Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(42)

“They don’t have me. She’s innocent until proven otherwise.”

His head jerked to the side, like he thought someone was listening. Then his focus turned back to me. “Don’t you think it’s weird that she came back here? That she came back to you?”

I did. I’d thought she’d take the money and go. But she was still here. Still waiting for something. “She trusts me,” I said. “I was the only one who spoke in her defense.”

His expression twisted up in confusion. “You can’t possibly think she trusts you.”

“She thanked me. After I gave my testimony.” I shrugged, remembering that final communication as I stepped down from the witness box. The last time I’d seen her.

“She…” He trailed off, shook his head. “That’s not at all what she said.”

“You weren’t there,” I said. He had testified earlier in the trial, so he couldn’t watch the rest.

“I know, but plenty of my friends in the department were there. They sat through the whole trial, and it’s all they could talk about after. What she said when her roommate stepped down.” His eyes widened, the whites glowing in the moonlight. “They were legitimately worried for you, Harper. If she hadn’t been found guilty.”

I blinked rapidly. “What—”

“How she turned to you, clear as day, with everyone watching, and mouthed: Fuck you. Like she didn’t even care if the jury saw.”

My mind was scrambling, trying to make sense of the scene. I shook my head, stepped back. “No, she didn’t,” I said. I was there, and he was not. But I couldn’t stop my mind from returning to that day, the way my head was light and dizzy as I stepped down from the witness box—all those eyes on me, and the questions, and Ruby sitting right there. I’d felt ungrounded and removed, everything distorted through a filter. And this time, in my memory, as I passed Ruby, I saw her teeth catching on her lip at the start, her message becoming something else—

“Seriously, Harper,” he said while I was still caught on my heels. “Be careful.” I closed my eyes, trying to see. The memory morphing each time: Thank you. Fuck you. “Hey,” he said, hand on my shoulder. “You have my number, right?”

But I shrugged him off. Ruby had known this would happen—that there would be someone else out here. Someone else watching. Chase had ruined his own career, his entire future, and now he was desperate to get it back.

“Stop watching us,” I said. Because he was obsessed. Had been back then and was still now. Jogging by my house, standing outside the pool, waiting for me, even now.

He raised his hands in proclaimed innocence, heading back inside.

I couldn’t get away from him fast enough, and I wasn’t paying attention as I rounded the corner, up the next road, behind our street. My mind was stuck on that scene in the courtroom—Ruby’s face, turning my way; Ruby’s eyes, meeting mine—so I didn’t tune in to the noise at first.

A car driving off. Brake lights disappearing around the curve ahead.

There were plenty of possibilities: someone lost; someone curious; someone who knew that Ruby was here and was watching.

As I stood there, staring at the space where the car had disappeared, I sensed something off in our backyards.

Something moving. Not behind the patio gates but closer—in the trees.

I ran my light through the pine trees, looking for any sign of someone else. I was worried that this was the person whom Chase might’ve mistaken for Ruby, testing the boundaries of his house. Who had been in my backyard when Mac was over.

I stood perfectly still, then heard that same familiar noise—of a gate creaking.

I paced the line of fences until I came to the unlatched gate: at the house beside mine.

The Truett house.

I pushed open the gate, shining the flashlight into the corners. But there was nothing inside the patio fence. A rusted spot on the brick where a grill had once stood. Dark, uncovered windows giving way to the empty house.

I pulled the gate shut, unable to lock it from the outside, wondering how it had gotten unlocked in the first place. Whether someone had found a way in and was snooping around.

And then I stopped.

Maybe it was Chase’s words, or thinking back to my testimony, but I stood frozen in place. Contemplating once more what I’d heard that night. The story it created.

Ruby, leaving through the front, taking the keys to the Truett house. Bringing the dog outside. Peering into the Truetts’ bedroom, watching them, making sure they were asleep. Taking Fiona’s car keys, starting the car, leaving the door ajar—

Planning it so carefully. So methodically. So ruthlessly. From the moment she took those keys.

In which case, what was she doing, waltzing in front of the cameras after?

If she’d been planning to return by sneaking in the back gate, she wouldn’t have let herself be spotted in the front by half the cameras on the street.

Either she planned it carefully and was not careful at all, or it was a crime of chaos. Both of these things could not be true.

Chase had to be wrong. About her, about what she’d said.

I hugged the edge of the fence line on the way around the block, passing each enclosed patio, until I could circle to the front of our street again, at Tina Monahan’s house. Without the porch light, the corner was pitch dark. As I passed in front of Tina’s house, a bright light suddenly shone across the driveway. They must’ve had a motion detector.