Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(82)

Tate flicked a latch on the side of the gun: I could hear it from where I stood; could hear my heart racing, too.

“Wait, wait, wait,” I begged.

But her arm kept lifting until it was pointed directly over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and shot the gun into the air, the noise deafening.

I crouched on impulse, dropped the box, covered my ears, until the ringing subsided. When I opened my eyes, Tate’s eyes were wide open, staring at the gun. She had taken several steps back, been unprepared for the recoil—like she’d had no idea what would happen when she pulled the trigger.

Only that people would come.

The sound of steps approaching, the back gate screeching open, and Javier spilling out into the night in his boxers. “Tate?” he called, skidding to a halt.

“Javier,” she said, waving the gun in our direction as she spoke. “Pick up that box.”

He did as he was told, eyes barely skimming over me as he bent down in front of me, taking the box from where it had fallen. He looked at it carefully, eyebrows furrowing, then back at his wife, like he’d never seen her before.

Chase arrived next, sprinting from the other direction, in tune to the sound of a weapon firing. “Whoa,” he said. “Everyone calm down.” He looked behind him for anyone else. “Shit.”

Charlotte’s gate creaked open slowly, and I saw eyes peering out from the darkness. “Mom?” Whitney stepped out in an oversize T-shirt, messy hair, rubbing at her eyes. She looked so far from adulthood right then, with no understanding of all the steps that had led to this moment. No idea the role she herself had played.

Molly emerged behind her, eyes wide, meeting mine—as if she understood. Someone else who quietly watched.

All of us stood there, in the trees behind the fence line, with no cameras and no other witnesses.

“What the hell is going on?” Preston asked, standing beside Chase as if they were the people in authority here and not the three of us—with the knowledge and with the gun.

“Call the police,” I said. I begged it, really. The fear of inaction, the danger of it.

“Harper, stop,” Charlotte said. “Listen, we’re all a family here. Every family has secrets. Things we need to keep together. A bond that makes you stronger.”

Another back gate opened, and everyone turned to look.

“Girls,” Charlotte said, taking control, hands still raised, afraid to make any sudden move. “Go back inside. Don’t say a word.”

But they both remained, staring at the scene unfolding before them.

Preston looked to Mac, slow to arrive, slow to react. Chase looked between all of us, trying to unravel it all.

“Harper says that no one killed the Truetts,” Tate said. And they looked to each other, considered each other, eyes wide, voices silent.

“Ruby was innocent,” I said. “The Truetts’ death was an accident, and Charlotte doesn’t want anyone to know.”

Molly whipped her head from her mother to her sister.

“She poisoned Ruby,” I said, though I had no proof. Just the conversation inside the house that no one else had heard.

We weren’t a family.

Us, with our taste for true crime and gossip. With our view into each other’s homes, our voyeuristic desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves.

Yes, we were as powerful as we had imagined, in our search for the danger, our yearning to lock it up. We had deluded ourselves. Turning ourselves into liars and worse. Buying in to our brand of reality. Because we had to believe it—accept that there was a killer, one who must’ve lived so close, right here.

It could just as easily be one of us. It could just as easily be you. Every one of us, inching one step closer.

It had to be someone else.

We’d conjured monsters from nothing. Manifested fear.

Truth by mob; death by fiction.

“Is no one going to call the police?” I yelled, my voice wavering. “Seriously?”

And Tate, with the gun, arms wide, gesturing to all of us like a threat. “You heard her. Call the fucking police!”

Javier made a show of patting at the sides of his boxers, then turned for the house. Preston had his phone out in his hand now.

But I was suddenly afraid. Of what they would say. Of whom they would protect.

Of what they envisioned as safety.

I slid my phone out from my back pocket, fingers shaking. Everyone watching as I pressed the buttons. No one stopping me as I held it to my ear. As I told them where to come. “This is Harper Nash. There’s a situation in Hollow’s Edge.”

Everyone kept watching, the tension growing. This realization that we were all complicit. That we’d made mistakes or told tiny lies—little things that added up. That ended with the conviction of an innocent person.

That we’d all had a hand in the events that led to her death.

“My neighbor killed Ruby Fletcher,” I said, so it was clear, so it was on tape somewhere.

A pause.

“Charlotte Brock.”

We stood there waiting, the call of a siren coming closer.

All of us staring at one another, trying to unravel the steps that had gotten us here. To Tate, with a gun. And Charlotte, with her hands up, begging us not to call the police. And me, with the proof.

To three of us dead, and the rest of us standing out back in the middle of the night like we were seeing each other for the first time.