Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(71)

“What?” And then, as it slowly dawned on me, “Did you send the lilies?”

Her eyes widened in a gesture I used to know so well, like Of course I sent the lilies. “Yeah, I left them on the porch. I wrote you a letter. I signed my name to it, Harper. It really wasn’t a mystery.”

But I was shaking my head, wanting to go back in time, to see the simple truth when it counted. “I never got it,” I said. “Ruby told me they were from her.”

Tate’s expression turned sharp, her jaw tensed, and I knew that if Ruby were alive, Tate would’ve made her pay. It was Ruby who had caused that divide between us. Who’d pushed that narrative. Telling me that my friendship with Tate was unhealthy. Letting me believe that she was the one who cared. The only one.

I wanted to ask Tate what the letter had said. What she’d wanted to tell me. I wanted to reach out to her, go back, make different decisions that would land me in a different place. But it felt impossible, too large a gap to bridge—how one small move led to another, until you were too far down a path to undo it all. Wondering how to even begin.

“Well,” she said. Well. Here we were, all the same.

We fell to silence—the hum of the refrigerator, the click of the air-conditioning unit turning on, white noise circulating, keeping our secrets.

“Tate, can I ask you something?” I said, voice low.

“Shoot,” she said in her straightforward way.

“Mr. Monahan said he saw Ruby that night,” I began, easing my way to the question.

“What night?” she said, turning away fast, her ponytail whipping behind her, like she’d just forgotten something. Like she knew what I was going to ask.

“The night the Truetts were killed,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, opening the fridge, taking out the lemonade, pulling two cups from the cabinet. “Do you want some?”

“No, thanks,” I said as she poured, one hand at the base of the pitcher to hold it steady. “He said Ruby was walking up the front of our street on her way home. But then she would’ve been on your camera, too. Right?”

She eased the pitcher down, sipped from her drink, then tipped the cup back further, gulping it down. “God, this doesn’t really do the trick anymore.” She laughed to herself, then stopped.

“Tate,” I said. Remembering what Ruby’s lawyer had said on the news program, that there was evidence that had been destroyed. And Chase telling them to keep it simple. The fight I’d heard between Tate and Javier, their voices carrying out the kitchen window. The tension brewing behind these walls. “Did you see her that night?”

She dropped the cup on the counter too hard, so the liquid splashed out over the rim. “She’s dead. It doesn’t really matter anymore.”

“It does, it matters,” I said. Because someone had killed her, and I had invited myself into the house of the people who might’ve destroyed evidence, and Javier would be coming back soon.

“No, I promise you. It doesn’t.”

“Was there someone else on your security camera? One of Charlotte’s daughters?”

Her expression jolted in surprise. “Charlotte’s daughters? No, why would you say that? It was her, it was only ever Ruby.”

The truth, then. Mr. Monahan was right. And Ruby had been on Tate and Javier’s camera.

“Then why did you hide it?”

“Because!” She threw her hands in the air. “Because there’s no way to just turn in a thirty-second clip of Ruby walking by. Because I’d have to turn over the entire evening. From midnight to two, that’s what the police wanted, right?”

I nodded, not understanding.

“I am a teacher,” she said. “A middle school teacher. We both are, me and Javier. You can’t have anything”—her voice broke, nearly a whisper now—“anything on your record. Nothing.”

“Tate, I’m not following you here.”

She finished the lemonade, then twisted the cup back and forth on the counter, looked me dead in the eye as if deciding on something. “We got back after midnight,” she said.

I nodded, encouraging her. I’d heard this much, after all. “You were at a friend’s party.”

“We were. And we drank too much.”

So they’d been caught on camera, stumbling in the front door, a little drunk? I hardly thought the police would care. I hardly thought they’d be able to charge the Coras with anything and make it stick.

“We hit a deer.” As soon as she said it, her eyes wide, the rest of the words started spilling out, like she’d been holding it back for too long. “It was bad, Harper. The car was a mess. Like we needed a new bumper. Like we’re lucky we got home in one piece.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “We’re lucky we got home at all. It was a horrible, horrible idea. But we kept driving after, figuring we just needed to get home, and that’s what you’d see on that camera out there.” She pointed to the front door. “Us, practically falling out of the car, barely able to stand. We moved the other car out of the garage to hide the damaged one inside. Because we couldn’t bring it to get fixed until we were sober. Because we had to pretend we’d hit a deer another time. We decided we’d say it happened the next day. And then we’d go into the shop and get the car fixed.”