, I got a whiff of sea salt and lavender. A candle left burning on the white wooden dresser. Forgotten when the Donaldsons checked out. There weren’t any rules expressly forbidding it, but it made me second-guess having candles in the house. I blew out the flame, the wisp of black smoke curling in front of the mirror before disappearing.

  The drawers had each been emptied of any clothes inside, and there was nothing left behind on the bathroom surfaces. The queen-size bed was unmade, with just the white quilt crumpled at the base. I opened the chest at the foot of the bed, where we kept extra blankets, and the scent reminded me of my grandmother’s old attic, stale and earthy. A spider scurried across the top blanket, and I jumped back, goose bumps forming on my arms. These blankets had probably remained untouched all season. They needed to be run through the wash, the entire chest cleaned out with furniture polish and a vacuum—there was one last family scheduled for next week.

  I scooped out the stack of blankets and quilts, holding my breath, and something caught my eye in the bottom corner.

  It was a phone. At first I assumed it had been left behind by the Donaldsons, hidden away just like I would’ve done. But the front screen was cracked in the upper-left corner, and it appeared dead, probably lost and forgotten by a family who’d been here earlier in the season. I went to slip it into my pocket, but a streak of red on the corner of the simple black case caught my eye. Nail polish, I knew. From the beginning of last summer, when she’d been texting before her nails were dry.

  Attempting to wipe it off had only made it worse. Gives it character, she said.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, my hand shaking.

  I knew I was holding Sadie Loman’s phone in my hand.

  SUMMER

       2017

  The Plus-One Party

  9:00 p.m.

  This was a mistake.

  I stood on the front porch of the Blue Robin, watching as people emerged from the surrounding trees in groups of two and three, carrying drinks, laughing. Traipsing through the wooded lots from their cars, some not bothering with the front door, coming in through the patio instead. I hoped the sound of us would get swallowed up by the sea.

  The party was supposed to be at the Lomans’ house this year, but Sadie was dead set against it. She and Parker had been arguing about it, Parker saying it was only fair, as if he were accustomed to playing by the rules, and Sadie appealing to his sense of control: You really want them in our house? Going through our things? In our rooms. Come on, you know how it can get.

  Parker had tried to address each point, which was how he worked, in business and in life: So, Avery can help keep an eye on things. So, we’ll make the bedrooms off-limits.

  Oh? she had said, her eyes wide and mocking. There are no locks, so how are you planning to enforce that, exactly? With a barricade of furniture? Are you going to fight them if they disobey?

  You’re being ridiculous, Parker had said, turning away, which was the wrong move.

  I felt my shoulders tensing as Sadie sucked in a breath, leaned toward him. Fine. You go ahead and tell Dad his desk was defaced by a drunken local. You can tell Bee someone vomited in her kitchen.

  He laughed. Jesus, no one’s going to deface a fucking desk, Sadie. Stop acting like everyone’s trash. And really, he said, eyes leveling on her, nothing worse than you’ve already done.

  It was then that I stepped in. We could have it at one of the rentals, I said. Both of the homes on the overlook will be vacant that week.

  Sadie nodded, her face visibly relaxing, fists unclenching. I could see the idea taking hold in Parker, his jaw shifting around as he mulled it over. Sunset Retreat, he said, it has more space.

  But I shook my head. No one knew these properties better than I did. No, I said, the Blue Robin has more privacy. No one will notice us there.

  * * *

  BUT NOW, STANDING ON the front porch while the party hit full swing, I wasn’t so sure about that. Cars lined the street in both directions, which was probably some fire code violation with the lack of street space left behind. I craned my neck to see my car, which I’d parked at the edge of the short driveway of Sunset Retreat across the way, facing out, to keep other cars off the property. Someone had already blocked me in, parking on an angle directly in front of the entrance to the drive.

  Between the trees and the dark, I couldn’t even see how far the line of cars stretched. There were no streetlights up here yet—just the porch light above me and the occasional headlight shining down the stretch of pavement whenever a car turned in.

  “Everything okay?” Parker stood behind me in the open doorway. He frowned, peering over my shoulder into the darkness.

  “Yes, everything’s fine.” There was a list of things I could worry about: the number of people who were still arriving, the amount of liquor, the fact that, though I’d removed the fragile decorations, I had not thought to pull out the throw rugs from under the furniture, and those would be harder to replace.

  But tonight I did not have to be myself. Tonight was for forgetting.

  * * *

  I FOLLOWED PARKER INSIDE, lost him in the mass of bodies in the kitchen. Found
myself in the middle of a familiar game.

  The music had turned, something frenetic, and no one was dancing or swaying to the beat. But there was a group hovering around the island, a cluster of shot glasses on the surface between them.

  I wedged my way into the group. “Hear, hear,” I said, picking one up, smiling.

  “Just in time,” the man beside me said. I recognized him vaguely, but he was a little younger, and I’d long since given up memorizing the names of the newer visitors. “I was just about to tell everyone about Greg and Carys Fontaine,” he continued.

  Greg slammed his glass down, mouth agape.

  “Don’t try to deny it,” the other man said, wide smile. “I saw you. Down at the Fold.”

  Greg shook his head and smiled then, before downing the next shot. Moving on.

  It was a purging of secrets, of trysts and regrets. A game with no rules and no exit strategy but to drink some more. A secret told or one exposed, and you would drink. And then later, you would make some new ones.

  Round and round they went. I barely recognized the bulk of the names by now.

  Six years earlier, Sadie and I had stood side by side at a table much like this one, at my very first Plus-One party. We had slipped into an easy comfort after that day at the beach, spent the months that followed in a way that felt both inevitable and unsustainable, and the Plus-One was the perfect way to see it out.

  One of Parker’s friends had leveled his finger at Sadie’s face and announced, You’ve been at my house. With my brother. The red had crept up her neck, but instead of pulling back, she leaned in to it. You’re right, I have. Can you blame me? I mean, look, I’m blushing right now, just thinking about it.

  It made her bolder, the way she wore her embarrassment on her skin. She said there was no use hiding from herself when her face already gave everything away.

  I watched the friend’s eyes trail after her the rest of the night. The thing about her back then was she was skinny in a childish way. Easy to overlook in a group photo. But even then she could have you in her thrall, quick as that.

  Looking back, I realized that this was the thing I was most taken with—the idea that you didn’t have to apologize. Not for what you’d done and not for who you were. Of all the promises that had been opened up to me that first summer, this was the most intoxicating of all.

  “Hey,” Greg said, looking around the room, his slack expression landing back on me. “Where’s Sadie?”

  Greg Randolph, I knew from six years circling this world. From the secrets Sadie would share, the way she could sum everyone up in a sentence fragment. His home, in a mountain enclave called Hawks Ridge, was almost as stunning as the Lomans’. But the thing I remembered most clearly about her assessment of Greg Randolph was the first thing she’d ever said of him: A mean drunk, like his father. He used to be broad and muscular but was currently sliding toward soft, the edges of his face losing definition; dark slicked-back hair, a tan across the bridge of his nose that bordered on a burn. Over the years, he had not been quiet in his pursuit of Sadie, and she had not been quiet in her resounding rejection.

  Since we were purging the truth here, I didn’t hold back. “On her way,” I said, “but still not interested in seeing you.”

  There was muffled laughter around the island, but no one drank, and Greg’s dark eyebrows shot up—a quick burst of anger that he couldn’t hide. But he recovered quickly, his lips stretching into a knowing smile. “Oh, I’m fully aware. Last I saw your friend Sadie, she was getting off a boat with that local guy I just saw.” He jutted his chin toward the patio, but I didn’t see whom he meant. “It was just the two of them at sunset. Never thought she’d go for that sort of thing, but what do I know. Figured it was my turn to share. A shame for her to miss it.”

  I frowned, and the man beside Greg said, “The one from the yacht club?”

  Greg laughed. “No, no, nothing like that. The guy who runs the fishing charters, you know?”

  Connor. He had to be talking about Connor. In truth, Connor did a lot more than that. He practically ran the day-to-day of his parents’ distribution company. Handled the books, took shipments from the docks, made sure the day’s catch made it to every restaurant in town, big or small. Brought the visitors out on charters during his downtime, after. But that wasn’t his main job.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t know,” Greg said, and I hated that he could read it in my face. He smiled, but my head was spinning. Connor. Sadie and Connor. It didn’t make sense, but that must’ve been why he was here tonight. Greg gestured to the next shot glass. “You gonna take this one for her?”

  I pushed the glass closer to him. “Pass,” I said, going for indifference, channeling the way Sadie would shake him off.

  “While we’re chatting,” Greg said, leaning an elbow on the island, sticky with alcohol, “I was wondering. Well, we were all sort of wondering. What is it that you do for the Lomans, exactly?”

  He was so close, I could feel his breath on the exhale, sharp and sour. I recoiled on impulse from the stench, though he smiled wider, wrongly assuming he’d struck a nerve. I’d heard the rumors. That I was Grant’s mistress. Or Bianca’s. That I was in service to something dark and secret, something they tried to cover up by planting me right out in the open. As if the idea of generosity, of friendship, of a family that extended beyond the circumstances of your birth, was something too hard to fathom.

  Jealousy, Sadie would say. An ugly, ugly thing. And then: Don’t worry, we’re the Breakers. They have to hate us.

  “This isn’t how the game goes,” I said. Because I knew that defense only redoubled their curiosity.

  Greg leaned toward me, almost losing his balance. Barely two hours into the party, and already he was sloppy drunk. “The game goes however I want it to go, friend.”

  It occurred to me then that he never used my name. I wondered if he even knew it, or if this was all part of some power play to him. I backed away, spinning directly into Luce, her brown eyes unnaturally wide. She had a hand on my arm, colder than expected. “I’ve been looking for you,” she said. “Something happened.”

  “What? What happened?” But I was stuck in the previous conversation, my mind playing catch-up.

  “The window.”

  She dragged me through the kitchen to the corner of the living room. One of the windows facing the backyard beside the patio had been broken. No, it had been almost broken. The glass was in one piece, but it would have to be replaced. It looked like someone had taken a bat to it. I lowered my face so I was eye level with the point of impact, ran my fingers over the spiderweb of grooves radiating out from the center.

  Through the glass, Connor was arguing with someone in the shadows. I shifted my perspective, trying to see, but his image through the window fractured into a dozen pieces against the night sky.

  He looked in my direction, and then he stepped away, out of frame. I closed my eyes, breathing in slowly. “We should cover it up,” I said, “so no one gets hurt.”

  I knew we kept a first-aid kit in the master bathroom down the hall, along with athletic tape. The tape seemed the best option, both as a deterrent and a stopgap until tomorrow.

  But the door to the master bedroom was already locked. “Dammit,” I said, slamming my hand into the wood, the noise echoing through the narrow hallway. I hoped it made them jump.

  “Guess Sadie was right not to have the party at their house,” Luce said.

  I sighed. “It’s fine,” I said. Even though I had felt the glass under my fingers ready to give way. It was one push from shattering, from really injuring someone. I had been prepared for someone to end up in the pool before the night was out. Expected a couple spills, a stain that would have to be professionally treated, maybe. But I had not been expecting any real damage.

  A woman raised a red cup in the air. “To summer!” she said.

  Luce raised hers in response, then spotted someone across the room—Parker, I assumed. She left me standing there
alone, at the entrance to the dark hallway.

  No one seemed to notice when I slipped out the front. When I circled to the side of the house, breathing in the solitude. Nothing but trees and the muffled sound of people inside.

  I wasn’t the only one out here. A twig cracking, a brittle leaf crunching, the rustle of fabric coming closer. “Hello?” I called. And then: “Sadie?”

  She moved like that. Light on her feet. Sure of herself. Not likely to pause for the sake of anybody else.

  But the woods fell silent after that, and when I pulled up the flashlight on my phone, I saw nothing but shadows crisscrossing the darkness.

  SUMMER

       2018

  CHAPTER 6

  I sat there on the edge of the bed as the seconds ticked by, staring at the phone in my hand.

  Sadie’s phone, which the police never found. Sadie’s phone, presumably lost to the sea, torn from her hand when she jumped, or tossed into the abyss in the moments before.

  If Sadie was alone that night, how did her phone end up here?

  Now I pictured the dots lighting up the message window, imagined her final text:

  Help me—

  There was a creak from outside the bedroom, and I stood quickly, my heart pounding.

  “Avery? You in here?”

  I slid the phone into my back pocket as I walked out of the room, down the short hall. Connor was standing in the middle of the front foyer, looking up the staircase instead. “Oh,” he said.

  “Hey, hi.” I couldn’t orient myself. Not with the phone in my back pocket and Connor before me, in the house where we’d all been when she died.