enough to see clearly, but it was enough: The girl in the upper-right window, staring out. Shadows behind the screens. Bodies moving in time to some rhythm we couldn’t understand, on opposite sides of a door. On opposite ends of the house. Every light on, every shade pulled open—they were a beacon in the night, calling us closer.
She sees us, I’d said, so sure from the way she was standing there, looking out.
Not possible, Connor had promised. The light from the boat was out. We were invisible, as we were taught to be.
If I lived there, I wouldn’t spend all day staring out.
If I lived there, I’d hang some curtains already, he said, laughing.
We watched their lives from a distance. Imagining what they were doing, what they were thinking. We were captivated by them.
So when Connor asked if it was everything I hoped it would be, I knew what he was thinking—that I had wormed my way into their lives, become the thing I once only imagined.
I could almost forgive him the implication. The tattoo on my body, the way I was living up there. The way I seemed to slide into her life. I was following the ghost of her footsteps even now. “It was a coincidence that we met,” I said. “She walked in on me in the bathroom when I was working. Evelyn hired me.” It was what I’d always believed until Erica told me someone from the Loman house had requested me to work that party. But that didn’t make sense.
“And yet,” he said.
And yet here we were again, in a place we hadn’t been together in years. “Did you ever see me in there?” I wondered then if he had continued on without me.
He cut his eyes to me briefly, but he didn’t move his head. “I don’t watch people, Avery. I’ve got better things to do.”
“Then what the hell are we doing here now?”
“Because I was a suspect until a note was found, and I’ve been living under a cloud for almost a year. I’m sick of it. I don’t know what’s the truth anymore.”
I blinked slowly, taking a steady breath. “I don’t know anything more than you do. I’m the one who told you about the phone.”
He shifted to face me, one leg tucked up on the bench seat. “You know, just because you don’t talk to us anymore doesn’t mean people don’t talk about you.”
“I know. I’ve heard it all.”
He tilted his head back and forth, as if even that was up for debate. “Most people seemed to think you’re fucking the brother. Or the father.” He said it sharp and cruel, like he intended to hurt me with it. “I say you’re smarter than that, but what do I know.”
“I wasn’t. I’m not.”
He raised his hands. “Faith always thought it was the sister,” he continued. “But I told her you only wanted her life. Not her.” He dropped his hands abruptly. “Anyway, mostly she was just pissed at you, so no one really listened.”
My stomach squeezed, hearing his words. Even though I’d imagined them, heard the whispers, gotten the implication from the snide comments—like Greg Randolph’s. It was different hearing them from someone who knew me, from the people who once were my closest friends. “It’s not true. Any of it.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I covered for you once before, you know. Told the police it was an accident when you pushed Faith.”
I flinched, though he hadn’t moved. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“I was there, Avery. I saw.” In the dusk, I couldn’t read his expression. Everything was falling deeper into shadows.
I closed my eyes, seeing her fall in my memory. Feeling the surge in my bones, as I had back then. The rage fighting its way to the surface. “It was just . . . I didn’t know she would trip.”
His eyes grew larger. “Jesus Christ. She needed surgery. Two pins in her elbow, and God, I covered for you, even after everything.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, my throat catching on the word. It needed to be said, now and then. “Back then, you should know, I used to think about dying. All the time.” I thought of the journal, the things I had written; the nightmare of my life. “I dreamed about it. Imagined it. There was no room for anything else.”
“You wanted to die?” he said, like it had never occurred to him.
“No. I don’t know.” But, the blade. The list of things I