Page 32 of Such a Quiet Place
The lake accidents mostly happened in the summer, with no college students to witness the tragedy. But the biggest tragedy to date was the truest: the murder of Brandon Truett, head of admissions, and Fiona Truett, who managed a string of tutoring centers. Locked away for the crime was a former student of the college and neighbor of the victims.
Ruby Fletcher was a legend in the flesh, and now she had returned.
When the students moved back in the fall, if Ruby was still here, I imagined they would start coming by our neighborhood to get a closer look. A new dare. I wondered if the local kids had already started.
The campus on Fourth of July week was mostly empty, especially given the early hour. Even if people were working, they probably wouldn’t come in until closer to ten, other than the grounds department.
I pulled into the lot behind the admissions building, a low brick building with glass inset into the triangular top of the roof, making it look like there might be a second story. Each administrative building in this section was small and quaint and separate.
There was another car back here in the small lot. Most visitors ended up parking in the main visitor lot and walking across the picturesque green at the center of campus, following the snaking brick paths to other brick buildings. This lot was unlabeled and set back, accessible via the narrow faculty roads, requiring a permit on the windshield.
I didn’t recognize the white SUV in the back-left spot, under the shade of an oak tree. The rest of the staff was supposed to be on vacation. I parked on the other side of the lot, closest to the building’s back door.
We didn’t schedule any prospective campus tours or meetings from our office for the holiday week. But sometimes people cameon their own during family road trips, taking in the colleges along the way, giving themselves self-guided tours. Others parked in our lots on the weekend to ride bikes through campus or have an afternoon picnic on the green.
I used my key to let myself in. The lights turned on automatically as I stepped inside. “Hello?” I called, just in case it was someone from tech, updating our systems. But the lights were motion-operated, and since it had been dark until my arrival, I couldn’t imagine someone else in here. The three offices beyond the front lobby stretched into darkness, though each was glass-walled—a modern renovation inside a classic, traditional structure.
I locked the entrance door behind me, which I always did when I was alone in here. It was a policy first implemented by Brandon Truett. He’d told us about a student who showed up after being rejected, demanding to know why. There’d been implications of a weapon. Campus security was called by the receptionist when she heard what was happening. Brandon said that was why we were to keep doors locked after hours, when campus security wasn’t the press of a button away. Especially if we were alone.
Back then, I’d thought he was overreacting, as I always did. Suspected his story, even, chalking it up to another legend that grew out of the old brick buildings. His story seemed less unlikely after his death. And any time I wanted to believe in Ruby’s innocence, I was reminded of this: someone who could’ve been angry enough to harm him. I told the police that there were thousands of people with motives. That his job made him the figurehead of rejection. Which, one way or the other, was a common motive for killing. Something that struck you to your core, sharp and fast.
“Anyone here?” I called, just so I wouldn’t spook someone. No one responded.
I had a different key for my personal office—a lock I’d had changed after taking over Brandon’s space, in the days when paranoiacrept in. Those first few months, I couldn’t look at my office without seeing the version that had existed before: the large desk in the center of the room, the worn chair, the single frame on the clean surface. College of Lake Hollow paraphernalia decorating the walls, a framed portrait of the lake and surrounding campus taken from above.
This office had never truly seemed like my own. Maybe it was the memory of a moving truck, of the empty places in my house—the fear that everything was temporary; that anything could be taken from me.
I’d replaced the chair first, the imprint of his body something that had sent a chill through me the first time I’d sat there, and I’d added my own decorations to the office, including a quirky blue bookshelf I’d put together myself, and a potted plant in the corner that was currently in need of water. But I’d left the College of Lake Hollow decor and the framed photo of campus. Put anything else left behind in the storage closet.
I used my black mug from the bookshelf—HELLO THERE! it declared in cutesy white text to whomever might be sitting across from me—to bring water from our shared bathroom in the hall back to my office, taking three trips in my continual attempt to keep the plant alive.
Then I grabbed the stack of blue files off my desk, where they’d been waiting. Brandon had kept most of his work organized in a system hidden from sight: in his desk drawers or in file boxes in the corner closet of the room. But I preferred everything where I could see it so I wouldn’t forget—a visual to-do list.
I used that same closet now to store all the things Brandon had left behind—the things not taken by the police during the investigation. I knew it was odd, all this time later, that his things still sat in a closet, gathering dust. But I was not the person who should’ve been responsible for deciding what to do with it all. And so these items remained, waiting for someone else to make that call.
His laptop had been at home, so I imagined the police had kept that; and his appointment calendar was kept electronically, with secondary access by Anna, at reception. There was nothing unusual on either.
What remained: a personal framed photo of him and Fiona, both of them dressed in khaki and white, standing on a beach, sunburned and carefree—so unlike the version of them I remembered; memos that had been sent his way but not received before his death; his most recent birthday card signed by the staff, along with a Visa gift card because we didn’t know what else to get him, stored in the bottom drawer; a fishing magazine that he’d accidentally routed to the school instead of home, which had kept coming month after month until it hadn’t been renewed; and a small package that had been sent to the school instead of his home. It had arrived when I was already working here, and Anna had left it on my desk, washing her hands of it. Staring at his name, I’d felt a chill and stored it in the closet with the rest of his things.
I had never gathered the nerve to throw it all out. The only next of kin was Brandon’s brother, and he’d had no use for anything but the dog. He’d never even set foot in this office, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask him:Do you want the vacation photo that was on his desk? A half-used Visa gift card?I’d grown accustomed to the contents of the closet, the same way I could walk by the Truetts’ front door without flinching. But now I stared at the closed door, a chill rising. Ruby’s return had shaken up everything, every memory. Nothing was spared.
As I stood there with the files tucked under my arm, I heard something from the other side of my office door, but I couldn’t tell whether it was coming from inside or outside the building. Whether it was the pipes resettling after my trip to the bathroom, an older system tucked behind the remodeled walls. Or whether it was someone trying the front door.
The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I turned to face the glass walls, the empty space. Here, with the historic brick buildings, we didn’t have cameras. We believed in the honor code—for our students and for ourselves. We believed we were an isolated community and that the community was ours—the town an extension of the college or the college an extension of our town. Either way, we had been conditioned to believe in our shared safety.
I stood listening to the silence. I counted to ten, then to twenty. Hearing nothing else, I decided it must’ve been the old building, the hidden pipes and air-conditioning that had not been updated during the renovations.
I locked my office behind me and walked faster than necessary for the exit. Outside, that white car still sat at the other end of the lot.
And that was when I heard it clearly: a heavy step at the side of the building, boot on gravel. I spun in time to see Preston Seaver walking into the lot.
“Hey there, Harper,” he said. I couldn’t tell if he’d been waiting or had just arrived. Whether he’d been here all along.
He was in his security uniform but on foot, not in his car or on one of the electric golf carts the security team often used to get around.
I stepped back, on instinct. “You gave me a heart attack,” I said, looking around the lot. “You’re working this week?” I’d seen him early yesterday morning, finishing Mac’s watch, and assumed he had off this week.
“Just the morning shift, making sure all the buildings are secure for the holiday. Anyone in there with you?” His green eyes skimmed over me quickly.
