I would never know exactly what she had wanted to say. Though the police had tried to find her phone, the GPS had been deactivated for as long as I’d known her—a leftover suspicion from her teen years that her parents were tracking her, watching her every move. The phone had been offline when the police tried to reach it, most likely lost to the sea when she jumped.

There was a path that wove through the trees from the B&B to the overlook, passing right behind the Blue Robin. I could take my car just as easily, looping back down the drive to the next turnoff, but I didn’t want to alert anyone that I was coming; I didn’t want anyone to notice my car and ask what was going on.

I walked the same path I’d raced down nearly a year earlier, following Parker and Luce. Racing toward something we had no ability to stop. In hindsight, I knew that Parker shouldn’t have been driving. None of us should have. The night had blurred edges, as parties often did for me. Bits and pieces came back to me in surprising flashes during the questioning, morphing into a stilted time line of things I had said or done, seen or heard.

Standing on the front porch now, I could almost feel the people on the other side—the heat, the laughter—before everything had turned.

The Donaldsons had followed protocol, leaving the house key in an envelope inside the mail drop beside the front door. Not the most secure method, I knew, but it was all part of the act. Part of the story we told about this place. There were a lot of obvious dangers in Littleport, despite the claims we made to the contrary for the tourists. A safe place, we told them, and technically, if you looked at the crime statistics, that was true.

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.