Page 87 of Such a Quiet Place
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.
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.
