She startled, then turned my way, and I walked out to meet her. Up close, her eyes were bloodshot, her face gaunt and makeup-free.

“I have to get out of here,” she said, shaking her head. Her hair was pulled back tight, severe. “I don’t belong here right now. I’m trying to . . .” She tapped at her phone, exasperated. “I’m trying to find a way to get to the bus station. If I can get to Boston, I can make it home.”

It was then I saw that she had a bag in her other hand, her grip tight on the tan leather handles. Her eyes searched mine as if I might have the answers.

“I’d take you myself, but I don’t have my car. It’s still at the overlook.” I swallowed. “Maybe you can take Parker’s car. Since Grant and Bianca are here now.”

Her eyes widened. “I am not asking him that right now.” She looked over her shoulder at the house and shuddered. “I don’t belong there. It’s not my place. It’s—”

“Okay, come in. Luce, come on.” A hand at her elbow to get her inside. I led her there, into the living room.

She sat on the couch, her back inches off the cushions, hands folded carefully over her knees, luggage on the floor in front of her. I gave her the number of a car service she could try; she was clearly rattled, unable to focus enough to find this information herself.

“Stay here. I’m going for my car. If you’re still here when I’m back, I’ll drive you to the bus myself.”

She nodded, staring at nothing.

It was the last time I saw her.

I started walking. Down Landing Lane, past Breaker Beach, where there were cop cars blocking the lot, the whole area roped off. I kept walking into the town center, where a solemn, shell-shocked air had settled over everything, like a thick fog.

My throat tightened, and I bent over on the sidewalk, hands on my knees.

“Avery?” A man turned from the back of his SUV at the curb. Faith’s father, securing a crate of coffee into the back of his vehicle, trunk open. “You okay, there?”

I stood and wiped my knuckles across my cheeks. “I left my car,” I said, my voice stuck against my windpipe, like I was choking. “At the party last night.”

He looked over his shoulder, up the road, in the direction of the party. “Well, come on, I’ll take you there.”

His car smelled of coffee grinds and fresh laundry, the world continuing on with or without Sadie. We drove up Harbor Drive, past the police station at the top of the hill. “Terrible news, about the Loman girl. I heard you were close.”

I could only nod. Couldn’t think about Sadie in her blue dress, standing at the edge. Barefoot, listening to the violence of the sea below.

He turned the car toward the Point, then cleared his throat. “Do you have a place to stay?”

“Yes,” I said, not understanding the question. Before realizing, without Sadie, the entire foundation of my life was about to shift.

“Well,” he continued, “you let us know. End of season, you know we have the room, should you need it.”

I turned to take him in—the deep lines of his weatherworn face, the longer, graying hair pushed back like he was facing the wind, and the sharp angle of his nose, like Faith’s. “I don’t think Faith would like that,” I said.

“Well,” he said, turning past the bed-and-breakfast, heading for the homes up on the overlook, “that was a long time ago.”

“It was an accident,” I said.

He didn’t respond at first. “You scared us all then. But you came out the other side okay, Avery.” He pulled onto Overlook Drive, where the Blue Robin was located.

“This is good,” I said as my lone car came into view. I wanted to be alone. Not think too hard about what I had done and what I had meant to do. What I was capable of when the bonds that held me in check were released.

“You sure?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

He gestured down the tree-lined road, from here to Sunset Retreat and the Blue Robin. “These all gonna be rentals, then? Every one of them? They’re gonna keep building?”

“Not right away. But yes, that’s the plan.” I stepped out of the car. “Thank you for the ride.” He nodded but kept his gaze down the long lane of uncleared lots.

I walked down the street, imagining the stream of people heading toward the party the night before—and then racing out, after the police arrived. I’d missed whatever happened in the aftermath, but it was obvious that people had left in a rush. The tire marks in the place where the grass met the road. The trash and debris left behind on the shoulder. An empty bottle. A pair of broken sunglasses.

My car was in the driveway of Sunset Retreat, facing out. But it looked like someone had driven across the yard: tire tracks revved all the way down to the dirt below. I imagined a bottleneck of vehicles and someone impatient, driving around everyone else.

The front door of the Blue Robin across the way was ajar, a darkness beckoning.

I stepped across the threshold, taking it all in. The air pulsed, like the house was alive.

There were half-empty bottles on the counters, the ticking of a fan set too high, the stench of sweat and spilled liquor. And the candles, burned down to the wick, wax pooling at the base. Most had extinguished themselves, but there was one burning by the back window, set just below the web of cracks. I blew it out, watching as the smoke drifted upward, seeing the night fragmented through the glass.

Upstairs, there were several jackets remaining on the bed in the first room. And a shoe, of all things.

My fingers twitched with misplaced energy. There was too much out of my control. Too much I could never change.

I pulled out my phone and called the cleaning company. Told them to come as soon as they could and to send me the bill directly; I didn’t want this to go to the Lomans right now. I didn’t want them seeing it, the reckless mess we were making as their daughter was dying.

Downstairs, I threw the bathroom towels into the washer, dark with grime. But that was the benefit of white towels, white sheets—the open, airy feel of a place, the cleanliness. It was an easy illusion to maintain with a half-cup of bleach.

In the bedroom, the chest with extra blankets was open, but nothing seemed missing or used—just a stack of folded quilts—so I eased it shut.

And then, feeling more myself the more I took control, I found the number for the window company and left a message. That we would need a replacement for a damaged window at 3 Overlook Drive, and to call me when they needed access to measure.

After, I pulled the front door shut but didn’t lock it—I didn’t have the keys. I’d have to come back and check up on things after the cleaning.

I walked across the street to my car, and my eyes burned. Every place I stepped, everything I saw, was a place that Sadie would never be and never see. Even my car felt vaguely unfamiliar to me now. The granules of sand below the driver’s seat, which had been there for who knew how long—but all I could see was Sadie, brushing off her legs after a bonfire at Breaker Beach. The papers stuffed into the door compartment, and I pictured her balling up a receipt, stuffing it out of sight. My sunglasses wedged into the visor, and I saw her lowering the shade to check the mirror, saying, God, could I be any paler?

I couldn’t shake the scent of the house as I drove. The liquor, the sweat, something almost animal about it. So I kept the windows down, let the fresh air of Littleport roll in.

I drove in the opposite direction, toward the winding mountain roads, where the sun cast a pattern through the trees as the wind blew, like an incoming eclipse.

SUMMER

?????2018

CHAPTER 26

I was standing outside the bed-and-breakfast after Faith disappeared inside. I was glued to my spot, trying to process what she’d just told me. Another car had turned up the night of the party—and Sadie had been inside.

Sadie had been right here a year earlier, stepping out of a car in the parking lot of the B&B, walking the path to the party. I looked into the trees down the path, imagining her ghost.

* * *

I DROVE BACK TOWARD the Sea Rose, needing to be alone, to think. Everything I’d believed about that night was wrong. Could everything I’d thought about Sadie be wrong, too?

Over the years, our lives had become so tangled, pieces of each other indecipherable. The details blurring and overlapping. My home was her home, keys on each other’s rings, her thumb pressed to the front of my phone, the same tattoos—or was it a brand?

And yet how had I missed that she was there? She had arrived at the party. But somehow she’d ended up back on the cliffs behind her house, washing up on Breaker Beach. How?