Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(25)

So when he said, We weren’t that serious. I mean, you know that. We never were, I could answer: I know.

I knew roughly how it would go after that, had watched the same routine with Ruby. The way he called her kiddo, the way he skirted around her, stayed in her orbit, always making sure she was turned to him, following.

He’d stood and placed the empty beer behind me on the sink, leaning close. I needed that, he said. I was no longer sure what he was referring to, and I no longer cared.



* * *



BEFORE MAC, BEFORE THE trial, before the sound of the engine humming too long in the garage next door, I had often felt like I was standing on the edge of something, looking down, always careful not to get too close. Growing up with my brother, I had always felt the pull toward the other extreme. Like I was fighting to maintain a delicate balance; like any slip would send the rest of our family into a spiral. I’d believed strongly in the necessity of control—for myself and for others. I’d spent my entire life staying within the confines I’d established for myself or the boundaries others had set for me.

What would happen, I’d suddenly thought, if I breached those confines? If I did not pull back but leaned forward instead, giving in to the impulse and recklessness of the moment?

The answer, it turned out, was both relieving and terrifying: nothing. There was no repercussion, no slide I’d set in motion, and there was something alluring about that realization.

But now, as Mac stood beside me, it felt more dangerous, more deliberate. Back then, what was the harm? There was no fear in being found out, no consequence we would have to face—other than the side-eye from Tate, the knowing look from Preston. It had felt justified, even. Two people who could understand each other. Whose lives had been shaken by proximity to Ruby Fletcher.

Things had been easy and simple with Mac. We weren’t serious, either. We were a convenience. I couldn’t imagine Mac ever being serious about anything. Whatever we had then had dissipated by winter vacation, only to start up again early last month—some Pavlovian response to the changing seasons.

Mac placed the beer bottle on the counter, standing closer. The room felt charged, like he was testing me, but in some game—something elicit, something exciting. A rush. Like he was waiting for Ruby to catch us.

“Wait,” I said. Because the decisions weren’t as easy to make when there wasn’t a twenty-year buffer and cinder-block walls between us. Then I thought, So what if she found me? What would she do? Leave? Would that really be the worst thing?

I didn’t put up much of a fight when Mac leaned in, his mouth on my neck. But he must’ve felt my resistance. “Don’t let her get to you, Harper,” he said, breath next to my ear, body pressing mine into the counter. “Are you afraid?”

“No,” I said, even though I was listening for a car, watching the front entrance. But the thing I’d learned about fear was that it heightened everything, even this. It solidified whom you trusted and whom you didn’t. It clarified things—about others, about ourselves.

A noise coming from the patio made me jump. Even Mac jerked back, knocking the beer bottle over in the process, so that it rolled against the countertop, too loud in the silence.

“What was that?” he asked, peering at the darkness through the living room windows. It had sounded like something had fallen on the patio.

Mac stayed put while I crossed the living room toward the back entrance. I pulled open the door, heard nothing but the sound of crickets and a creaking hinge. The back patio was empty, but the high back gate of the fence had come unlatched and kept swaying back and forth.

That gate should’ve been locked from within. There was a bolt to turn from the patio, and it was unreachable from the outside. I’d started locking it after the Truetts. I never forgot. Without the lock, the gate could be unlatched by someone from the outside, occasionally from the wind or neighbors jostling the fence line.

I walked down the back steps, crossed the patio, and peered outside the fence into the row of trees. The sound of the crickets grew louder, but there was nothing visible between the shadows of the evergreens, overlapping. I couldn’t even see the streetlight on the other side of the road beyond, where the next half-moon court sat, a little more elevated than ours.

I pulled the gate until the latch clicked, then turned the lock. Maybe Ruby had left the gate unlocked when she was out here earlier today. When we were listening to Javier and Tate. Maybe she’d gone out for a walk and had forgotten to secure the fence after. But she’d been barefoot this morning; I didn’t think she’d been outside the fence.

“I think someone’s been watching the house,” I said, retreating to the safety of inside, locking the back door behind me. I turned to face Mac and felt once more the image of the key chain hidden in my back pocket. I wondered if whoever had placed it there had been trying to sneak closer to watch my reaction.

Mac was still staring out the window, and I didn’t know whether he believed me.

“Maybe you should get back out there,” I said, irrationally angry. Like he was the one at fault.

“Harper,” he said, “it was probably just the wind. Don’t let her get to you.”

My irritation only grew. As if Ruby’s presence was shifting the fabric of my reality. As if I was seeing danger in the places it didn’t exist.

As if Mac had come for any other reason than because he was drawn to the danger of the moment himself.