Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(60)

I was remembering the way Mac came over at the start of summer break, beer in hand, crooked smile on his face—the coincidence of his timing. Whether the rumors of Ruby’s case had brought him to my front door once more. And if so, what he was truly after.

I called my brother again, sitting on the cold floor of the foyer, the photo in my hand.

This time he answered on the first ring. “Harper? Is it Dad?”

“Sorry, no, everyone’s okay,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Good.” He paused for a beat. “It’s just, you’ve called twice on a Saturday. I have a missed call from you from earlier.” Our calls were infrequent, our relationship existing primarily on holidays and via parent updates.

“What kind of person would you say I am?” I asked abruptly. I was staring at a photo of evidence I’d hidden. Had listened as Ruby called me an opportunist, unable to be happy as myself.

“Are you drunk?” he asked as answer.

“No. Just if you had to describe me to a friend. Like My sister is…”

“The good one,” he said without pause.

“Ha,” I said.

I heard his sigh through the phone. “I guess I would say: I wish I knew her better growing up, but I fucked up our family pretty good. I would say: She gave me more chances than I deserved, and she’s a better person than me.”

I’d forgotten this about my brother: that he was direct and honest, always trying to atone for himself but unable to stop the cycle. I was wrong—nothing existed in him that reminded me of the true Ruby.

In the silence that followed, he said, “Is everything okay? You’re not having some sort of breakdown, are you?”

“Well,” I said, thinking of how to even begin. How to present this without inviting judgment. And then I stopped worrying. It was my brother, and I’d seen him at his worst, and maybe it was only fair that he saw me at mine. “The verdict in my neighbors’ murder was thrown out.”

“Oh, shit,” he said.

“Ruby came back here. To my house. It was a mess, and she’s dead.” Silence on the other end. “The police think she was poisoned.”

More silence.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Are you in trouble?” he asked, quick and low.

“No.” A pause. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. Kellen, my God, it’s all horrible.” A horrific mess, with three people dead and an investigation just beginning.

“You should come visit me.”

I laughed. “I don’t need Mom breathing down my neck right now, too.”

“No, I’ve got a new place. God, it’s been a while, Harp.” Our last real conversation was the one on New Year’s Eve, I thought now. Over seven months with neither of us reaching out. “I’m in Philadelphia,” he said. “Well, close to Philadelphia.”

“What?” That was six hours away.

“Long story. But I have a job here, and other than dealing with Mom’s constant calls, it’s a pretty quiet time.” Quiet times was the term Mom used for his good times. As if quiet were a positive thing and not an immense blanket of deception covering what was potentially brewing below.

But I was stuck on his prior statement. “You moved to a new city, you’re only six hours away, and you didn’t tell me?”

“I don’t want to impose.”

“You wouldn’t be,” I said.

“You weren’t always thrilled to see me when I came to visit Dad…”

Because my dad expected too much of Kellen, was never able to let the past go. He’d bring it up somehow—on day two or day three—and I’d have to watch my brother harden, never able to exist in the present. “Not because of you,” I said.

“Well,” he said, “I also don’t have a car right now, either.”

I laughed then, remembering how his excuses always existed in layers. But knowing I could reach him in a day’s drive if needed. “I’ll call you later,” I said. “It’s good to hear your voice. Just don’t tell Mom and Dad, okay?”

He laughed then, too. “Harper, it is my absolute pleasure to begin repaying that debt to you.”

And then I pushed myself off the floor with that photo in hand. I wondered what Ruby felt the first day when she was home, reaching her hand deep into the soil—coming up empty.

The first day Ruby was back, even before she’d gone to the kayak for the money, she’d gone into the backyard in the middle of the night and reached her hand down into the dirt, looking for this.

I was seeing her more clearly now: She wanted access to all of us here—our secrets, our lives.

When I’d found the keys this spring, Ruby had already been gone for so long. She had been convicted.

Back then I’d wondered what she had been doing with those keys. Whether she used them to piece through our lives, stirring up gossip with a throwaway line—if our discomfort had been all for her entertainment.

Chase told me the guys had wanted to bring up the rumors they knew but couldn’t prove during the investigation. And now I was thinking again about the way Aidan had left, so fast, desperate to escape something.

Chase was right: She had always been dangerous, just not in the way I had assumed.