images for my own safekeeping.
The surfaces were damaged slightly, adhered to the newer versions, the corners crimped and discolored from the frames. Where there once were childhood portraits, there were graduation pictures. Where there once were graduation pictures, there were vacation shots—Sadie at the Eiffel Tower, Sadie in red snow gear with mountains behind her, Sadie sitting beside Parker somewhere tropical, with the ocean behind them.
I sorted through these forgotten pictures now, trying to find the right fit for the piece. God, she would hate this. In each photo, she was either too young-looking or too happy. Too disconnected to the purpose of the article. They would want something to appeal to everyone, insider and outsider alike. She had to appear both approachable and untouchable.
In the end, I settled on her college graduation picture. She held the diploma in her hand, but her head was tipped back slightly, like she was starting to laugh. It was perfectly Sadie. And it was perfectly tragic.
This photo captured the beginning of something. It was on the nose, but it would cut hard. The beginning of a laugh, of her life. Something that I now felt had been taken from her.
And then I placed the rest of the photos back inside the box, hidden within the closet, where they would remain alongside all the other people I had lost.
* * *
SADIE JANETTE LOMAN TO be honored in Littleport memorial
My fingers tapped against the edge of the keyboard, waiting for the words to come. I stared at the photo of her in the graduation gown, the blue sky behind her over the dome of the building.
Sadie Loman may have spent nine months out of the year in Connecticut, but Littleport was her favorite place in the world.
She’d told me that the first time we met. And now she was about to become a part of its history.
For a small town, we had a long past that lived in our collective memory. It was a place filled with ghosts, from old legends and bedtime stories alike. The fishermen lost at sea, the first lighthouse keeper—their cries in the night echoed in the howling wind. Benches in memory of, in honor of; boxes moved from home to home. We carried the lost with us here.
It was a place for risk-takers, a place that favored the bold.
I was trying to find a place for Sadie in this history. Something to be part of.
She was bold, of course she was. But that wasn’t what people wanted to hear. They wanted to hear that she loved the ocean, her family, this place.
What I would say if I were telling the truth:
Sadie would hate everything about this. From the bell, to the quote, to the tribute. She’d sit on the rocks, looking down on the beach where we would all be gathered, holding a drink in her hand and laughing. Littleport was unsympathetic and unapologetic, and so was she. As much a product of this place as any of us.
She might demand that she be forgiven. She might compensate for a perceived wrong with an over-the-top counterbalance. She might know it, deep inside, when she had gone too far.
But Sadie Loman would never apologize. Not for who she was and not for what she’d done.
* * *
I’M SORRY. I WISH it didn’t have to be this way.
Two simple sentences. The note they found. Crumpled in the trash.
What was the chance that all of this was a mistake? That the police, and her family, had seen one thing and believed another?
What were the odds that Sadie had chosen those very same words, the ones I had used earlier that summer—the ones I had written myself, folded in half, and left on the surface of her desk for her?
SUMMER
2017
The Plus-One Party
9:30 p.m.
It happened all at once. The light, the sound, the mood.
The power had gone out. The music, the house lights, the blue glow from under the water of the pool. Everything was darkness.
Inside, there were too many bodies all pressed together. My ears still buzzed from the music. Someone stepped on my foot. I heard the sound of glass breaking, and I hoped it wasn’t the window. Everything became sound and scent. Low whispers, nervous laughter, sweat and the whiff of someone’s hair product as they walked by, and then a spiced cologne.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, a breath on my neck. I froze, disoriented. And then I heard a scream. Everything stopped—the whispers, the laughter, the people brushing up