Page 48 of Such a Quiet Place
CHAPTER 16
SILENCE.
It stretched up the road and around the corner. No doors opening or closing, or neighbors calling to one another, or voices carrying from backyards or open windows. It moved through with a heavy warning, a physical presence—something worth heeding.
This was the opposite of what had happened after the Truetts, the way we had all called to one another, reached for one another, arms entwining in comfort and relief. The feel of skin on skin, reminding us that we were alive.
The message board back then had been full of notes. All of us checking in:What happened? Who noticed? Oh my God, is everyone else okay?The calls, the texts, the community growing even closer in the aftermath, at first.
Now the message board was empty. Not only that, someone had gone through and deleted every previous post.
Even my house was eerily quiet. Nothing but a drip coming from the kitchen, the click of something mechanical in the living room walls. Like time had frozen last night with Ruby’s death. Her purple insulated cup that I’d dropped in the sink when I’d firstreturned, my flip-flops kicked off by the front door, beside the pool bag. I couldn’t bear to move anything.
My phone rang from the spot beside me on the couch, Mac’s name on the display. “Hey, you okay?” he asked as soon as I picked up.
“Yeah, I mean. I don’t know. I think so.” My own voice seemed to carry in the silence.
“I wanted to come by last night to check on you, but the police were outside. I didn’t want them to see me going to your house after they took all the statements,” he said.
“No, that’s fine. That’s okay.” I cleared my throat. “How are you?”
I heard him breathing into the phone. “It’s crazy. I can’t believe it. Did you see what happened?”
“No, I was back at the house. I’d left early.”
“Me, too,” he said. “As soon as the fireworks were over. I told the police that. I didn’t see anything. Preston and his date barely made it through the fireworks show before leaving, too. Charlotte didn’t see anything.” A pause. “None of us did.”
“You talked to them?” I’d gone straight back home on autopilot after giving my statement. Had walked upstairs and stood in the shower until my skin had begun to prune. Had found myself in her room after, in her bed, staring up.
“For a little bit, outside, yeah. After we gave our statements. Listen,” he said, and his voice dropped, his mouth pressed closer to the phone. “No one said anything.”
In the silence, I imagined what he was implying: my fight with Ruby; the things we’d said or at least insinuated; the way she’d turned on all of us, fingers pointed and accusations hurled.
“No one isgoingto say anything,” he added, like a promise.
I felt a lump in my throat. Felt the memory of Charlotte’s hand squeeze my shoulder, Preston chuck me under the chin, Chaselean against the gate beside me. “What happened to her? Did the police say anything?”
“No one knows. Maybe it was the alcohol. She was drinking so much she could barely stand. Tina said she had thrown up. And she was lying on her back…” His words trailed off, and I saw her there, head tipped back, the red glow of the fireworks reflecting on her exposed skin—
“And none of us checked,” I said.
“Harper,” he said, gentle and close, like he was propped up on one elbow beside me in bed. I closed my eyes, thinking how easy it would be to slide back into this. “Don’t do this to yourself. You’re a really good person, and you did all you could for her.”
But I hadn’t. I’d needed her gone. Told her she was a terrible fucking person. Wanted her far away and out of my life, never to return.
“What did she say to you down by the lake?” I asked, thinking that whatever she’d confided to him there were the last words she’d ever spoken.
“Nothing really,” he said, but I was picturing his arms wrapped around her, the way her body had folded into his. “She was drunk, and sad, and not really making any sense.”
“Shit,” I said, hearing the catch in my voice.
He sighed. “I’ll come by tonight, okay? Help you go through her things? I’ll even bring dinner.”
The silence was messing with my thoughts—a buzzing in my head I couldn’t contain, an emptiness that only seemed to expand. But Ruby’s things were already packed up, and I’d ended things with Mac. I didn’t want to go back. “I’m doing that now,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”
The doorbell rang, jarring me back to the present. “I gotta go,” I said before hanging up.
From my spot on the couch, I opened the laptop to see whowas out there. A man I didn’t know stood on my porch, looking up at the camera—staring back.
