Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(18)
“Thanks, Harper, I owe you one,” she said, heading for the front door. My whole life, suddenly in her grip.
I followed her outside, watched as she slid into the driver’s seat of my car. She started the engine, lowered all four windows as if the inside of my car felt too contained. Hands on the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead—
“Like riding a bike, right?” She gave me an exaggerated grimace, and I wanted to ask, Do you even have a license? Is it still good? But more than anything, I wanted her gone—before anyone else noticed her sitting in my car. Ruby in my house. Ruby in my car. Slowly infiltrating my life once more.
“That’s what I hear,” I said.
She gave no indication that she heard me as the car glided down the slight incline.
I watched from the sidewalk as she drove to the stop sign, turning out of sight at the Seaver house, then I listened as the sound of the engine faded into the distance—not sure what I was waiting for. An accident? A change of mind or heart, my car suddenly returning up that same road? Ruby apologetic, stumbling out of the car, handing me back the keys, all the while saying, Oh my God, I don’t know what I was thinking.
A flash of movement in the front window of Charlotte Brock’s house caught my eye: curtains dropping back into place.
Of course people were watching. Whatever had happened at their meeting the night before, no one was reaching out to fill me in. This would probably make it worse.
I crossed in front of the Truett house and shuddered at the lingering scent of exhaust from my car. A trigger of a memory, my arms rising in goose bumps—Chase yelling at me to open the garage door as he turned off the car, then the mechanical churning so painfully slow as I held my breath—
The smell had taken a while to dissipate. It lingered so long that sometimes I wondered if it was what had brought me to their house that morning to begin with. Some subconscious understanding of wrong, only exacerbated by the barking dog.
Past the Truett house now, I marched up the porch steps to Charlotte’s front door, still feeling a chill, like the ghost of a memory following me in the dark.
When I rang the bell, I heard footsteps on the other side of the door—and then silence. As if someone was watching. Deciding.
“Charlotte, come on,” I called as I knocked.
The door abruptly swung open. Molly glanced past me.
“Hey, is your mom home?”
She blinked rapidly, long eyelashes and faint freckles on her cheeks, like her mother’s. Her gaze finally settled back on me. “No, she had to take Whitney to the dentist.”
I noticed her own teeth then, white and sparkly. I’d thought she had braces; she must’ve just had them removed. She ran her thumb along the top row now, like she was still getting used to the feeling.
As she started closing the door, I caught sight of the duffel bag in the hall, deep blue against the light gray walls, matching the set of landscape photographs hanging in the foyer. As if even this had been coordinated. The layout of their house was much the same as my own, but with a master down along with the two extra bedrooms upstairs, and decorated with a much better eye for design.
“You going out of town?” I asked.
Molly shifted to block my view, narrowed her eyes, a new distrust—as if the fact that I had harbored Ruby tainted my own character. As if she hadn’t known me for years.
“Mom wants us to go stay with our dad. But she didn’t check with him, and he’s not home.” Hand running through the ends of her dark hair, gathered over her shoulder.
Bob Brock had seemed as generic as his name, tall and thin and nondescript. Blandly handsome in person but nothing to remember. He had the type of face I thought I’d seen before. That had made me ask, Have we met? when I’d first moved in. Nothing like Charlotte, who was easy to notice, easy to remember. She had dark hair and freckles and looked much younger than her age. From a distance, walking together, Charlotte and her daughters could all pass for siblings. They were striking on their own, even more so as a group.
Even his job seemed ordinary—he worked in accounting. Which was what made what happened so hard to believe. Bob worked from home, depending on the project, and apparently had a habit of asking his girlfriend to park around the corner, keeping her car out of sight, and walk up our street, entering through their double garage, before she came into frame on their security camera.
But Margo Wellman had noticed the unfamiliar car at the curb, noticed the trend of the timing, and posted a photo to the message board of the blue sedan with a short blond woman exiting, because we had a strict no-solicitation rule. Anyone know this woman? she’d written. She’s been parking here every day this week around noon. I’ve never seen her before. And then Preston Seaver searched through his security feed and posted a clip of her walking past his house, sunglasses on, head down: Looks like she was heading up our street. But she never made it onto Charlotte’s camera next door. Charlotte was the one who posted: She never shows up on my video. Disappears somewhere between your front door and mine. ??
No one responded, not a word, until the truth sank in, and the drama shifted from the board to reality.
Charlotte was nothing if not detail-oriented and organized. She piled Bob’s things neatly into boxes and stacked them out front. We saw the locksmith’s van parked along the street before the end of the day.
The girls aligned themselves, as expected, with their mother—remaining here more often than not, even though their parents lived in the same town and shared custody. Bob had stuck it out with the girlfriend. Word was, he’d moved straight in with her on the other side of the lake after Charlotte had kicked him out.