Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(27)

Here, to our neighbors, we revealed a side of ourselves that we kept hidden from our colleagues and acquaintances. The person we were at five a.m. on garbage day; the hours we kept; the lives we led. We were closer to being a family than not, knowing each other’s schedules, and visitors, and insecurities.

We knew who didn’t make it in to work (and whether they lied about the cause); we noticed whose cars didn’t make it home at night; we saw whose recycling bins were overflowing at the edge of the driveways (though we were rarely surprised); we listened to the arguments carrying from open windows and backyards, feeling more like confidants than voyeurs.

I rang Charlotte’s doorbell precisely at nine. She answered the door barefoot, in leggings and a flowing tank over a sports bra, like she had been working out. Though there wasn’t any evidence other than the clothing. Her hair was shiny and blow-dried straight, and her house smelled of coffee and freshly cut flowers. There was no evidence of the luggage from yesterday in the hall, or her daughters.

“Hi,” she said in a faux-quiet voice. Then she gestured to the staircase behind her. “The girls are still sleeping.” A quick roll of her eyes. “Teenagers in the summer. Come on in. They won’t hear us in the kitchen.”

I followed her past the stairway, down the hall, into the kitchen, where three barstools were tucked under the counter dividing the kitchen from the living room, the lack of a table opening up the space.

Charlotte still had a faint limp, if you knew what you were looking for. An accident in the midst of her divorce that had landed her in a ditch with her leg pinned the wrong way. A resulting knee surgery. It was more pronounced when she was barefoot, like she was still being careful. A residual fear of the damage. I rarely saw her in shorts, so the limp sometimes caught me by surprise. But I found it reassuring that there were things outside all of our control. That even she couldn’t anticipate a deer darting out from the woods. That even her instincts—cutting the wheel in the wrong direction, toward the lake, where the road sloped into a ditch—could be wrong.

“Are the girls going to Bob’s?” I asked her.

She faltered, looked over her shoulder at me, and said, “No, they’re spending the holiday here.”

“Oh, yesterday Molly mentioned—”

“Yes,” she said, waving away the comment, “there was a mix-up on his end over who had them for the long weekend.” She poured us two mugs of coffee and sat on one of the counter stools, leaned her chin in one hand, and waited for me—for what I’d come to say.

I always felt insecure when I was alone with Charlotte. As if our contrast was too great not to acknowledge. Ever since Bob left, it seemed like she’d doubled down on herself. Calm and unflappable before and after. The fact that her marriage had fallen apart in such a public way, that she was aware we all knew—it must’ve killed her. I knew what it was like to have the whole neighborhood watching as the life you’d built abruptly fell apart. But instead of humanizing her, it had done the opposite. She’d fortified herself, daring you to find a weakness.

“First,” I said, hands held out in the universal proclamation of innocence, “I had no idea she would turn up at my house. Scared me to death, to be honest.”

“Mm.” A noise that could’ve meant any number of things. Her face remained porcelain. “I can imagine.” She spooned some sugar into her mug, the metal clanging against the side.

“She just…” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “She just walked right in like nothing had changed.”

“And?” she asked, raising the mug to her lips, steam rising.

“I think she came back for her things.” I didn’t specify the money she’d left behind, hidden in her old kayak. I cleared my throat. “And… did you see her lawyer on TV the other night?”

Charlotte shook her head, mug frozen. But the lack of movement gave her away—she was holding her breath. Intrigued despite herself. I wanted to shake her, break through the surface, share a secret. But it was like she thought any show of emotion lost her the upper hand. Like she had to be the person you wanted something from, needing nothing in return.

“Ruby said they’re going to sue,” I finally said.

Charlotte lowered the mug back to the counter. “Sue who, exactly?”

I tipped one shoulder, then added cream and sugar to my mug. I really did need the caffeine, my head fuzzy from the sporadic night’s sleep. “She didn’t say. But she went to meet with the lawyer yesterday.”

She raised her eyebrows again. “And?”

“And she hasn’t come back yet.”

Charlotte let out a deep breath. “Maybe she’s not coming back. Maybe this has nothing to do with”—she waved one manicured hand over her head—“any of us.” The same thing I had hoped.

“Well,” I said, after taking my first sip of perfectly brewed coffee, “she has my car. So I do, in fact, hope she returns in this case.”

Charlotte closed her eyes and laughed softly despite herself. “Oh, Harper,” she said, and I knew I was forgiven. That I was back in the role she expected me to inhabit. Too trusting, too naive. Too blinded by my desire to see the good in everyone. The last to know when Aidan was going to leave. The last to accept the truth about Ruby but forgivable for the pattern of my own nature.