Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(3)

Tate and Javier Cora, my neighbors to the left, were looking to move, but they were two doors down from the crime scene and had been advised by their realtor to wait it out. But there were others who had slowly disappeared. A fiancé who had left. A husband who was rarely seen.

Breaking the case had broken a lot of other things in the process.

Instead, I said: “The Wellmans had their baby. A boy.”

Ruby smiled. “Guess he’s not such a baby anymore.”

I pressed my lips together in an approximation of a smile, unable to figure out the right thing to say, the right tone. “And Tate’s pregnant.”

Ruby froze, beer bottle halfway to her mouth. “She must be unbearable,” she said, one eyebrow raised.

She was, but I wasn’t about to tell Ruby that. I was always trying to decrease animosity, smooth over tension—a role I’d long inhabited in my own family. But these were safer conversations than what we could’ve been discussing, so I ran with it. “And Charlotte’s oldest just graduated, so we’ll be losing one more by the end of the summer.” I was filling the silence, my words coming too fast, practically tripping over one another.

“Can we vote someone else out instead?” she asked, and I laughed, imagining the many names Ruby might propose, wondering which was at the top of her list. Chase Colby, most likely.

It felt like no time had passed. Ruby was always like this: disarming; unpredictable. A hypnotic personality, the prosecutor had declared. As if we were all the victims and therefore blameless in our allegiance.

It was something I repeated to myself often, to absolve myself.

But then I realized why she was asking about everyone, about who was here and who would remain: Ruby was planning to stay.



* * *



IN TRUTH, I HADN’T given much thought to where Ruby would go after her release. It hadn’t occurred to me that here would even be on her mind, with everything that had happened. We hadn’t spoken since that day in the courtroom after I testified, and that could barely count—she’d just mouthed the words Thank you as I passed.

I’d pretended I hadn’t noticed.

If I’d had to make a guess, it might have been that she’d go to see her dad in Florida. Or hole up in some hotel suite funded by the legal team who had gotten her released, working the case angles with her lawyer. I would’ve thought she’d be more likely to disappear entirely—seizing her chance, reemerging in some faraway place as someone new. A person with no history.

I checked the clock over the fridge, saw it creeping past noon, drummed my fingers on the countertop.

“Expecting company?” she asked. She was looking at the spread on the counter again.

I shook my head. “I was going to bring this to the pool.”

“Great idea,” she said. “I missed the pool.”

My stomach plummeted. How many things had she missed—the cool blast of the refrigerator, the pool, me. Would she keep listing them off, twisting the knife?

“Be right back,” she said, heading toward the hall bathroom at the base of the stairs.

I washed the knife as soon as she was out of the room—it was too much, laying out there on the surface, taunting us both, unspoken. Then I picked up my phone quickly, scrolling through the messages piling up.

From Tate: Why didn’t you tell us she was coming back here??

From Charlotte: Call me.

So they already knew.

But I ignored them, instead firing off a quick message to Mac, fingers trembling with leftover adrenaline: Do not come over.

I had no idea how long she intended to stay. Ruby’s bags were sitting just outside the entrance of the kitchen. Maybe I could get a sense of things without asking directly. I listened for water running in the bathroom, but the house was eerily silent. Just the cat, Koda, hopping off a piece of furniture somewhere upstairs, and the muffled call of a cicada from the trees out back, growing louder.

I slowly unzipped the larger piece of luggage, peering inside. It was empty.

“Harper?”

I yanked my hand back quickly, the side of my finger catching on the zipper. Ruby’s voice had come from the top of the staircase, but only her shadow was visible from where I stood. I didn’t know what she could see from this angle.

As I backed away from her bags, she came into view, moving slowly down the stairs, hand sliding down the railing. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

Her voice had subtly changed, the way people had pointed out during the investigation—what some called hypnotic but what others called cunning or angry. It was all loaded together on a razor’s edge. Either way, it made you pay attention. Made you tune in acutely to whatever Ruby was going to tell you.

“About what?” I asked, feeling my heartbeat inside my chest. There were so many things I could tell her:

Everyone still thinks you’re guilty.

I don’t know why you’re here.

I slept with your ex.

“My things. Where are my things, Harper.”

“Oh,” I said. I hadn’t had time to explain. Hadn’t thought it would be an issue. Hadn’t thought she’d expected any differently. “I talked to your dad. After.”

She paused at the bottom step, raised a single exacting eyebrow. “And?”

I cleared my throat. “He told me to donate them.” It wasn’t that I was unsympathetic, it was just, twenty years was a long time. She acted like she’d been gone a week, not fourteen months.