Page 47 of Such a Quiet Place
But on the frame was Margo Wellman, casting glances behind her as she pounded on the door with the side of her closed fist. I heard her sharp breathing, a single whimper.
“Coming!” I yelled as I raced down the stairs, because she looked afraid, and she was on watch tonight, and I worried Ruby had done something.
As soon as I opened the door, I knew something terrible had happened. I’d seen the expression before.Chase, turning from the end of the bed, eyes wide with horror, mouth slightly open, choking on his words—
I placed both hands on her upper arms, her skin clammy and cold. The rough feel of goose bumps or a heat rash covering her shoulders. “What did she do?” I asked, trying to force the wordsfrom Margo. Picturing the endless possibilities: the pool water, the lake water, the knife under her bed—
“Ruby’s at the pool,” Margo said. “She’s still there.”
I squeezed her shoulders tighter, thinking of everyone who had been down there together. All these people I suddenly cared for.
She sucked in a gasp of air. “She’s not breathing, Harper.” Hand to her mouth, fingers shaking, while faces scrolled in my mind: Charlotte and her girls, Tate, Tina—
Margo started running toward the pool, and I followed, barefoot, heart pounding.
That moment when Chase lunged toward the bedroom windows, throwing them open, and I caught a glimpse—
The lights at the Seaver brothers’ home were on, and a door swung open like they could sense something happening—
Chase’s raspy voice that morning as he’d yelled at me, “Call 911. Harper, move!”
The front door of the Wellman house also ajar, the lights off. A baby crying inside, ignored.
Voices yelling from the pool. “Get her on the ground!”
Tina, the first person I saw, in her pajamas under the corner light of the pool. Paul Wellman helping her lower a figure from the lounge chair. The chair I’d last seen Ruby in—
And then I understood. It was Ruby, still at the pool, not breathing. My foot caught on the curb, and my knee hit the grass outside the pool entrance.
The sharp cry of a siren, a flash of red and blue, and Chase’s shadow illuminated from up the road, heading our way.
And then time slowing down, my body sluggish, the scene coming in fragments:
The EMTs pushing their way in and Tina stepping back, kicking over my blue insulated cup that Ruby had taken. Tina lookingout the pool gates straight at Margo and me, her face set. A single shake of her head.
The street filling up behind me. The sirens and the lights, the gathering crowd. The police arriving in new vehicles, beckoning us back.
And still we watched, standing on our toes, leaning around one another. There was movement on the trail beyond the pool, people sneaking closer for a better look.
Everyone watching her, even now. The commotion she could create, bending the gravity of a room her way. A spectacle, still—living or dead.
