She had no idea, the depths of my own anger. Or maybe she did. She tipped her head to the side, watching me closely.
“No one’s stopping you,” I said. “Do what you want. But the Lomans, they think they control everything. People, properties, this entire town. They think they’ve earned that right. They think they deserve to know everything. Maybe they don’t.”
If it were me, I’d let them wonder. Let them wake up to footsteps and not be sure. Let that fracture split their night, their lives.
“You need to leave,” I said. “You need to get out of here. Please, just stop. You almost . . . This place, it was full of gas. Someone could’ve gotten hurt.”
“No, no one was supposed to get hurt. Just—no one was even noticing. You didn’t, even, until the candles. No one was doing anything.”
A chill ran through me. All these invisible lives, hidden just out of sight. Even that night at the party, when she was right there, she remained out of frame, hidden behind shadows and broken glass.
“Did you see what happened that night?” I asked.
She looked at me out of the corner of her eye. Then pressed her lips together. What did she think had happened? Did she, like the police, believe I could’ve been involved in Sadie’s death?
“No. Connor told me to leave. I wasn’t about to hang around after that.”
Had those been the footsteps I’d heard that night in the woods? When I called Sadie’s name? Forgetting how so many of us could move like a ghost, undetected and invisible—as we were taught to do.
Still, it was her word. Her word that she’d left the party, gone back home. I stared at her face, trying to see—
The sound of a car engine in the distance pulled my focus. I peered down the road but couldn’t see past the trees.
“Faith, let’s go back to your place.” I pulled her by the sleeve, trying to get her to stand, but she was staring at my hand, clenched in the fabric of her shirt. “The police have been keeping an eye on the house across the street.” I nodded toward the Blue Robin. I wondered if it was the detective even now. If he would find us here and know.
She stood then, her gaze following mine down the road. “I don’t see anyone,” she said.
“Still. We need to go.”
We walked quietly, side by side, around the side of the Blue Robin, back through the path of trees, like two friends. To anyone else, it probably looked like a friendly hike. I waited until we were out of view of the Blue Robin, until I was sure we were alone again, to ask. I kept my voice low. “None of this—the candles, the damage—it’s not about Sadie?”
She stopped walking for a second before continuing. “Sadie? No. No. You thought I could hurt her?”
Could she? I closed my eyes and shook my head, but that was a lie, and she knew it. Anyone could do it. That wasn’t the question here. “If I was going to hurt someone,” she said, not breaking stride, “she would be the last Loman on my list.”
I had missed Faith. She was fierce and honest—how had I not seen her there in the shadows? What was happening at the properties this year had all been about Parker and what the Lomans stood for—not Sadie.
As we emerged into the clearing of the parking lot, she headed toward the back of the house, overlooking the sea.
“Faith. Please. Hate them all you want, but they lost their daughter last year. Is that not enough?”
She looked off to the edge of the cliffs, but I knew how it could be—how you could become so lost in your own anger and grief and bitterness that you can barely see anything else. When she turned back, her eyes were watering, but I didn’t know if that was from the sting of the saltwater wind. “I know you were close to her, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry she’s dead.”
She walked back toward the house, and I headed for my car, the rest of the lot currently abandoned. But all I could think was that Parker’s car had been parked at the B&B the night Sadie died. He could’ve left, sneaked back home, and returned.
“Faith,” I called just before she disappeared from view. “You said a car pulled in to the lot that night, after Parker was here. Who