“No. But I knew who she was. I’d seen her before. Curly hair, sort of brownish red. Worked at that bed-and-breakfast, the one we went to for brunch sometimes.” She choked on her own laugh. “He brought me right there during the summer, paraded me around, the sick fuck. I figured, after, that’s why he wanted to park there. That’s what took him so long to show up at the party. So he could see her first.”

I stepped back just as the door swung open. An older woman in a floral dress stood there, half in the entrance, door balanced on her hip. She looked between us. “Is everything okay?” She must’ve sensed it in the air, the tension, the danger of this moment. A name tag was clipped to the front of her dress. The secretary, then.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Avery?” Luce’s voice faded away as the door swung shut behind me. I moved fast, practically running down the hall. I pushed through the closest exit, into the crisp morning end-of-summer air, sucking in a deep breath.

Goddamn Connor. He knew. The girl he was arguing with in the shadows—the one who’d swung a pillar at Parker. I saw them through the cracks in the window, near the edge of the yard—her face just out of frame. He saw it happen, and he lied. Choosing his allegiance, then and now.

I could see her perfectly, that girl in the shadows. Knuckles white. I pictured the look in her eyes as she stumbled backward. Could see it clearly, in a way I never could before. Fear, yes, but anger, too.

Faith. It had been Faith.

CHAPTER 24

I sat in the car outside the hospital, my hands shaking. Pulling out that sheet of paper with our names, unfolding it again. Adding one more name to the end of the list:

Faith—9 p.m.

She’d been there. Sometime after Parker arrived but before the window was broken.

I could barely focus on the drive home, feeling nothing but a white-hot rage surging through my bones.

If the case was reopened, like I believed, the police were looking at a person who had been at the party. They were looking at that list of names again.

But there was one more name. A name the police didn’t even know about. Someone who wasn’t even supposed to be there.

* * *

CONNOR KEPT CALLING WITH a frequency that I found alarming. I had watched each call come through, listened to each ring until it went to voicemail. But then it would start up again a few moments later, and I began to worry that something had happened. Sadie’s dedication was the next day. I wondered if the investigation had changed anything. The next time the phone started up, I answered on speaker. “Hello?”

“Where are you,” he said by way of greeting.

“On my way back. Is everything okay?” The coastal highway was much emptier heading north on a Monday, so much different from the Sunday commute out of town.

“I was worried. You said you would call, and you didn’t.”

“Sorry. I started driving straight after talking to Luce.”

A pause. “What did she tell you? What did you find out?”

No longer curiosity but a test, and I couldn’t tell where his allegiance remained. “Oh, I’m sure you already know.”

A stretch of silence, everything unraveling between us in the gap. “No.”

“You didn’t know Faith was the girl who broke the window?” I came up fast on the car ahead of me, veered around it without pausing. I had to slow down, calm down, but my fingers tightened on the wheel. “You didn’t know she was fighting with Parker Loman and took a swing at him?”

“No. No. I mean, I saw her there. I knew she was upset. I knew she was there to confront Parker, but I told her to leave. I sent her home. Jesus, she was furious with me, probably still is. Accused me of being a traitor. She didn’t know why I was there.”

“Well, you missed it. The fight. She was pissed and took a stone pillar to his head. She missed Parker and hit the window instead.”

“Listen, Faith wouldn’t hurt someone . . .”

His words trailed off, and in the gap of silence, I laughed. “But I would, isn’t that what you mean?”

He didn’t answer.

“She swung it at his head.”

“The window wasn’t even broken, right? She probably didn’t swing it that hard. Maybe she just wanted to scare him. Let him know she was upset.”

“Give me a break, Connor.” As if that were the narrative he wanted to believe about both Faith and himself. That he had not latched himself on to two girls from his youth, each of whom had the power to harm, to rage. Because what did it mean for him that he saw something in the both of us that he liked—that he loved?

“You don’t know her anymore, she’s . . .”

“She’s what?”

“Smaller, somehow. Like she surrendered and gave up.”

“That doesn’t sound like Faith.” Not the girl I used to know, sneaking in houses with me, speaking her mind, fearing nothing—the perpetual bounce in her step. But I remembered how she looked when I saw her at the B&B the week before, quiet and reserved. The clipped words, the fake amicability.

But she could harm. Oh, she could harm.

Bend until you find that point. When you’re low and sinking faster, and so you do something, anything, in a drastic move, just to get it to stop. The fuck you rising to the surface. The scar from Parker’s fight. The violent shrug of Connor’s arm. My hands connecting with Faith’s shoulders. The surge as I felt our shift in balance—the fulcrum on which so many lives were balanced.

“Listen, I’m out making a few deliveries, but let me talk to her first. Let’s get together. Let’s—”

“No, Connor. No.” I would not wait for Connor. Detective Collins clearly had the two of us in his crosshairs. Connor had told me as much—that the detective was asking questions, not only about Connor but about me. And I’d just discovered that Connor’s allegiance did not lie with me. If I wanted the truth, I’d have to get there myself, before it was too late. “I’ll know the truth when I ask her. I’ll know.” Same as how Connor and I could still read each other even after all these years. The things we wanted to keep hidden but couldn’t. Faith couldn’t lie to me. If I asked her, if she’d hurt Sadie—I’d know.

“And then what?” Connor asked.

I didn’t know. Couldn’t answer honestly. Faith or Sadie. My past or my present. “Promise me you’ll let me talk to her first.”

“We’re too old for promises, Avery.” He hung up, and I pressed my foot on the gas, picking up speed as I veered off the highway.

* * *

I WASN’T PAYING ATTENTION as I eased my foot off the gas, coasting back down the mountain roads toward the sea. Didn’t see the approaching hairpin turn and braked too late—the momentum swinging the back of my car off the edge of the pavement, the entire car teetering slightly left. My stomach dropped, and I jerked up the emergency brake. My hands shook, my pulse raced, and it took until the surprise of another car—a honk as it swerved past—before I could focus again.

How easy that would’ve been, I realized. Death never something I had to look for but something that sneaked up when I wasn’t watching. How easy it must’ve been for my father, drifting asleep on the mountain road, my mother beside him, my grandmother in the back. The dark road, the dark night. Honestly, I was surprised it didn’t happen more often.

It was a miracle, it seemed, that so many of us made it this far and kept going.

I took a few deep breaths, then drove back toward the downtown of Littleport. In the distance, the sun hit the surface of the water, and my stomach dropped. I passed the turn for Hawks Ridge on my left, with its stone pillars and iron gates. Then a road to the right—forking off toward the place I grew up, with the one-level homes that backed to the woods, and a view of the mountains. In front of me, the road sloped toward the sea and the center of downtown.

The streets weren’t as congested as they were on the weekend, and I could pick out a few familiar faces as I passed. I knew Detective Collins was somewhere out here, looking for me. Waiting for me. Because he believed that I had wanted to be part of Sadie Loman’s world, and that when she was set to cast me out of it, I wanted her dead.

They knew what I was capable of when I was angry.

The sea in the distance looked calm. I steered the car back up the incline, past the police station on top of the hill, toward the Point in the distance, and the lighthouse.

The lot was half full, and my wheels slowed on the gravel drive. As I exited the car, I could hear the crash of the waves against the cliffs beyond the wooden fence. The shocking power of the ocean. A reminder that one place could become both a nightmare and a dream.

Watching a family empty their luggage from the car beside me, I almost missed it: a woman walking from behind the B&B into the woods. Down the path I’d raced the year before.

It was the speed at which she moved that made me follow her. That hair, wild and untamable, piled in a ponytail high on the top of her head. The quick glance over her shoulder, like she didn’t want to be seen.

I kept my distance, following the path, but I couldn’t keep her in view without being noticed. And by the time I reached the backyard of the Blue Robin—the high row of hedges surrounding the pool, the flash of the blue siding from the house, peeking out from over the top—I had lost her.