Such a Quiet Place: A Novel(83)

We had searched so hard for the evil lurking under the perfect veneer, the thing we were so sure existed. Like we had conjured it here.

We were good people with bad intentions. Or bad people with good intentions.

We imagined ourselves judge and jury, protectors of our community.

Turned ourselves into monsters, to murderers.

We became the very thing we feared.





THURSDAY, AUGUST 1





HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE

The page you are looking for does not exist





CHAPTER 26


I WAS STAKING THE FOR-SALE sign in the front yard when the car pulled up behind me.

I heard the window lowering, the questions beginning: “Harper Nash? Can I get a moment of your time?”

“No comment,” I said with barely a glance over my shoulder. The reporters were becoming less frequent, but a few persevered.

“You sure about that?”

The sound of her voice registered first, and I stood slowly, wiping my hands on the sides of my shorts.

Blair Bowman smiled tightly from behind the wheel of a black SUV as she turned off the engine.

I looked quickly up and down the street as she approached, sleek dark hair tucked behind her ears but dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, like she was just out for a drive.

“Let’s take this inside,” I said.

Her smile grew. “I thought you might reconsider.”



* * *



INSIDE, BLAIR BOWMAN PEERED around the house carefully, like she was imagining Ruby here.

But the house had changed since I’d prepared it to put on the market. The downstairs smelled of fresh paint and polished floors. I’d already removed half of my things to make the space look bigger. Upstairs, Ruby’s old room had been converted back into an office. There were no personal touches anywhere—a blank slate for other people to imagine their life, their future.

Some days, if I was lucky, I wouldn’t see her ghost.

“So, you’re moving. Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said. But I felt the pull of some trajectory, away from all of this. From Ruby, and Lake Hollow, and the life I’d built here. The possibilities that existed elsewhere. “My brother lives close,” I said. “I’m going to visit him for a while.”

She nodded. “That’s probably a good idea right now. Though I guess you’ll be back eventually, if there’s a trial.”

There wasn’t much yet to prove it was Charlotte—just the things she’d said that night: to me, to Tate, to the neighbors who were listening. Just the antifreeze in her garage (in so many people’s garages). It was still so early in the process. Too early to know what she would do, what others would do. Whether she’d take a deal. Whether there would be enough to convict.

Blair walked deeper inside, down the hall, toward the kitchen. “I suppose you know why I want to talk to you,” she said, turning around.

Because Ruby was staying here. Because I was the one to call the police that night to tell them Charlotte was guilty. To share what Ruby had uncovered.

I said nothing, though. Waiting for what she would reveal.

She smirked. “It’s not that difficult to trace an email, Harper.”

I flinched, though I supposed I’d suspected it—the reason she had shown up at my door. I thought I’d been so careful.

“An anonymous email, sent from the college campus, with a post from that message board… It was a short list, Harper.”

I crossed my arms. “There are plenty of us who work at the college and live in this neighborhood,” I said. It didn’t have to be me.

She shook her head, hands up, conceding the point. “If it came down to it, it wouldn’t be difficult to prove. Do you have any idea of the information stored in digital images?” She closed her eyes briefly. “Look, I’m not here to give you a hard time. But there’s so much interest in this case—in Ruby’s release, in her death—that someone else is bound to come looking.”

And yet she was the only one here.

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said.

“I guess I’m just here to satisfy my own curiosity,” she said. “Closure, you could call it.” She shifted on her feet, looking at me closely. “Did you always know she was innocent, Harper?”

“No,” I said. The truth. “I just wasn’t sure she was guilty.”

I’d sent the email to the lawyer in January. After Christmas with my brother, when I’d told him about the trial and my part in Ruby’s conviction.

He’d asked if I knew she was guilty, and I couldn’t answer. That look in his eyes—that question—it stuck with me.

It must’ve stuck with him, too, for him to call me about it again on New Year’s Eve. His apology, though, had not absolved me.

Was I sure?

Were we ever?

I believed back then that the system would shake it all out—but that was naive. We were the system. Decided what went in and what stayed out.

And so, spending the end of winter break alone in this empty house, I’d revisited everything, trying to convince myself.

I’d saved every post from that message board—so sure, like we all were, that the truth would emerge between the lines. I’d prove it to myself. So I knew we had done the right thing, the good thing.