Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(64)

I turned the page, and a square of folded paper slipped out.

I unfolded it to reveal an old computer printout. Like something from our message board.

But it wasn’t recent. I recognized it from long ago. This was a screenshot of our message board from the early days of the investigation:


HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE

Subject: CHECK YOUR CAMERAS

Posted: 4:48 p.m.

Chase Colby: You all saw the video from the Seavers—looks like Ruby, but it’s not a clear shot with her hood pulled up. What we need is footage between midnight and 2 a.m. We need to track Ruby, and it has to be airtight. Check your doorbell cameras, any security footage, anything that picks up noise… let me know what you’ve got.

Margo Wellman: What if we find something else?

Chase Colby: Don’t.

Javier Cora: Lol

Preston Seaver: He’s just being honest. There can’t be anything else. A lawyer will take that and try to cast doubt, twist the story around so that it’s someone else instead. Anyone who might’ve stepped outside. Suddenly you’re the other suspect. Just saying.

Chase Colby: He’s not wrong.

Tina Monahan: It’s obviously her.

Charlotte Brock: Delete this.

This exchange had barely appeared on the message board before Chase went back and deleted it. But it was enough. And Ruby had it.

The post that had kicked everything off. The focus on her time line that ultimately led to her conviction, yes. But also her release. The screenshot that found its way to the lawyer months after the trial, that started the internal investigation into the police. That got her conviction overturned.

Ruby had a copy of it, and as with a list of suspects, she was watching them all.

The paper shook in my hand as I scanned through the names. My neighbors, people who once were my friends. It had seemed so innocent then: an idea slowly gaining momentum—evidence conforming toward its support.

I had thought everyone had good intentions. But maybe I was wrong.

The people of Hollow’s Edge, subconsciously conspiring against her, to end her. To put her in her place. To show: Here—look what we can do. That we, as a collective group, were powerful. And once we began, it was a steamroller gaining momentum, and there was no stopping it.

She had come out of prison on a mission. Had lied and broken into this house; followed us, watched us. Taunted us with what she knew.

This neighborhood may have become something different in the time since she’d been gone, but oh, so had she.

I wasn’t sure if she would’ve done this before or whether prison had changed her. Or if everything that had happened before had changed her view of the justice system. What was the point of playing by the rules if you were the only one? If the system had failed you?

Not that I was ever sure Ruby had played by the rules. She’d had these keys, after all.

But two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been here. I wouldn’t have dug up the keys and let myself into this home that did not belong to me.

Turned out, we were all so close to criminal. All you needed was a good enough motive.



* * *



I TOOK THE JOURNAL with me. Had no intention of staying in this house any longer than necessary. Wasn’t sure how Ruby had managed—in the oppressive heat, with the stifling scent—knowing all that had happened here. I couldn’t lock the back door, since the key didn’t work, but I retraced my steps, out the patio gate, back through my own, and then sat on the edge of my couch, trying to make sense of Ruby’s notes.





CHAPTER 21


BY NOON, I HADN’T slept, but I believed that I had worked out Ruby’s system; that I knew what she was doing in that house at night, curled up in a sleeping bag in the front room.

Ruby was watching us. Tracking each of us.

She’d been in that house even when I thought she was gone.

From her journal, it was obvious she’d been here all along, watching us.

Under the heading for each day was a list of initials, and arrows, and times, kept in columns. I realized she was keeping track of who was passing in front of the window and in which direction. She watched us during the day, and she watched us at night.

I wasn’t sure when she slept, other than the few times I’d seen her in the upstairs bedroom of my house.

I could find myself, even, on these pages. HN, passing the front window of the Truett house, going to the right—when I was heading to the pool or to Charlotte’s. A chill ran through me as I realized I’d seen Ruby there once. That the chill at the back of my neck had always been her: a flash of movement in the front window as I passed. The feeling that someone was watching me.

She noticed Mac coming and going, too. MS to the left—to see me. A wave of nausea rolled through me, even though she was gone. Of course she’d known. She must’ve known about Mac almost from the start.

In the evenings, she marked the movements of the people on watch: Mac and Javier and me, passing by, on each shift.

All these mundane movements—she’d been keeping track of them all.

Beginning June 29, she knew there was nothing quiet about this neighborhood. She knew she’d caused a stir with her return and that people would show themselves, reveal themselves. Believing we’d be afraid.

And we were.

Not of the physical things she was capable of but something more—something she might know. The year before, we had been a steamroller gaining momentum, but that momentum had shifted direction. She had endured, she had returned, and she knew what we had done.