Parker leaned down to whisper something in her ear, and she flinched, distracted. Her face was stoic as she turned to face him, and I used the moment to slip away, taking the steps to the second-story landing. The hallway was bright and airy, even with the darker wood floors and closed doors. I knew as soon as I put my hand on the knob, second one down the hall, that this room was hers.

But the inside was so different than I’d imagined. There were relics from childhood lingering, like the horse figurines on a high shelf. Photos tucked into the edge of her dresser mirror—a group of girls I might’ve seen downstairs. Sadie had spent her high school years at a boarding school and summers in Littleport. Her room was as temporary a place as any, filled with the things left behind, never fully growing with the person who returned to it each time.

Her quilt was designed in bursts of color—purple, blue, green—the opposite of her bed in Littleport, which was all in shades of ivory. She hadn’t been here since before the start of the summer season, but I kept searching for some sign of her, something left behind that could fill the void she once occupied.

I ran my hand over the ridges of wood grain on the surface of her dresser. Then over the jewelry box, monogrammed with her initials, painted peach on white. Beside it, a pewter tree was positioned in front of the mirror, its branches bare and craggy, meant to display jewelry in a child’s room. A single necklace hung from the farthest point. The pendant was rose gold, a swirling, delicate S, and set with a fine trail of diamonds. I closed my fist around it and felt the edges poking into the flesh of my palm.

“I always knew you were a thief.”

I saw her in the mirror first, pale and unmoving, like a ghost. I spun around, releasing the necklace, coming face-to-face with Bianca. She stood in the doorway; her black sheath dress hit just below her knees, but she was barefoot. Her toes flexed while I watched.

“I was just looking,” I said, panicked. Trying desperately to hold on to something that I could feel slipping away.

She swayed slightly in the doorway, her face fracturing, like she was overcome—picturing Sadie here, seeing me instead, in her daughter’s room, in her daughter’s dress. But then I wasn’t sure—whether she was the one moving or whether it was me. She looked so pale, I thought if I blinked, she might fade away into the bone-colored walls.

“Where does your money go? I wonder,” she said, shifting on her feet, the hardwood popping beneath her soles. I could feel the mood shifting, the room changing—a new way to channel her grief. “You make a living wage directly from us. You have no bills, no expenses, and I know exactly what we paid for your grandmother’s place.” She took a step into the room, then another, and I felt the edge of the dresser pressing into my back. “You may have had my husband fooled, but not me. I saw exactly what you were from the start.”

“Bianca, I’m sorry, but—”

She put a hand out, cutting me off. “No. You don’t get to talk anymore. You don’t get to roam my house—my house—as if it’s your own.” Her eyes caught on a photo of Sadie, wedged into the corner of the mirror. Her finger hovered just over her daughter’s smile. “She saved you, you know. Told Grant that stealing the money was her idea, that she was the only one responsible. But I know better.” Her hand moved to the necklace, the delicate S, enclosing it in her palm.

I set my jaw. Bianca was wrong. She believed I had stolen from their company, taken Sadie’s job, let her take the fall for it, but it wasn’t true.

In mid-July, over a month before Sadie’s death, I’d been reconciling the rental property finances when I realized the numbers didn’t line up. That money had gone missing, systematically and quietly, and had never been flagged.

For a brief moment, I considered asking Sadie about it first. But I worried I was being set up—all summer I’d felt she’d been holding me at a distance. It was the reminder that everything in my life was so fleeting, so fragile. That nothing so good could last.

I summarized the details, passed them along to Grant, didn’t say what I knew to be true: If it wasn’t me, it was Sadie—who was technically the person in charge. I was many things, but I wasn’t a thief. I would not lose everything I’d worked for because of her misplaced rebellion.

The fallout was handled behind closed doors, and I never asked Sadie about it. She shut me out when I tried to mention it. Back then I thought it was just her recklessness. Like her fixation on death—something to grab attention. She was always striving for an edge, seeing what she could get away with, never stopping to consider the collateral damage.

For a month afterward, she’d avoided me, not responding to my texts or my calls. Latched herself firmly on to a friendship with Luce. With Parker, they became an impenetrable group of three. One month and I’d been cast out of everything I’d known, as I had been once before. But I was older this time. I could see things three steps forward and back, and I knew exactly what Sadie would do when presented with each move.

I left her a note, an apology, beside a box of her favorite fudge. Positioned in the center of her desk, so I was sure she’d see them.

I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be this way.

So she would know I wasn’t upset and didn’t think any worse of her. I understood her, of course I did. Any apology would need to come from me. I wasn’t even sure she knew how to apologize, how to feel it. But that was the thing about loving someone—it only counted when you knew their flaws and did it anyway.

The very next night, she sent me a text—Avie, we’re going out, come!—never mentioning what had happened, and I was back; everything was fine.

She’d knocked on my living room window—her face pressed up to the glass, her cheek and one hazel eye, crinkled from laughter. She reminded me of Sadie at eighteen, and maybe that was the point. I could hear Luce and Parker in the driveway.

Sadie had a bottle of vodka in her hand when I opened the door, and she pulled down a few glasses from my cabinet herself, poured at least two shots’ worth into each. “I thought we were going out,” Parker said, standing in the open doorway.

“We are. In a minute. Don’t just stand there,” she said, rolling her eyes so only I could see. Luce crossed the room, following orders, glass raised to her lips.

“Wait!” Sadie said, hand out, and Luce froze. “Wait for everyone.” We each picked up a glass. “Hear, hear,” Sadie said. She clinked her glass against mine. Her eyes were large and unblinking, and I believed I could see everything reflected inside, everything she never said.

“To us,” Luce said, and Parker repeated in echo. I could feel my heartbeat in my toes, my fingers, my head. Sadie stared back at me, waiting. The silence stretched, the moment intoxicating.

“There, there,” I said, and her smile cracked open.

* * *

THE NIGHT SHE DIED, she traipsed into my room without a thought, or so it seemed at the time. We’d been back to normal for two weeks, and I didn’t want to shake the foundation. If something was off, I’d been too focused on my work to notice.

But to Bianca, I had set everything in motion. I’d gotten Sadie fired. I had ruined her. Taken her job. Revealed her to her parents. Pushed her to this inevitable outcome.

Standing across from Bianca, I thought I finally knew the real reason Sadie had taken that money—not as a reckless act of rebellion at all. It was something she had said after I’d been welcomed back into her life, when we were all out at the Fold. From a corner of the bar, Parker had Skyped in to a board meeting he’d forgotten about, with a drink in his hand, laughing sheepishly.

Parker can get away with literally everything. I can’t even get away, Sadie had said. The closest she had come to mentioning the fallout of her missteps.

In retrospect, that was what I had missed. She wanted out. Out of the Lomans’ grip, out of her life, by any means possible. Out—into the directionless, limitless wild. So she stockpiled the money. And that wasn’t my fault at all. No, the blame could be traced back a few more steps.

“You did this,” I said, stepping toward Bianca, my voice rising. “I can’t imagine what it must’ve been like for her, growing up in this house.” The same way grief had taken hold of me years earlier. Except I wasn’t sinking but sharpening. Wasn’t chasing something at the bottom but letting something free instead.

I had been armed for attack with all the things Sadie had ever told me. Her whisper in my ear, one of the first things she’d said about her mother: All must worship at the shrine of Bianca Loman. “Why do you think she did it there?” I asked. “At the place you were so desperate to live? It wasn’t safe, isn’t that what Grant thought? Living so close to the bluffs? But you insisted.” Push and push until something shatters.

“And now look,” I went on. I was shaking, my expression ferocious in the mirror. Did Sadie’s parents ever see her for the person she was and not the one they expected her to be?