Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(17)

When Aidan and I moved in, Tate and Javier Cora became our closest couple friends. We spent evenings in their yard or ours, drinking beers, grilling, laughing. The guys would go out sometimes in the evenings together, and Tate and I would meet up at the pool, drinks in hand, chairs turned toward the lake, faces angled into the breeze.

After Aidan’s departure, it became clear they had known for a while that he’d been considering leaving me; neither of them seemed surprised. When I told Tate—the first person I wanted to see; I showed up on her front porch with righteous anger and a bottle of wine—it was obvious that someone had beaten me to it. And it was then I understood that, at some point along the way, Tate had decided not to tell me that my fiancé wasn’t in it for the long haul.

I thought of every opportunity she’d had to tell me. Every time I had mentioned the ideal time for the wedding—Oh, yes, May is perfect, she’d agreed, anything later and you’ll melt—or how we were waiting for Aidan to finish his program first. Afterward, whenever I looked at her, I could only wonder how long she must’ve known. How many times she and Javier had discussed it, how they must’ve felt such pity for me. Something that verged on embarrassment.

It was hard for a friendship to recover from that. Every time I saw them together, I pictured them discussing it, hushed whispers in their kitchen, where they could peer from their window straight into our living room: It’s not our place, Javi. Oh, but poor Harper. I don’t think she has a clue.

Another chime came from the other side of the fence, and Ruby raised one eyebrow, her whole face shifting into a question. I knew what she was implying, letting me fill in the blanks. Who would Javier be texting after a fight with his wife?

A window suddenly slammed shut. Their back door swung open, the hinges crying. A pause as some silent communication seemed to be happening: No one was moving; no one was speaking. Like Tate had just realized their mistake—the open window, their voices carrying.

Ruby pushed the wooden ottoman slightly with her bare foot so that it scraped against the brick of the patio, and I didn’t think it was an accident. A small smile broke onto her face. I heard Javier take a deep breath, heard his feet on the steps, the door closing, the lock turning with unnecessary force.

Ruby didn’t have to make a scene. She could disrupt the balance with the shift of her chair. With the mere possibility of her on the other side of a high fence. Her small smile stretched into a wide grin, and I shook my head, though I was grinning, too. I felt the last fourteen months dissipating—the bond threatening to form once more, the same one that had made our living arrangement so easy.

After Aidan left, Ruby had quickly joined me in my coolness toward Tate, picking up on some undercurrent. There had been a vacancy left behind, a sharp sting of betrayal, and Ruby had filled it.

“Wonder what that was all about,” Ruby said, standing from the chair. Then she ambled across the small brick patio, casting a quick glance toward the edge of the mulch bed, where the soil had been disturbed in sections. Rabbits, she had said, but it looked too organized. Too deliberate.

“Come on,” I said, gesturing for her to follow me inside. “How long were you out there?” I asked once the door was closed behind us. Always, always, tallying her minutes. As if I could control her actions by accounting for her time. Knowing how guilt emerged in the gaps: The time to unscrew the carbon monoxide detector from its spot on the ceiling; the time to take Fiona’s car keys from their spot beside the garage door; the time to start the car and run—down to the lake, down to the woods; the time to dispose of evidence and sneak back home—

“Not too long,” she said. “Hey, can I borrow your car today?”

My train of thought faltered. “I can drive you,” I said.

She skirted by me, walking past the kitchen into the foyer. “I have a meeting with my lawyer,” she said, her voice echoing as she headed for the stairs. “She’s coming through town and asked if I could meet her and the team in private. It’s in some business park, and I don’t know how long it will take.” She paused at the bottom step, one hand on the railing. “Okay?”

It was not. Handing over my car was not the same as an extra bathing suit, a pair of flip-flops. “I was planning to go to the grocery store,” I said.

“We can do that tomorrow,” she said, and I remembered that, with Ruby, you had to be firm and definitive, had to say what you meant. She would not give you the benefit of nuance or concede a point that had not been earned.

“I’ll call you an Uber,” I said, and her fingers curled tightly on the railing, the ragged nails bitten down to the quick.

“Harper,” she said, “the case is all over the news. I can’t have some kid with a license picking me up, driving me around, taking his shot for his fifteen minutes of fame after.”

The implied threat: Following her back here. People watching. Media vans camped outside, like they had been the days after her arrest—

Every decision was a balance, and I couldn’t see the right option, the right answer. I felt the pieces spinning out of my control.

She didn’t even wait for me to say yes.



* * *



WHEN SHE CAME BACK downstairs a short time later with that brown leather messenger bag slung across her chest, she went straight for the drawer beside the front door, where I kept my ring of keys. This was another skill of hers, to push you into something, catch you on your heel before you realized what was happening. Asking, half as a joke, Any chance you could use a roommate, filling the backseat of her car and taking up residence in your house; saying, with the police on the front porch, Will you tell them, Harper? Tell them I didn’t do it? That I don’t have their key anymore? That I couldn’t have done it? So that the only thing you could possibly say, with her right there, eyes wide and searching, was Yes, of course, yes.