Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(66)

“There we go,” Mrs. Monahan said, following us inside.

“Chase was going to come?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, he helps out a lot. Whenever Tina isn’t around. He’s a good man, that one.”

I wasn’t sure she’d agree if she knew everything that had happened during the trial. If she understood that he was under internal investigation, that his hand in the case had tainted everything.

“Do you want something to drink while you wait, dear?” she asked as Mr. Monahan moved farther down the hall, toward the dining room at the front of the house.

“No, thank you, I’m sure I’ll catch up to her later—”

“That girl is back,” Mr. Monahan said, eyes narrowed at the dining room windows, facing the front yard.

A shudder rolled through me. The same thing he’d said when I was out on watch that night, when he was with Tina, asking if that girl was back home.

“What?” I said. I turned, expecting to see the ghost of Ruby. If anyone could return, fake her own death, convince us she was gone when she was really still here, it would be her. I caught a streak of dark hair—a blur at the edge of the window—and then it was gone.

He grunted. “She thinks she’s so clever. Hugs the front porches so the cameras don’t catch her, so no one will see her. But we do. We see her.” He moved closer to the window, and I stepped beside him, peering out.

“George, don’t make trouble,” Mrs. Monahan called. He waved off his wife, though she couldn’t see him.

“Who was that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “One of Charlotte’s girls. She figured the trick,” he said, eyes narrowed as he kept watching. “Stay close enough, and the motion lights don’t catch you, the cameras look right past you.” He shook his head. That girl back? he’d asked just after one of Charlotte’s daughters had been dropped off at home—not asking about Ruby at all.

“Where is she going?” I asked.

“Down to the lake. Cuts through the trees. There.” His finger jabbed at the windowpane, and my gaze followed. The trees across the way. The other side of the inlet, with the dirt access road, the abandoned campfire.

“Ha,” Mrs. Monahan called from the kitchen. “Like you would know. What, you following her now?”

“No, but people talk around me like I’m not here. Like if I’m not on your eye level, I can’t tell what you’re saying. I can hear just fine,” he called back, raising his voice. “She and that young man were making plans at the pool party, standing right over me. Before…” His words trailed off. Before the fireworks. Before Ruby was found dead. Before she was poisoned.

Before someone poisoned her.

But I was stuck on his earlier comment. “What young man?” I asked.

“You know,” he said, waving his arm, seeming to search for something. Mrs. Monahan entered the dining room and gave me a knowing look. Like his mind wasn’t all that it should be anymore. Like I should take whatever he said with a hefty dose of salt. “She told him there was a party out there. That they were meeting at the pit the next night. Asked if he’d be showing up this time.”

The pit. That must’ve been what they called it—the small clearing on the other side of the inlet. Where Javier thought the kids were launching a boat. Where I’d seen the shadowed figure watching the kids on the lake last night.

“They’re just kids, George,” Mrs. Monahan said. “You weren’t even sure which girl it was.” She turned to me. “They look so similar, don’t they? For a long time, George called them both Whitney.”

“No,” he said with a grin. “I called them both Molly.”

I saw Ruby’s journal again. The initials she put in the page at night with a question mark.

Not Margo Wellman.

She couldn’t be sure whether it was Molly or Whitney. Ruby had seen one of them sneaking by in the evenings—and so did Mr. Monahan.

“Anyway,” he continued, “it’s the older one. The one we had the graduation party for. She’s the one who was making plans to meet up at night. She’s the one who sneaks out there.”

“Whitney,” I answered.

“You sure you don’t want something?” Mrs. Monahan asked, a polite way of telling me it was time to go.

“No, thank you,” I said. I opened the front door, and Mrs. Monahan retreated to the kitchen.

“I told Charlotte,” Mr. Monahan said in the entrance, one hand on the door. He lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t want my daughter out there with everything going on. Scary enough she was out there that night.”

I blinked twice, trying to process. “What night?”

“The night the Truetts…” He trailed off, hand to his hair again, as if trying to keep track of something.

“You saw Whitney out that night?” I asked, keeping my voice low in response. Ruby had claimed she heard someone else out there, and maybe this was it. Maybe she had been telling the truth about that all along.

“Yeah, I told Chase that. Saw one of Charlotte’s daughters heading down there earlier in the evening.” He shook his head again. “I saw her and Ruby both. But we don’t have cameras, and apparently, an eighty-five-year-old in a wheelchair is not the most reliable witness in the middle of the night. Like I said, I’m not blind. I could’ve helped. But I guess they didn’t need it.”