The House Guests Read online

  She tried a deep breath and discovered her chest would not allow it. Her heart was taking far too much room, beating too fast and squeezing painfully. “And he didn’t tell you anything more?”

  “We tried to go deeper, and that’s when he resigned. Not after some well-thought-out planning, but during that conversation. He resigned effective immediately and claimed that if his own partners didn’t trust him, what was the point of being in the practice?”

  Mark had worked long and hard to become a psychiatrist and join the others at prestigious Church Street, yet he had been willing to throw it over without an in-depth discussion. She didn’t know what to say.

  “In a way it was something of a relief when he decided to go,” Fletcher said. “I hate saying that, but the air immediately felt lighter and easier to breathe. We’re always on guard with our patients. We didn’t like being on guard with each other. Not to that extent.”

  “Who is we? You mentioned staff, not just the other doctors. What did you hear from them?” She named the people she meant. The staff social worker. The occupational therapist who was their usual referral. The two physician’s assistants and office managers. “And what about the nurses?”

  She stopped, because she was thinking of others. The small behavioral unit at Riverbend Community, the hospital where Cassie had met Mark, was often filled with patients sent there by Church Street. The hospital staff’s insights might be valuable.

  “Ivy Todsen from the behavioral health unit worked hand in hand with Mark,” she said. “Sometimes she even called him in the evenings to update him on patients they were worried about. And how about Zoey Charles? He liked working with her because he said she always went the extra mile. What do they say? Or any of the others?”

  “I don’t know what staff at the hospital were thinking, Cassie. We didn’t take a poll of everybody he knew.” Fletcher sounded annoyed.

  She lifted a brow. “You didn’t talk to the staff members who might have the most information?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just don’t remember how much if anything Ivy or any other hospital personnel had to say. It was a difficult time.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve missed the meal, but I can still hear the luncheon speaker. Are we good now?”

  She held up her hand when he started to get to his feet. “Was all of this so traumatic, Fletch, that you couldn’t face me after Mark died? I’m having problems understanding why everybody connected to Church Street, including your wife, distanced themselves so thoroughly. That just doesn’t add up.”

  “I’m sorry you felt abandoned. We sent flowers, cards. We were there for the memorial service.”

  “And so were the people who cleaned our condo.” She knew better than to belabor the personal. She might never know why Fletcher and the others had backed away, and in the long run what did it matter?

  She had put so much of herself, so much energy and love into relationships that had been severed with little thought or concern. She contrasted that with her family, who she had often given little thought to, but who had welcomed and comforted her since her return. In the future she would need to be more careful.

  Fletcher stood. “Please tell Savannah that Valerie and I are thinking of her. And take care of yourself, Cassie. We hope you’ll find peace here.”

  She watched him walk briskly away. She wondered if he was really going back to the conservatory, or off to the bar for a double shot of a top-shelf Scotch. Fletcher had told her some of the truth, but she was no fool. He had not told her everything.

  Today was only the beginning of her search for answers.

  13

  WHEN SAVANNAH EMERGED FROM her room on Monday morning, Will was already in the kitchen finishing a bowl of cereal. Over breakfast in Manhattan she’d always sprawled in the chair across from her father, who read her interesting tidbits from the Times. In his final months he’d often been too busy or preoccupied to talk, but most of the time he’d still sat at the table. Now facing breakfast without him made her stomach hurt.

  She had dreamed about her father last night. It hadn’t been one of her worst nightmares. She hadn’t been thrown out of their sailboat to drown, or swimming toward him as he went underwater for the final time. This morning they’d been on land, no place she recognized, and he’d been trying to explain something in a language she didn’t speak. He’d waved his hands, and finally he’d pointed in the direction she’d come from. She had tried to tell him she couldn’t understand, but he’d continued speaking anyway.

  Cassie seemed to know Savannah no longer wanted a sit-down breakfast. Most mornings she put out something Savannah and Will could eat on the way to school, like a homemade muffin or peanut butter toast. This morning Savannah found a plate of her favorite oatmeal cookies, spiked with lots of almond butter and dried fruit, sitting on the counter.

  Will took his bowl to the sink, then grabbed two cookies, taking a big bite of the first before he spoke. “I love the stuff your mom makes for us in the morning.”

  “She is my stepmother, not my mom, and baking gives her something to do besides hassle me.”

  “You don’t like her much, do you?”

  “She dragged me here. What part of that am I supposed to like?”

  “I like living here.”

  “You’ve never lived anywhere better.”

  Her insults never seemed to faze him. “One person’s better is another person’s worse. And my mom’s waiting outside.”

  Last night Cassie had explained she’d be gone today by the time Savannah woke up, and Amber had agreed to do school transportation. Cassie hadn’t said where she planned to go, nor had Savannah asked. She hoped the final destination was so far away her stepmother wouldn’t be home again for days.

  She took two cookies and followed him out the front door, wincing at a blast of cool air. She tugged the hoodie over her head as Amber pulled her car out of the garage. She stepped out and greeted Savannah with an apology.

  “I’m sorry. You both have to sit in the back today. I didn’t realize the passenger window in front was cracked open when I washed the car yesterday. The seat’s damp.”

  Savannah wanted to find a reason not to like Amber, but so far, despite what Savannah had done to ruin her life, she didn’t seem to hold her actions against her. Amber treated her with warmth mixed with an appropriate level of caution.

  Will climbed in beside Savannah and struggled to curl his long legs into a comfortable position. He smelled like soap and laundry detergent, and she could see he’d shaved this morning, although most of the time he didn’t bother since there wasn’t much need.

  “Do you two have tests today? Anything special?” Amber asked from the front.

  “Who knows,” Savannah muttered.

  Will took up the conversational slack and chatted with his mom. They were almost at school before Savannah realized that the bracelet she was wearing under the hoodie had snagged on something. She carefully rolled up her sleeve until the bracelet was exposed. The clasp was caught on a thread. She noticed Will was watching.

  She unfastened it and picked at the thread until it was free. “What are you looking at?”

  “That’s just a pretty bracelet.”

  She clasped it in place again and turned away. She rarely wore the bracelet. She had a good idea how much it had cost, and she saved it for special occasions. But that morning, on impulse, she had opened her jewelry box and pawed through rings and chains until she found the drawstring pouch of robin’s-egg blue with a Tiffany logo. The bracelet was a gold chain with one simple stylized heart. Her father had given it to her on her fifteenth birthday and told her she would live in his heart forever.

  Maybe she still did. Maybe that’s what he’d been trying to tell her in the dream. Maybe somehow Mark would see that they were still connected. Maybe he would come to her again when she slept, and this time she would understand.r />
  Two hours after Amber dropped them off at school, Savannah was struggling to bluff her way through another stupid chemistry quiz. She reached under the hoodie’s sleeve to finger the bracelet for good luck, then farther up her wrist. Finally she rolled up her sleeve and shook her arm. But even after she slid her hand all the way up to her shoulder, the bracelet didn’t materialize.

  After class she carefully slipped off the hoodie while she was still at her desk and turned it inside out. She looked under the desk and then, more frantically, in her book bag, in the pockets of her jeans, even inside her high-top sneakers. But the bracelet was gone.

  Out in the hall she saw Helia and Minh coming toward her from the other direction. Minh stopped. “You okay? You don’t look too good.”

  “I lost something, that’s all.”

  Helia chewed the inside of her cheek, then she shrugged. “I guess we could help you look since it’s lunchtime.”

  “You should go to the office and tell them,” Minh said. “If somebody turns it in, they’ll know who it belongs to.”

  Helia punched Minh’s shoulder. “That’s always your answer, isn’t it? Tell an authority figure and everything will be okay.”

  “If we’d told the police about that money we found, the way I wanted to, maybe things would have turned out better. None of us would have gotten in trouble with our families.”

  “Stop it!” Savannah took a deep breath and fought back tears. “I’ll look myself. I don’t need your help!”

  Helia stared at her, but instead of leaving or yelling back, she shrugged again. “Okay, it’s gotta be a big thing. What are we looking for?”

  Minh put an arm around Savannah’s shoulder. “And where do you think it might be?”

  “I don’t have a freaking clue.” Savannah described the bracelet without adding it was from Tiffany’s. “My father gave it to me.” She remembered Helia pointing out that she’d never had a father, and Savannah should get over herself. But this time Helia looked like she was thinking things through.

  “So how’d you get to school?” she asked after a moment. “Then where did you go and what did you do from there?”

  “And on our way to all those places, we will stop by the office,” Minh said.

  Helia rolled her eyes. “Like good little girls.”

  Savannah hoped three sets of eyes would be better than one. “Thank you.”

  “I figure I’m open to one good deed a year, and the year’s almost up,” Helia said.

  * * *

  At the end of her Geometry class Savannah stared out the window as rain whipped across the glass and skies grew darker. She had one more class after this one, and afterward she intended to spend another hour scouring the school for her bracelet. The office had taken the information and promised they would let Savannah know if anybody turned in a bracelet. Helia had come up with several places to look that Savannah hadn’t even considered. But even three sets of eyes hadn’t turned up the bracelet. Somebody had probably found it and planned to keep it. That sounded disturbingly familiar.

  When the bell rang, she gathered her books and stood to leave, but her teacher, a woman about Cassie’s age, beckoned Savannah to stop by her desk on the way out.

  She winced at a thunderclap before she spoke. “Savannah, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be making As in this class. You seem to understand everything we cover, but you’re about to fail because you aren’t turning in your homework. What’s up with that?”

  Savannah turned up her hands, as if she had no idea what the answer was. “I just forget to do it.”

  “I’ll be calling your mother to discuss the necessity of doing homework.”

  Savannah nodded as if she agreed. “You can try, but I doubt she plans to do homework, either. I think she already passed Geometry.”

  She scooted out the door and wondered what it would feel like to fail a class. Maybe somebody in the office, the principal or a guidance counselor, would decide she should become a hairstylist or a cook, although both of those things probably required classes, too. Maybe somebody in charge would help her plan a life cleaning houses or picking up trash in the streets.

  Maybe she’d find her bracelet while she was dumping cans into a garbage truck.

  She looked up and saw that Will was waiting for her just a few doors away. She rarely saw him during a school day, but now he grinned when he saw her. She almost turned in the other direction, but she was blocked by a group taking up most of the hallway behind her.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “My mom texted to say she can’t pick us up.”

  “Oh, goody.”

  “She has an emergency meeting at the restaurant, and she wouldn’t be able to get here until close to five.”

  “Did I ask why?” Savannah cocked her head. “I don’t think so.”

  “She said we should walk home together.”

  The house was at least a couple of miles away, maybe farther. Savannah couldn’t believe this. “Walk? In this weather? You’re kidding, right?”

  “The rain’s supposed to stop about four. We can wait until then and do our homework in the meantime.”

  Even though she’d planned to spend time after school looking for the bracelet, she glared at him. “I’ll find another way.”

  Will looked uncomfortable. “Mom kind of promised Cassie she’d make sure you got home safely.”

  “You don’t mean safely. You mean without getting into trouble, right? Like I’m in jail because I made one mistake, which I’ve paid for and paid for!”

  “Hey, this isn’t my fault.”

  “Don’t look for me after school. You won’t find me.” She started past him, but he grabbed her arm.

  “That’s not the only reason I’m here.”

  She shook off his hand. “No? What else?”

  “I found something of yours.” Will reached in the pocket of his jeans. He held out her bracelet.

  Savannah snatched it from his hand. She knew what must have happened. When she’d slipped the bracelet back on in the car that morning, she hadn’t clasped it correctly, and it had dropped on the seat between them. Will had seen and taken it without telling her. Maybe he’d planned to pawn it. Maybe he’d figured out that it was real gold and worth some money. Or maybe he’d just wanted to get even with her for what she’d done to him and his mother.

  She stared at the bracelet and then at him. “You had it all day?”

  “I didn’t have a chance to return it until now,” he said. “I found it—”

  She didn’t let him finish. “You had it all this time! What did you plan to do with it, Will? Why didn’t you find me right away unless you were trying to figure out how to make this work for you?”

  He stared at her, then he shook his head, but his eyes were blazing with anger. “You really are a brat, a spoiled brat who thinks everything that happens in the world is about you. Just because you steal things from other people doesn’t mean everybody else will, too. Walk yourself home today and every day. And the next time I find something that belongs to you, I’ll leave it right where I find it.” He turned and pushed his way through the group in the hallway.

  She watched him go, so upset she was riveted to the spot. One of the girls in the group, a popular one who never paid any attention to Savannah, came over to stand beside her. She was ridiculously pretty, a brunette with the kind of figure boys always followed with their eyes.

  “I’m Madeline,” she said. “Madeline Ritter. They call me Mad. And right now I’m not the only Mad in the hallway, right?”

  Savannah blew out a long breath. “I’m Savannah Westmore.”

  “Yeah, you’re new to Winds, right? From somewhere up north?”

  “New York. Manhattan.”

  “I live a couple of streets over from you. I’ve been meaning to introduce myself
. We should get together sometime. There aren’t too many Coastals in Sunset Vista.”

  “Not a lot of sunsets or vistas, either.” Savannah realized that maybe Madeline was a fan of their stupid housing development, and she’d just ruined any possibility of a friendship.

  But Madeline laughed. “Lots of old people, though. Did I see you talking to Will Blair?”

  Savannah knew she had to be honest. “Will and his mother are staying with us for a while. My stepmother invited them. He’s the most annoying boy that ever lived.”

  “A dweebster for sure.”

  “He just told me I’m supposed to walk home with him after school. Not much chance of that.”

  “You don’t have a ride?”

  “My ride bailed.”

  Madeline assessed her. “Meet me out front after school. You can ride with me.”

  Savannah couldn’t believe her luck. “That would be great.”

  “Gotta protect you from the weirdos. I saw him digging around by the front steps at lunch. Maybe he was looking for worms?” Madeline raised a hand and started back the other way.

  But Savannah hardly noticed. She was picturing the moment she and Will had gotten out of Amber’s car that morning. When she got to the bottom of the steps she decided not to wear her hoodie inside. Few others were bundled up against the cold. In fact some of the kids hurrying to class were wearing shorts and tank tops that were barely long enough to pass the dress code. Embarrassed, she slipped the hoodie over her head and folded it against her, only later giving in and putting it back on when the temperature dropped even more.

  She hadn’t noticed the bracelet was gone until Chemistry. Had she lost it in the car, the way she’d imagined the scene when she accused Will? Or had the bracelet slipped off when she pulled the hoodie over her head before classes began? Had Will seen it at lunchtime, after the bracelet had been trampled into the ground by other kids hurrying to homeroom that morning? Had he seen something glinting in the dirt, unearthed it and realized who it belonged to?