Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(20)

Now I heard the echo of his question: Shouldn’t you be sure? I wasn’t even sure what she was doing here now. But suddenly, with Ruby out, I saw the opportunity.

This time I approached her room with purpose.

Since the main door to her bedroom was closed, I entered the bathroom, like I had this morning, so as to disturb as little as possible. I took a closer look. On the counter were the essentials we had purchased online yesterday: fresh toothbrush and toiletries, half of them piled in the far corner, unopened. Humidity lingered in the bathroom, condensation clinging to the mirror, like she’d only just stepped out. I flipped the exhaust fan to circulate the air, and something fluttered overhead.

Above, a tight wad of paper had been wedged between the vent blades. I closed the lid of the toilet and stepped up carefully, balancing with one hand against the wall. Reaching up, my fingers brushed against the edge of a paper—a twenty-dollar bill that had unfurled, flapping with the gust of the fan. I leaned to the side, getting a better look at the roll of cash. If those were all twenties, that was far more money than I would’ve thought the lawyer would give her to get herself started.

From what I could see from this angle, there was an assortment of small bills—fives, tens, twenties. Like a hand had reached into a bucket of cash and randomly pulled. I couldn’t imagine her lawyer opening her wallet, counting out her assorted cash, and handing it over with a shrug, but I couldn’t figure out where else Ruby would’ve gotten it.

I quickly flipped the fan switch off.

My heart raced as I opened the cabinets under the sink, looking for more things she might’ve hidden, when I spotted a bright yellow pouch tucked behind the plumbing. I knelt on the ceramic tile and pulled it out. A small drybag, like we used when we were kayaking, to keep our phones and keys safe and dry.

It was empty.

She must’ve found this in the storage compartment of her kayak, buried under fourteen months of junk. Suddenly, I understood. This money hidden in the bathroom; the empty drybag under the sink; her fear that I’d gotten rid of the kayak and her insistence on taking it out—she had hidden her money there before her arrest. Maybe she’d been planning to make a run for it.

And now she was back for it.

A chill ran through me at the realization that maybe the neighbors hadn’t been paranoid with the rumors after her arrest. Their claims of money that had gone missing from a wallet, a purse, a house during a party. Maybe I had never known Ruby as well as I’d thought.

But I could feel my pulse slowing again, because I could finally make sense of her actions. She’d sneaked inside that first day, shoes in her hand, empty luggage in the hall. She was here, in my house, for the things she’d left behind. This was a series of steps I could trace forward and back, understand her motivation, see it through to its inevitable end: with her leaving this place.

Koda leaped off the edge of her bed in the connecting room, and I jumped, startled.

Ruby’s luggage sat in the far corner of the room. When I checked, it was still empty. I pulled open one of the drawers to the small dresser she’d brought over from her dad’s house when she moved, carefully searching through the clothes we had ordered together, tags still on. Some things, like the socks, remained in the plastic bag they’d arrived in.

There was nothing unexpected as I checked the rest of her drawers. I stood at the single window, peering out between the tilted blinds, where her room overlooked the back of our square patio and Tate and Javier Cora’s backyard. The branches of the trees outside the fences swayed, though there hadn’t been any breeze when I’d been out.

I pressed my face closer to the blinds, my forehead resting on the white slats. If someone was lurking in the line of trees beyond our backyards, I wouldn’t be able to tell, with the high fence blocking the view of the ground. Rows of tightly packed evergreens creating the illusion of privacy, so you would forget about the road giving way to another semicircle of houses directly beyond.

A squirrel, probably. We heard them all the time, hopping from the branches and scurrying across the roof. A quick pitter-patter of feet that set my heart racing every time.

I checked the closet last. Inside, the few wire hangers on the metal rod remained empty. A heap of dirty clothes was stacked in the dark corner, like she wasn’t sure what to do with them just yet. I dug my foot into the pile of fabric just to check. Nothing.

There wasn’t much else in the room to go through. A beige towel hung from the edge of the bed where the cat had been sleeping, and I resisted the urge to pick it up and hang it in the bathroom before it mildewed.

Before Ruby’s arrest, I had let the police in here myself, given them permission to search, when they were looking for the missing carbon monoxide detector. I was so sure they wouldn’t find it here—and they didn’t. The police ultimately believed that was why Ruby was spotted on Margo and Paul Wellman’s video feed, running toward the lake: to dispose of the evidence, though nothing was ever found.

I’d watched as they searched her room back then, methodically and carefully. I remembered all the places they’d checked. So I flipped the pillow over. Ran my hands along the comforter, then along the seams where the bed was pushed against the wall.

Finally, I reached between the mattress and box spring, sliding my arms up and down the length of the bed. My pinkie caught on something sharp near the head of the bed, and I jerked back. A dot of blood, the beginning of a wound; I brought it to my mouth to stop the sting. Then I reached my other hand carefully under the mattress again, and my fist closed on something small and metallic.