Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(36)
I locked my office behind me and walked faster than necessary for the exit. Outside, that white car still sat at the other end of the lot.
And that was when I heard it clearly: a heavy step at the side of the building, boot on gravel. I spun in time to see Preston Seaver walking into the lot.
“Hey there, Harper,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he’d been waiting or had just arrived. Whether he’d been here all along.
He was in his security uniform but on foot, not in his car or on one of the electric golf carts the security team often used to get around.
I stepped back, on instinct. “You gave me a heart attack,” I said, looking around the lot. “You’re working this week?” I’d seen him early yesterday morning, finishing Mac’s watch, and assumed he had off this week.
“Just the morning shift, making sure all the buildings are secure for the holiday. Anyone in there with you?” His green eyes skimmed over me quickly.
“No,” I said, holding up the files that had been wedged between my purse and my body. “Just bringing some work home. It’s empty in there otherwise.”
He nodded, then tipped his head to the white SUV in the lot. “You know whose car this is?”
“No, haven’t seen it before. I assumed it was someone giving themselves a tour.”
“It was here yesterday, too. There aren’t any plates.”
I looked again—the tinted windows, a contrast to the mud-caked tires. “Was it in the same spot?”
He chewed the side of his cheek. “Don’t remember.”
It reminded me then of what had happened after Brandon’s death. How the media had come to his home, our neighborhood, and then to his place of work, reporting from our lot, while we watched from behind the windows, our doors locked. How Anna had to call security to get them to leave. Murder wasn’t good press for the college, either.
“You could get it towed,” I said. “If there’s no permit.”
“You don’t want to tow the wrong person’s car, here, by accident.” He walked closer, peering in the windows, completing a slow circle.
I unlocked my car and dropped my purse and the files on the passenger seat, preparing to leave before he could question me about something else.
“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yeah, see you at the party,” I said, easing myself inside.
When I drove out of the lot, I checked the rearview mirror. Preston was standing beside the white SUV, hands in his pockets, watching me go.
CHAPTER 12
AS I TURNED IN to Hollow’s Edge, past the stone sign and the fresh flowers and the mock lanterns at the entrance, I caught a glimmer of the lake before the road curved, and my breathing stilled, like always. On the drive in, it sometimes felt like you were sliding toward the water, especially in the dark, with only the porch lights to guide you down. I knew the graded roads and elevated plots were to give the impression that each house could have a view, but sometimes it created the illusion of the entire neighborhood sloping toward the lake, like we were all fighting some gravity.
But for all our differences, this was it—what we were here for, what drew us in. We were a group who appreciated a certain aesthetic, a certain lifestyle. We gravitated here, and to one another, from this commonality alone. We assumed things about one another because of it. We assumed we were alike.
We had kayaks and paddleboards and fishing lines. We spent summer weekends in our bathing suits underneath cover-ups, coolers ready to go, an assortment of insulated mugs to keep our drinks cold. We had midday happy hours and late-night barbecues, hair tangled from the wind or the water.
Maybe Brandon and Fiona hadn’t known what they were getting into when they moved here. To be fair, neither did I. I’d toured the area with Aidan before we moved, thought it looked calm and peaceful and quiet, that it was the type of place that would settle into me—that it would settle me. Turn me into someone still driven but more carefree, like Aidan. But that was before we were both ultimately surprised by the people we turned out to be. Seeing each other for the first time out of context when we moved here. Maybe Aidan seemed so academically driven only because he preferred it to the finality of what came next. Something he was actively avoiding.
And maybe I seemed outdoorsy and adventurous only because I’d been pushed outside all my life, sent to camps, enrolled in activities—anything to avoid the pitfalls my brother had fallen prey to. Maybe I became this way only because my parents were terrified of what could happen to me when I remained stationary. Like there was something sinuous that targeted stillness, always waiting to sneak up on me, sneak into me. This fear that I was at the whim of something greater, outside my control.
It was easy to forget now that the Truetts were one of the first families in. And maybe that tainted their perspective, too—that someone was always moving in, changing the rules, changing things on them.
A large subset of us at Hollow’s Edge overlapped at work. It wasn’t just Brandon and me, in the admissions department, and Ruby, who had been a student. It was Tina in the health center and the Seaver brothers in grounds and security. Paul Wellman in alumni giving; Charlotte, as a counselor; and Tate, who helped coach lacrosse as a second job.
It was the reason, I believed, that our neighborhood sometimes took on the approximation of dormitory living. Like we were an extension of the college in both location and age. Conforming ourselves to the unique structure of a private post-secondary education.