Page 28 of Such a Quiet Place
CHAPTER 10
IWAS STANDING IN THEhallway outside the kitchen with my cell phone in my hand, debating, when I heard the mechanical hum of my garage door. Nearly thirty hours after Ruby had left to go meet with her lawyer. Enough time for me to research local business parks and pull up Blair Bowman’s information, debating whether to make that call—or whether to call the police, report my car missing.
I opened the front door and stood in the entryway, staring at Ruby in my driveway, watching as she rifled through the trunk. She didn’t even look my way until she was halfway up the steps, in a different outfit than when she left. She pushed through the doorway, two tote bags full of groceries on one arm.
“Hi!” she said, bags extended in my direction. “Hold on, there are more.” Nothing about being gone, being missing. The new clothes, the lack of contact.
She turned down the steps, gathering the last of the bags, closing the trunk with a resounding thud. Half the street probably heard, heading for their front windows.
Ruby strode past me in the entrance with the three remaining bags. She waltzed into the kitchen, humming as she emptied thegroceries. The tote bags were my own, stored in my trunk, now brimming with the staples of my kitchen.
“Ruby,” I said, unmoving at the entrance.
She paused, turned around, lips pressed together when she took in my face. “You’re mad,” she said, her posture deflating.
“Of course I’m mad,” I said, not bothering to worry about the level of my voice, whether anyone could hear. “You were gone for two days with my car! I was”—furious, worried—“I wasthis closeto calling the police.”
I heard the echo of my mother in my head, following Kellen into the house after one of the many times he’d disappeared for a night, a weekend, or more. The nights my parents had spent arguing over whether to call the police or his friends. Whether to lock him out or lock him in. Over who had abandoned him and who had enabled him. The relief evident on her face at his return, even as her voice rose in anger—
Ruby blinked rapidly. “Oh, God, I’m sorry. I know, I wasn’t thinking. I just…” She lifted her arms, closed her eyes, feigning contrite. “I got carried away. I wanted to call, but I didn’t know your number. Not by heart. It used to be in my phone, you know.” She fished around in her messenger bag, pulled out her cell. “Here,” she said. “Tell me your number.”
I recited the numbers by rote, and my phone began ringing in my back pocket. She pressed “end.” “Now we’re connected,” she said. “It won’t happen again.” As if the fault had been out of her hands until now.
“Where have youbeen?” I asked, because it was my car, my house, and Charlotte was right. I didn’t owe Ruby unfettered access to my life.
She let out a sigh. “It was late by the time we finished up, and we’d been drinking over dinner, and I just thought… I should stay. Last thing I need is to get pulled over now, right?” Eyes wide,like she was sharing a secret. “I would’ve called you if I had your number, I swear! And then I wanted to make it up to you by getting the groceries, since you mentioned needing to go shopping. I found these bags in the trunk. Very resourceful. Very conscientious.” A grin. “And I’m making you dinner,” she said, a tentative smile. “To make it up to you. And to thank you. For everything.” She blinked once, slowly. “Forgive me?”
I nodded, started emptying boxes from the closest tote bag. Because what could one say when she was in your house, with your keys, and she’d been locked up for the last fourteen months?
“I really am sorry, Harper,” she said, voice lower, more confessional.
“You scared me,” I said, our eyes locking over the span of counter between us.
She held my gaze, unmoving, until I looked back to the tote bags. There was something almost eerie about the groceries she’d purchased. She knew exactly what I’d been needing. A new carton of eggs, the type of orange juice I drank, everything that was running low—she’d gotten it all and then some. I thought of the money in the bathroom. How much more of it did she have? She’d come back in new clothes with new food. I assumed she’d stayed at a hotel near her meeting, but maybe I was wrong.
“Go,” she said, and I was shocked by the word—the one I’d been thinking to say to her instead. “Go relax. I’ve got this. Please, let me do this.”
When I didn’t move—because it was my house, my kitchen, my cabinets she was currently opening—she pulled out the wine from the last bag. “Here,” she said, “still your favorite?” And something softened inside me, because it was. Because, fourteen months later, a lifetime later, she still knew this. And I remembered the other side of her, before the investigation: how thoughtful she’dalways been. When I’d had a bad workday, when Aidan had left, she’d somehow known exactly what to say or do.
She’d brought me flowers—lilies, my favorite, in an assortment of colors that brightened the room. She’d stood on my front porch with the vase in her hands and said,He’s an asshole, and I’m sorry.I’d invited her in, and she looked around my half-empty house, and it was then, seeing the empty spaces that needed to be filled, that she asked if I could use a roommate. When all I could feel were the people who had been our friends, who were no longer reaching out, as if my heartbreak might be contagious.
It wasn’t a roommate I needed in particular, but Ruby filled up the space with her things, her laughter, her thoughtfulness.
Ruby checked the right drawer on the first try, held up the corkscrew, and opened the bottle, pouring me a healthy portion. I took it from her hand, our fingers brushing.
“Now,” she said, with a crooked grin, “let’s see if I remember how to use a stove.”
This time I smiled, too. I went along with it, leaning into the awkwardness, the way she just embraced it, made it a part of her, didn’t try to fight it or pretend it didn’t exist—the opposite of Charlotte, in so many ways.
I took the glass of wine out back, sat in the Adirondack chair with the chipping white paint, watching the shade creep across the brick patio. Thinking about how the trial had painted her, the way they wanted to make her into a manipulative villain instead of someone fully formed. Who could be both generous and careless, fearful and feared.
Next door, I could hear the daily monotony of Tate and Javier’s dinner routine—banging cabinets, the rattle of a pan on the stovetop, Javier’s muffled voice. Whatever had happened yesterday, they seemed back on track today.
I curled my toes on the wooden stool, watching the bees dartingfrom flower to flower in the mulched garden against the house. The far-right corner of the mulch bed was disturbed—Ruby was right, though it wasn’t obvious unless you sat at a distance. An abrupt gap between the flowers and the edge of the brick, the mulch between them dark and overturned.
When Ruby swung open the door a while later, her face was shiny, and the scent of garlic and oregano trailed after her. “Dinner is served,” she said with a flourish of her arm, beckoning me inside. She was brimming with nervous energy, watching for my expression as she led me past the kitchen.
She’d set the dining room table off the front foyer, which we never used. It ended up functioning as a holding area for mail or packages, usually. We typically ate at the kitchen table, or standing at the counters, or on the couch with plates balanced on our laps, wineglasses on the coffee table.
