Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(15)

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WHEN I WENT BACK inside my house, I heard the shower running upstairs, and I tried calling Charlotte. When she didn’t pick up, I texted instead: Heard about the meeting. Anything I can do?

I’d long since learned that the best way to get what you needed from Charlotte was to offer to help. As the head of the owners’ association, she had enough people stopping her outside or coming by her house at all hours, asking her questions or complaining. Between that and her job as a counselor at the college, she was surrounded by other people’s problems.

A door upstairs crashed open, and Ruby came running. She stumbled down the steps in such a rush that a sense of panic spread through the room. The tags were still on her clothes, and her hair was wet and unbrushed, and I looked for the danger, for who was after her. But she stopped in the living room, frantically moving the couch pillows. “It’s on, it’s on.”

“What? What’s happening?” I stood beside her, trying to help, but had no idea what she needed.

It was then I noticed the phone in her hand. A phone I’d never seen before and didn’t know she had. She held it up to me. “My lawyer called. The news. They’re doing a program.”

“You have a phone?” The wrong comment. The wrong question.

“Yes, my lawyer gave it to me. I don’t have anyone’s number, though.” She was half-paying attention, her gaze roaming around the room until she found the remote.

It was the first time since she’d arrived that I saw behind Ruby’s carefully constructed facade. A tremble in her fingers as she turned on the television, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. She was practically breathless, standing in front of the couch, shifting back and forth on her feet.

“That’s her,” Ruby said, pointing the remote at the screen. “That’s my lawyer.”

The woman had sleek dark hair, cut blunt to her collarbone, angled cheekbones, a sharp suit. Her name was displayed on the bottom left of the screen in bold print: Blair Bowman. And now her words were coming through: “A grave miscarriage of justice. Evidence that could’ve exonerated her early on had been destroyed by those who should’ve known better. The crimes against Ruby Fletcher go back further than the trial itself. She never should’ve been arrested.”

Ruby eased onto the couch, perched forward. On the screen, Blair Bowman was sitting at a table with a man and another woman, discussing the facets of the case. How one of the neighbors was a cop and never should’ve been professionally involved; how he’d tainted the investigation from the start, advising others on what to say and what not to say. How the video evidence did nothing but prove Ruby was in the vicinity—and of course she was, she lived there, it wasn’t a crime to be outside. How witnesses had lied. “The relationships between all of these neighbors were contentious from the start,” the lawyer said, punctuating her point with her hand on the table.

A noise escaped Ruby’s throat, and the tension in my shoulders ratcheted up another notch. It hadn’t been me. I hadn’t lied. I’d been called by the defense—the only neighbor called by their side—to vouch for Ruby, and that was my plan. I thought I’d done the right thing, the good thing.

But in the witness box, in that moment, whatever you were thinking up to that point, it changes. What you say is between you and your god—or your faith in a system. A belief all the same. That the system we built would not wrongly convict or wrongly acquit. That justice can be served only if all play by the rules. And you play by those rules as a belief in something greater than you.

So I told them: Yes, she sometimes walked their dog; yes, I believed she had a key; yes, she was out that night, and I’d heard her come in at two a.m. through the back door, had heard the shower running soon after.

But I also told them she had no reason to do it. I told them we had all known Ruby for years. I told them she was a good roommate and reliable, and there was no animosity between her and the Truetts, no more than the rest of us. I told them the Truetts trusted her.

But I didn’t know what the others had said. I didn’t know about the footage that was shown. The very tight time line we had created. I did not hear Chase’s testimony.

How he’d told them that, on the morning we’d found the Truetts, all the neighbors came running. In the commotion, every one of us came out. Everyone except Ruby. As if she already knew the scene we had uncovered.

I didn’t know about the map that was shown of where each of us lived. The evidence attached to each house and the very clear path, established by each witness, of a closed loop—from the scene of the crime to Ruby’s return home: Charlotte Brock. Preston Seaver. Margo Wellman. Me.

When I went into the courtroom, I didn’t think they had enough. Neither did Ruby, it seemed—who, without bail, had pushed for a fast trial, believing she’d soon be out.

In that moment, on the stand, I did not know I was providing the final missing piece that would convict her.

Ruby leaned forward now, chin in her palm, rapt with attention.

Her lawyer was closing out the discussion. “We are looking into options, but rest assured this is not the last you’ll be hearing from us.”

Ruby shifted to face me then, practically drunk with some unnamed emotion—excitement or power. “We’re going to sue,” she said.

She smiled then, and I recognized it—her first real smile. The authentic Ruby Fletcher. The one I remembered. And suddenly, I knew why she was here. Knew exactly what she was doing, what she wanted. Even before she said it, I knew: “Someone’s going to pay.”