Then there were my contacts from the various vendors around town, who were always friendly when they saw me out, but always from a remove.

Other friendships had not survived over the years. I’d never reconciled with Connor and Faith. And I’d drifted from the group I met when I started business courses at the community college, made excuses, turned down an offer for a shared apartment lease in a different town. I was set up to work in Littleport. And nowhere else would’ve had this view. This perspective, looking out over everything I’d ever known. Nowhere else would’ve had Sadie.

* * *

IT WAS AFTER SIX P.M. when I got the call from a woman who introduced herself as Katherine Appleton, staying at the Sea Rose—a small cabin down by Breaker Beach, not too far from here. She said it was her dad who’d rented the place, but she was the one staying. I hated when people did this—rented in the name of someone else. As long as nothing went wrong, I let it slide. As long as it wasn’t a group of college kids with no respect for others’ property, who would leave the venue with more damage than it was worth. The Lomans had an express rule against homes being rented in someone else’s name, but I only partially enforced it. I was more interested in keeping the weeks booked: my bottom line, I supposed. The rest was up to me to handle. I was always on call, regardless of the fact it was a Friday night during the last week of August.

“I found your number in the paperwork,” she said. Her words were unnaturally stilted.

“Yes, I’m the property manager. What can I do for you, Katherine?” Fingers to my temples, hoping this could wait.

“Someone lit our candles,” she replied.

“What?”

“Someone. Lit. Our. Candles,” she repeated, each word its own sentence. “And no one here did it. So they say.” I heard laughter in the background.

They were drunk. Wasting my time. Calling me up when no one would fess up, on a dare—Tell me or I’m calling the owners. But then I remembered the candle left burning at the Blue Robin, the scent of sea salt and lavender.

“Okay, Katherine, hold on. Were there any signs of forced entry?”

“Oh, I don’t remember if we locked up. Sorry.” More talking in the background. Someone asking for the phone, Katherine ignoring the request.

“Was anything taken?” I asked.

“No, I don’t think so. Everything looks the same. Just spooky, with the candles.”

I couldn’t figure out what they wanted from me. Why they were calling on a Friday night; why they were still on the line.

“We were just—we were wondering,” she continued. Another laugh in the background. “If there were any ghost stories about this place?”

I blinked slowly, trying to catch up. “You’re calling for a ghost story?” It wasn’t the most ridiculous call I had received on a Friday night, but it was close. What was wrong with people, that they would imagine a ghost first and not something real? Either way, I figured I should be grateful they weren’t threatening to leave, demanding a refund or my immediate attention.

The laughter in the background made me think it was probably one of them. That I’d swing by and find too many people in the space, evidence of air mattresses, an overflowing recycling bin.

“I’ll be by in the morning,” I said. “To check the locks.”

* * *

AFTER HANGING UP, I pulled out the stack of current rental agreements. Tomorrow I’d have to check all the properties, just to see. There were two definite break-ins that I knew of, and now this.

Saturday was when most of the turnovers happened anyway, unless a family was staying for longer than one week. Anyone leaving tomorrow should be out by ten. I lined up the cleaning companies to hit the properties first that had visitors expected the following week. Saturday was chaos: We had six hours to turn a place over, make sure it was ready for the next batch.

I checked the list of homes, making a schedule for myself. There were twenty-two units I oversaw in Littleport, and eighteen were currently occupied. Sixteen would be taken the following week.

I flipped through the list again, wondering if I’d misplaced something. I didn’t have a listing for Sunset Retreat. Not for last week or the coming one.

Sunset Retreat, across from the Blue Robin, where I’d seen a curtain fall, seen someone watching after I found the phone.

No one was supposed to be there.

My stomach twisted. Someone had been watching. Not just the Loman house. Not just the rentals. But me.

CHAPTER 13

A sharp thrill ran through me as Parker and I walked from the parking lot into the Fold. It was the dark, the promise, the man beside me. It was my place, restored. It was the Friday night, the crowd. The anticipation of what I hoped to uncover and could feel hovering just inches away.

The bar had the feel of a local joint—the distressed wooden beams, the thick wood high-top tables, the laminated plastic menus. But it was all for show. The prices, the bartenders, the view, this was a place geared for the visitors. The owners knew what they were doing. A hidden gem, tucked away up a rickety flight of wooden steps, behind a weatherworn sign. An exposed balcony overlooking the rocky coast, a promise that this was the true Littleport, uncovered just for them.

It had been marketed exactly this way. The owners accrued enough income on four months alone, boarding up the windows and the balcony come October, and moving their operation back to their main headquarters—a burger-and-beer place two miles inland.

The room was loud and boisterous, but the volume dropped as soon as the door shut behind us. It was a reaction to Parker. They hadn’t seen him here all summer, and now they came to pay their respects, one by one. Girls in jeans and fitted tops. Guys in khaki shorts and polos. Each of them blending in with the next. Hands on his shoulder, fingers curled around his upper arm. A sympathetic smile. A caress.

I’m all right.

Thanks for thinking of us.

Yeah, I’m here for the memorial.

In the silence that followed, one of the men raised a shot glass and said, “To Sadie.”

Parker was pulled into a group at the corner table. He peered over his shoulder at me, raised two fingers, and I made my way to the bar.

The bartender raised his eyes briefly to meet mine, then went back to wiping down the countertop. “What’ll it be,” he said absently, as if he knew I didn’t belong.

A man took the seat beside me as I ordered—a bourbon on the rocks for Parker, a light beer on tap for me—and I could feel him staring at the side of my face. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but he knocked on the bar top to get my attention. “Knock knock,” he said, just in case I hadn’t noticed, and then he added, “Hi there,” when I finally faced him. Greg Randolph, who had taken such delight in telling me about Sadie and Connor at the party last year. “Remember me?”

I nodded hello, smiling tightly.

He asked it as if he hadn’t seen me around for the last seven years. As if he hadn’t met me beside the Lomans’ pool many summers ago, at a fund-raising party hosted by Bianca when I’d been dressed up in Sadie’s clothes, tugging at the bottom of the dress, which suddenly had felt two inches too short, when Greg Randolph had stepped between the two of us, telling Sadie some trivial gossip that she seemed wholly disinterested in. He paused to politely address every adult who walked by.

Don’t let the nice-guy act fool you, she’d said when he turned away. Underneath, he’s a mean drunk, like his father.

She had not lowered her voice, and my eyes widened, thinking someone might’ve heard. Greg’s dad, maybe, who was probably one of the adults in the group behind us—if not Greg himself. But Sadie had smiled at my expression. No one listens that hard, Avie. Only you. She’d waved her hand around in that airy way, as if it were all so inconsequential. All this. This nothingness.

I never knew what happened between Sadie and Greg.

The bartender placed the drinks on the counter, and I left my card to keep the tab open.

“That for me?” Greg asked, jutting his chin toward Parker’s glass.

“Nope,” I said, turning away.

He grabbed my arm, liquid spilling over onto my thumb as he did. “Wait, wait. Don’t go so soon. I haven’t seen you around all summer. Not like we used to.”

I could sense the bartender watching, but when I looked over my shoulder, he had moved on, wiping down the far end of the bar.

I stared at Greg’s hand on my arm and placed the drinks back on the counter, so as not to make a scene. “I’m sorry, do you even know my name?”

He laughed then, loud and overconfident. “Of course I do. You’re Sadie’s monster.”

Everything prickled. From the way he used her name, to the leer of his whisper. “What did you just say?”

He grinned, didn’t answer right away. I could tell he was enjoying this. “She created you. A mini-Sadie. A monster in her likeness. And now she’s gone, but here you are. Still out here, living her life.”