Page 17 of Such a Quiet Place
“Come on,” I said, gesturing for her to follow me inside. “How long were you out there?” I asked once the door was closed behind us. Always, always, tallying her minutes. As if I could control her actions by accounting for her time. Knowing how guilt emerged in the gaps:The time to unscrew the carbon monoxide detector from its spot on the ceiling; the time to take Fiona’s car keys from their spot beside the garage door; the time to start the car and run—down to the lake, down to the woods; the time to dispose of evidence and sneak back home—
“Not too long,” she said. “Hey, can I borrow your car today?”
My train of thought faltered. “I can drive you,” I said.
She skirted by me, walking past the kitchen into the foyer. “I have a meeting with my lawyer,” she said, her voice echoing as sheheaded for the stairs. “She’s coming through town and asked if I could meet her and the team in private. It’s in some business park, and I don’t know how long it will take.” She paused at the bottom step, one hand on the railing. “Okay?”
It was not. Handing over my car was not the same as an extra bathing suit, a pair of flip-flops. “I was planning to go to the grocery store,” I said.
“We can do that tomorrow,” she said, and I remembered that, with Ruby, you had to be firm and definitive, had to say what you meant. She would not give you the benefit of nuance or concede a point that had not been earned.
“I’ll call you an Uber,” I said, and her fingers curled tightly on the railing, the ragged nails bitten down to the quick.
“Harper,” she said, “the case is all over the news. I can’t have some kid with a license picking me up, driving me around, taking his shot for his fifteen minutes of fame after.”
The implied threat: Following her back here. People watching. Media vans camped outside, like they had been the days after her arrest—
Every decision was a balance, and I couldn’t see the right option, the right answer. I felt the pieces spinning out of my control.
She didn’t even wait for me to say yes.
WHEN SHE CAME BACKdownstairs a short time later with that brown leather messenger bag slung across her chest, she went straight for the drawer beside the front door, where I kept my ring of keys. This was another skill of hers, to push you into something, catch you on your heel before you realized what was happening. Asking, half as a joke,Any chance you could use a roommate,filling the backseat of her car and taking up residence in your house; saying, with the police on the front porch,Will you tell them, Harper? Tell them I didn’t do it? ThatI don’t have their key anymore? That I couldn’t have done it?So that the only thing you could possibly say, with her right there, eyes wide and searching, wasYes, of course, yes.
“Thanks, Harper, I owe you one,” she said, heading for the front door. My whole life, suddenly in her grip.
I followed her outside, watched as she slid into the driver’s seat of my car. She started the engine, lowered all four windows as if the inside of my car felt too contained. Hands on the steering wheel, eyes straight ahead—
“Like riding a bike, right?” She gave me an exaggerated grimace, and I wanted to ask,Do you even have a license? Is it still good?But more than anything, I wanted her gone—before anyone else noticed her sitting in my car. Ruby in my house. Ruby in my car. Slowly infiltrating my life once more.
“That’s what I hear,” I said.
She gave no indication that she heard me as the car glided down the slight incline.
I watched from the sidewalk as she drove to the stop sign, turning out of sight at the Seaver house, then I listened as the sound of the engine faded into the distance—not sure what I was waiting for. An accident? A change of mind or heart, my car suddenly returning up that same road? Ruby apologetic, stumbling out of the car, handing me back the keys, all the while saying,Oh my God, I don’t know what I was thinking.
A flash of movement in the front window of Charlotte Brock’s house caught my eye: curtains dropping back into place.
Of course people were watching. Whatever had happened at their meeting the night before, no one was reaching out to fill me in. This would probably make it worse.
I crossed in front of the Truett house and shuddered at the lingering scent of exhaust from my car. A trigger of a memory, my arms rising in goose bumps—Chase yelling at me to open thegarage door as he turned off the car, then the mechanical churning so painfully slow as I held my breath—
The smell had taken a while to dissipate. It lingered so long that sometimes I wondered if it was what had brought me to their house that morning to begin with. Some subconscious understanding ofwrong,only exacerbated by the barking dog.
Past the Truett house now, I marched up the porch steps to Charlotte’s front door, still feeling a chill, like the ghost of a memory following me in the dark.
When I rang the bell, I heard footsteps on the other side of the door—and then silence. As if someone was watching. Deciding.
“Charlotte, come on,” I called as I knocked.
The door abruptly swung open. Molly glanced past me.
“Hey, is your mom home?”
She blinked rapidly, long eyelashes and faint freckles on her cheeks, like her mother’s. Her gaze finally settled back on me. “No, she had to take Whitney to the dentist.”
I noticed her own teeth then, white and sparkly. I’d thought she had braces; she must’ve just had them removed. She ran her thumb along the top row now, like she was still getting used to the feeling.
As she started closing the door, I caught sight of the duffel bag in the hall, deep blue against the light gray walls, matching the set of landscape photographs hanging in the foyer. As if even this had been coordinated. The layout of their house was much the same as my own, but with a master down along with the two extra bedrooms upstairs, and decorated with a much better eye for design.
