THE ONLY EVIDENCE OF the storm last night was the soft give of the earth beneath my feet. The morning was crisp and sunny, the way of Littleport postcards in the downtown shops. These were the days that catered to the tourists, that kept us in business: picturesque, quaint, protected and surrounded in turn by untamable nature.

In truth, the place was wild and brutal and swung to extremes. From the nor’easters that could quickly drop an easy foot of snow and ice, downing half the power lines, to the summer calm with the birds calling, the buoy bell tolling in a rhythm out at sea. From the high-crested waves that could tear a boat from its mooring, to the gentle lapping of the tide against your toes in the beach sand. The quaint bustle to the barren loneliness. A powder keg to a ghost town.

As I passed the garage, I noticed that the garbage can had been fixed, the gate secured. Parker was apparently up and out, unfazed by the late night and the liquor.

I had just set my foot on the first step of their porch when the front door swung open. Parker stopped abruptly, doing a double take.

It was the same look he’d given me the first time he saw me. I’d been sitting in Sadie’s room, cross-legged on her ivory bedspread, while she painted our nails a shimmering purple, the vial balanced precariously on her knee between us, nothing but sea and sky behind her through the glass doors of her balcony, blue on blue to the curve of the horizon.

Her hand had hovered in midair at the sound of footsteps coming down the hall, and she’d looked up just as Parker walked by. He was nineteen then, one year older than we were, just finished with his first year of college. But something had stopped him midstride. He’d looked at me, then back at Sadie, and the corner of her mouth had twitched.

“Dad’s looking for you,” he’d said.

“He’s not looking very hard, then.” She’d gone back to painting her nails, but he hadn’t left the doorway. His eyes flicked to me again, then away, like he didn’t want to get caught staring.

Sadie had audibly sighed. “This is Avery. Avery, my brother, Parker.”

He was barefoot, in worn jeans, a free advertisement T-shirt. So different than he looked in the carefully staged portrait downstairs. A faint scar bisected the edge of his left eyebrow. I’d waved my hand, and he did the same. Then he took a step back into the hall and continued on.

I’d been looking at the empty hallway when her voice cut through the silence. “Don’t,” she’d said.

“What?”

She shook her head. “Just don’t.”

“I won’t.”

She’d capped the bottle, blowing lightly on her nails. “Seriously. It won’t end well.”

As if everything that promised to follow would be contingent on this. Her attention, her friendship, this world.

“I said I wouldn’t.” I was not accustomed to being bossed around, to taking orders. It had been just me and my grandmother since I was fourteen, and she’d been dead six months by then.

Sadie had blinked slowly. “They all say that.”

* * *

PARKER LOMAN HAD GROWN broader in the years since then, more put together, self-assured. He would not falter in the hallway. But I raised my hand, just like I did back then, and he did the same. “Hi. I tried texting you first.”

He nodded, continued on down the steps. “Changed my number. Here.” He held out his hand for my phone and updated his contact info. I wondered if he’d changed his number because of Luce. Or Sadie. If people called him, friends with condolences, journalists looking for a story, old acquaintances coming out of the woodwork in a tragedy. Whether he needed to cull his list, his world shrinking back to the core and rebuilding—like I had once done.

“What time is the lunch?” I asked.

“It’s scheduled for one-thirty. I already added you to the reservation. Want to drive over together?”

I was taken aback, not only that he remembered but that he was following through. “I’ve got a few errands to run after, better drive myself.”

“All right, see you then.” He walked backward a few steps in the direction of the garage. “Off to pick up some groceries. There’s nothing in the house. I mean, other than the whiskey.” He smirked. “Should I get anything else?”

I’d forgotten how charming he could be, how disarming. “No,” I said. “We’re good.”

“Well,” he called, still smiling, “guess I’ll let you get to that early appointment.”

* * *

I KEPT TO A familiar path. Taking the incline down Landing Lane, stretching my legs in the process. Reaching the edge of downtown before looping back and ending at Breaker Beach.

August used to be my favorite time of year in Littleport, from both sides of the divide. There was something in the air, a thrumming, the town in perpetual motion. This place was named for the Little family, but everyone here—residents and visitors alike—had adopted the moniker like a mission. Everything must remain minuscule in the town center. Small wooden signs with hand-painted letters, low awnings, narrowed planks. The visitors during the summer sat at small bistro tables with ocean views, and they drank from small flute glasses, speaking in small voices. There were little lights strung from rafters, as if we were all saying to one another: It’s always a holiday here.

It was an act, and we were all playing.

Step outside the town center, and the act was gone. The summer homes towered two, three stories above the perfectly landscaped yards, perched even higher on cliffsides. Long stone-lined drives, sprawling wraparound porches, portrait-style windows reflecting the sky and the sea. Beautiful, magnificent monstrosities.

I’d grown up closer to the inland edge of town, in a three-bedroom ranch with one room converted to my mother’s studio. She’d ripped out the carpeting and pulled off the closet doors, lining the shelves with row after row of paints and dyes. Every room had been painted a bright color except that one, as if she needed a blank and neutral palette just to imagine something more.

Our only view then was of the trees and, beyond that, the boat in the Harlows’ driveway. Connor and I used to race the trail behind our homes, startling the hikers as we wove around them, slowing down for nothing.

My grandmother’s bungalow, where I’d spent my teenage years, was in an older waterfront community. The scent of turpentine and paint I’d grown accustomed to had been replaced with the sweet sea roses that lined the perimeter of her backyard, mixed with the salt air. Families had lived in the Stone Hollow neighborhood generations gone back, staking their claim before the rising prices and holding it.

I’d known every facet of this place, lived a life in each different quarter. Had believed at one time, wholeheartedly, in its magic.

I stopped running when I hit the sandy strip of Breaker Beach. Hands on knees, catching my breath, sneakers sinking into the sand. Later in the day, the tourists would gather here, soaking up the sun. Kids building sandcastles or running from the tide—the water was too cold, even in the heat of summer.

But for now, I was the only one here.

The sand was damp from the storm last night, and I could see one other set of footprints crossing the beach, ending here, just before the parking lot. I walked across the sand, toward the edge of the cliffs and the rocky steps built in to the side of the bluffs. Here, the footsteps stopped abruptly, as if someone had headed down this path in the other direction, leaving from the house.

I stopped, hand on the cold rocks, a chill rising. Looking at the dunes behind me and imagining someone else there. These prints were recent, not yet washed away by the encroaching tide. That feeling, once more, that I was not alone here.

The power outage last night, the noises in the dark, the footprints this morning.

I shook it off—I always did this, went three steps too far, trying to map things forward and back, so I could see something coming this time. A habit from a time when I could trust only myself and the things I knew to be true.

It was probably Parker out for a run earlier. The call about the second break-in shaking me. The unsteady dream of the sea lingering—the memory of my mother’s words in my ear as she worked, telling me to look again, to tell her what I saw, even though it always looked exactly the same to me.

It was this place and everything that had happened here—always making me look for something that didn’t exist.

This was where Sadie had been found. A call to the police around 10:45 p.m. from a man walking his dog that night. A local who knew the shape of the place. Who saw something in the shadows, a shimmer of blue in the moonlight.

Her leg, caught on the rocks at low tide. The ocean forgetting her in its retreat.

CHAPTER 4