Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(59)



Anyone who saw this picture would know.

Anyone could see it was me.





CHAPTER 19


THEY WEREN’T MINE.

That was the defense I had worked through, sitting in my backyard patio, key ring in hand. What I’d tell the police. What I’d tell the neighbors.

They weren’t mine.

But they’d been in my house, and my fingerprints were all over them, and this wasn’t just the Truett key. Oh, no. If only it had been, maybe I would’ve called someone, turned them in.

But this was something more, and I heard the echo of Chase’s advice, his low words through the fence: Keep it simple.

Get them out of the house.

Away from you.

Now.



* * *



I’D FOUND THEM THREE months ago, in the spring, planting flowers in the mulch bed of my patio. Spade in the soil, digging beneath the mulch into the cool earth.

My shovel struck something hard six inches down—something I thought at first was an accumulation of small stones. But I reached my gloved hand into the soil, and my fingers hooked into a ring. A glint of metal in the sun as I pulled it out.

A large ring of keys, deliberately hidden in the corner of the garden.

That dog-bone key chain was the first thing I recognized, attached to a larger ring by a small loop. But the large ring was full of keys. Each labeled with a small black letter written in Sharpie.

I pieced through them one by one, wiping the dirt and grit from the surface of each key to reveal what was written below.

The T, the B, the S, the C… I was halfway through the key ring before the realization settled in: that these were the keys to other houses on the street. The T for Truett; the B for Brock; the S for Seaver; the C for Cora. On and on they went.

I didn’t know what this meant. Why Ruby had all of these keys. I assumed she’d hidden them during the investigation after denying she’d had the Truett key. Asking me to back her up, to tell the police: I don’t have their key anymore.

A bold-faced lie, while she buried the truth.

Not only did she have the Truetts’ key, she also had the keys of nearly everyone on the street. And they probably had no idea.

I could only imagine that this was an accumulation of keys she had amassed over the years, living here. From all her time walking dogs, or bringing in mail, or house-sitting. The keys that were left for her under doormats, or spares that were temporarily lent her way. Either she hadn’t returned the keys, or she’d copied them. My guess: copied them. So that no one knew she had them anymore.

But these were also more keys than I thought she’d had access to. There were plenty of people who had never trusted Ruby, wouldn’t have left her in possession of a key. But we were all connected here. Access to one house could grant her access to another—a neighbor’s spare key, for emergency, labeled and hung on a key hook on the wall or in a kitchen drawer.

Years ago, Tate and I had swapped keys in case one of us was ever locked out. Though our friendship had cooled, we’d never asked for them back. Such an admission would be too direct. Too confrontational. And so Tate and Javier Cora’s key was still buried at the back of the top drawer of the entryway table, should they ever need it.

Ruby had plenty of chances to find it, copy it, use it. From the look of it, she had gotten us all. Every one. And now this set of keys was in my hand.

I’d debated what to do with the ring of keys that day, sitting on the brick patio, as the late afternoon turned to evening. And then I thought of the lake, of fingerprints disappearing—a hand of fate that might or might not drag them to the surface someday in the future, freeing me of any role or suspicion.

So I’d headed that way in the dark, passing the closed front doors, the glow of porch lights. The jangle of keys in my pocket was too jarring in the quiet night. I’d clenched them tightly in my palm, cut down the path in the woods by the pool, heading toward the water. Believing I was alone.

But someone had seen me. Someone had stood at the back corner of the concrete pool deck, watched as I ran by—and caught me.



* * *



NOW I KNELT ON the cold wooden floor of the front foyer, this photo in hand, with all the things I knew it could imply—all the ways it could be twisted against me. Wondering why someone was taunting me with this and what they were planning to do with it now.

Though Preston and Mac shared that upstairs office space, Mac had been with me at the meeting. He’d already been there when I arrived. It was Preston who came in late. Who had time to leave this threat in my door.

Preston had been so quick to turn on Ruby after the Truetts were found dead. And when Ruby was gone, his distrust seemed to transfer to me, by rule of proximity alone.

Preston, who had been at my place of work, watching me. Preston, who had a master set of keys at work. Who had printed other warnings in his office, the I SEE YOU crumpled under his desk. Preston, who lived three doors down, who had walked straight through my front door when I’d been out on watch.

I’d thought these warnings had been to try to push me to get Ruby to leave. A threat that, if I did not, this could be revealed—to others, to Ruby herself.

But Ruby was gone now, and this newest picture had still arrived. And I no longer knew whom I could trust.

I didn’t know whether Mac was a part of this somehow. I didn’t know how much the brothers shared with each other, whether family mattered above all else. I felt entirely afraid and alone.

Megan Miranda's Books