and ghosts for company. What I would say, what I would do—how I would corner them into the truth. No: What I would take from them instead.
I felt it as I sat there—not the creeping vines of grief, pulling me down. But that other thing. The burning white-hot rage of a thing I could feel in the marrow of my bones. The surge gathering as I stepped forward and pushed.
I wanted to scream. Wanted to scream the truth to the world and watch them fall because of it. I wanted them to pay for what they had done.
But there was a flip side to that knowledge. Because here was what else that payment provided: a motive. My motive. All of the evidence fell back on me. The phone that I had found. Her body, with signs of a struggle, in my trunk. Me, wandering around the back of the Lomans’ house that night, looking for any piece of evidence left behind. And the note on the counter. It was my handwriting. My anger. My revenge. It was mine.
* * *
THERE WAS A KNOCK at the front door, and I peered out the gap between the front curtains, expecting that Grant or Parker had somehow found me. Or Bianca, come to tell me to leave again. But it was Connor. I saw his truck at the curb, so obvious on the half-empty street. “Avery? You in there?” he called.
Shit, shit. I unlocked the door and he strode inside as if I’d invited him.
“How did you know where I was?” I asked as he looked around the unfamiliar house. His eyes stopped on the stacks of family albums and letters on the counter.
He paused a moment, staring at the article on top of the pile, a black-and-white photo of the wreckage—Littleport couple killed in single-car wreck.
“Connor?”
“She told me what happened,” he said, dragging his eyes back to me. “Faith.” He was breathing heavy, wound tight with adrenaline.
“How did you know I was here?” I repeated. I thought I’d been so careful, but here he was, unannounced. I didn’t like the way his gaze lingered on my things. I didn’t like the way he was standing—on edge.
“What?” He shook his head, like he was trying to clear the conversation. “It’s not hard to find out if you know what you’re looking for.” I took a step back, and he frowned, his eyes narrowing. “You told me you weren’t living at the Lomans’ anymore. But you’re not at Faith’s, most of the hotels are still full . . . Plenty of people mentioned seeing you around. I checked a couple of the rental properties until I saw your car downtown. This was the closest one.” He started pacing the room again, like there was nowhere else for his energy to go. “Faith didn’t hurt Sadie, I told you. You believe her, right?”
“Wait.” My eyes were closed, my hand out. I couldn’t follow both conversations at once. “People told you they’d seen me around?” I’d noticed it recently, hadn’t I? The way people looked at me, the way they watched. How they seemed to recognize something about me. I thought it was because of the investigation, new rumors that might be swirling. But maybe it had always been there. And like the Lomans, I’d become desensitized, unaware of the gazes. “Right,” I said, hands gripping the counter in front of me, spanning the distance between me and Connor. “The girl fucking around with the Lomans up there. Is that the talk?”
His throat moved as he swallowed, but he didn’t deny it. “The girl doing something up there.”
I looked to the side, to the covered windows and the dark night beyond. I didn’t understand why he was here, what he wanted. How many people knew I was hiding out here? Hadn’t I learned better than to think I was invisible by now?
“It wasn’t Faith,” he repeated.
“Yes, I know it wasn’t Faith. I know what that money was for now.” My hands tightened into fists. My entire adult life built on a lie. On a horrific secret. Molded by people I thought had given me so much but instead had taken everything.
Connor stopped moving, watching me carefully. Maybe this was my downfall—always too trusting in the end; choosing someone else over the solitude. Yet again thinking people had anything but their own interests at heart. We were alone in this house, with no one else around. He had kept things from me already, and we both knew