She cleared her throat. “Justine wanted me to check in. We’ll need the piece for Sadie tomorrow—by afternoon at the latest.”

Yesterday felt like forever ago. “I can email you the piece tonight, but the photo will probably be a physical copy. I don’t have access to a scanner.” I would not contact Grant or Bianca to ask for a high-resolution image of their deceased daughter, though it would have to be one of theirs, something that once graced the walls of the Breakers. In truth, I could think of nothing more fitting.

“We’ve got a meeting at the dedication site with Parker Loman tomorrow around eleven. Right at the entrance of Breaker Beach. Want to meet us there with the photo?”

Somewhere in that house were Sadie Loman’s personal items, just returned to Parker from the police station. Parker had said he’d be working from home today, and I could see the lights from the upstairs office from their drive.

Tomorrow, around eleven, he would be out. The house would be empty.

“Why don’t you stop by after,” I said, edging the car to the other side of the garage. “I’ll meet you at their guesthouse. Just send me a text to let me know when you’re on your way up.”

Inside their house was that journal, given back to Parker. The item they used to determine the presumed last words of Sadie Loman. The thing they rested their case on.

And I needed to see it.

Something had worked its way inside, dark and sinuous. Like I had just set something in motion that I now had no power to stop.

* * *

BACK INSIDE THE BEDROOM of the guesthouse, I opened the closet door, pulling out the single box that had never been unpacked—marked K for Keep, in Sadie’s handwriting. The rest I had steadily unpacked with time, the few things of my own worth bringing. But this was the box that held my parents’ things, my grandmother’s things.

Though the house itself did not belong to me, I knew no one would dare touch this box. For all the times that Sadie had reached into my closet, she’d never placed her hands on this.

I lifted my parents’ wedding album, my grandmother’s letters, placing them carefully aside. Until I’d unearthed the small shoebox underneath.

Inside were the photos of Sadie that once were scattered around the Loman house. Replaced each year with a new set. But Bianca had added them without removing the previous photos, stacking them one on top of the next in their frames, so they remained as one. Like layers of paint, slowly growing in thickness, until I’d removed the older images for my own safekeeping.

The surfaces were damaged slightly, adhered to the newer versions, the corners crimped and discolored from the frames. Where there once were childhood portraits, there were graduation pictures. Where there once were graduation pictures, there were vacation shots—Sadie at the Eiffel Tower, Sadie in red snow gear with mountains behind her, Sadie sitting beside Parker somewhere tropical, with the ocean behind them.

I sorted through these forgotten pictures now, trying to find the right fit for the piece. God, she would hate this. In each photo, she was either too young-looking or too happy. Too disconnected to the purpose of the article. They would want something to appeal to everyone, insider and outsider alike. She had to appear both approachable and untouchable.

In the end, I settled on her college graduation picture. She held the diploma in her hand, but her head was tipped back slightly, like she was starting to laugh. It was perfectly Sadie. And it was perfectly tragic.

This photo captured the beginning of something. It was on the nose, but it would cut hard. The beginning of a laugh, of her life. Something that I now felt had been taken from her.

And then I placed the rest of the photos back inside the box, hidden within the closet, where they would remain alongside all the other people I had lost.

* * *

SADIE JANETTE LOMAN TO be honored in Littleport memorial

My fingers tapped against the edge of the keyboard, waiting for the words to come. I stared at the photo of her in the graduation gown, the blue sky behind her over the dome of the building.

Sadie Loman may have spent nine months out of the year in Connecticut, but Littleport was her favorite place in the world.

She’d told me that the first time we met. And now she was about to become a part of its history.

For a small town, we had a long past that lived in our collective memory. It was a place filled with ghosts, from old legends and bedtime stories alike. The fishermen lost at sea, the first lighthouse keeper—their cries in the night echoed in the howling wind. Benches in memory of, in honor of; boxes moved from home to home. We carried the lost with us here.

It was a place for risk-takers, a place that favored the bold.

I was trying to find a place for Sadie in this history. Something to be part of.

She was bold, of course she was. But that wasn’t what people wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that she loved the ocean, her family, this place.

What I would say if I were telling the truth:

Sadie would hate everything about this. From the bell, to the quote, to the tribute. She’d sit on the rocks, looking down on the beach where we would all be gathered, holding a drink in her hand and laughing. Littleport was unsympathetic and unapologetic, and so was she. As much a product of this place as any of us.

She might demand that she be forgiven. She might compensate for a perceived wrong with an over-the-top counterbalance. She might know it, deep inside, when she had gone too far.

But Sadie Loman would never apologize. Not for who she was and not for what she’d done.

* * *

I’M SORRY. I WISH it didn’t have to be this way.

Two simple sentences. The note they found. Crumpled in the trash.

What was the chance that all of this was a mistake? That the police, and her family, had seen one thing and believed another?

What were the odds that Sadie had chosen those very same words, the ones I had used earlier that summer—the ones I had written myself, folded in half, and left on the surface of her desk for her?

SUMMER

?????2017

The Plus-One Party

9:30 p.m.

It happened all at once. The light, the sound, the mood.

The power had gone out. The music, the house lights, the blue glow from under the water of the pool. Everything was darkness.

Inside, there were too many bodies all pressed together. My ears still buzzed from the music. Someone stepped on my foot. I heard the sound of glass breaking, and I hoped it wasn’t the window. Everything became sound and scent. Low whispers, nervous laughter, sweat and the whiff of someone’s hair product as they walked by, and then a spiced cologne.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, a breath on my neck. I froze, disoriented. And then I heard a scream. Everything stopped—the whispers, the laughter, the people brushing up against one another. The light from a phone turned on across the room, and then another, until I pulled my cell out of my back pocket and did the same.

“She’s all right!” someone yelled from outside. Everyone shifted toward the back of the house.

I pushed my way through the crowd, my eyes adjusting to the darkness. Outside, the clouds covered the stars and the moonlight. There was only the beam of the lighthouse cutting through the sky above, swallowed up in the clouds.

It was Parker, of course, who had her, surrounded by a semicircle of onlookers. At first I could see only a dark shape curled up in Parker’s arms. He rubbed her back as she coughed up water. “Okay, you’re all right,” he was saying to her, and then she turned her face up. Ellie Arnold.

Sadie had known her forever, found her annoying. Said she would do anything for attention, and so my first thought was neither generous nor sympathetic.

But when I crouched down beside her, she was so shaken, so miserable-looking, that I knew she hadn’t done it on purpose.

“What happened?” I asked.

She was soaked, clothes clinging to her skin, trembling.

“She couldn’t see,” Parker answered for her. “She lost her place.”

“Someone pushed me,” Ellie said, arms folded around herself. “When the pool lights went out.” She coughed and half sobbed. Her long hair was stuck to her face, her neck.

“All right. You’re okay.” I repeated Parker’s words and smiled to myself, glad for the dark. The pool was four feet deep all the way across—she was never in any real danger, despite her present demeanor. All she had to do was plant her feet.

I was more worried about the sound of her scream carrying in the night.

One of Ellie’s friends finally made it through the crowd. “Oh my God,” she said, hand to her mouth. She reached down for Ellie’s hand.

“Get her inside,” Parker said, helping her stand. Ellie wobbled slightly, then leaned on her friend as the crowd parted for them.

“There are plenty of towels in the bathrooms, under the sinks,” I said. “Probably a robe somewhere, too.”