Page 53 of Such a Quiet Place
But there was nothing hidden away. Nothing but dust and old paint cans and things I’d had no use for in all the years I’d lived here. I was starting to doubt myself, thinking that maybe that box in my office had been missing for months; that it hadn’t been Ruby at all.
I was still searching the house, hoping some new alcove would reveal itself to me, when my doorbell rang, jarring me.
I peered out the front window, saw Mac standing on my porch with Chinese takeout in a white plastic bag and a haunted expression. He had a hat on, though it was dusk, and the dark circles under his eyes looked even more pronounced—like he hadn’t slept, either.
I opened the door, and he sheepishly held up the bag of food. “I know you said you had already gone through her things, but I figured dinner couldn’t hurt.” He let himself in as I stepped to the side.
“Thank you. I don’t think I can eat, though,” I said.
“Then at least you’ll be all set with leftovers,” he said, giving me half a smile. He made himself at home in my kitchen, pulling the containers from the bag, taking two plates down from the cabinets. I was captivated by the way he kept moving, like the way we’d continued to celebrate at the party, everyone trying to push through to normalcy by persistence alone.
“She was poisoned,” I said, in case he hadn’t heard.
He paused, standing over my counter, spoon deep in the sweet-and-sour chicken. “They don’t know for sure,” he said. “They don’t know what happened.”
I felt nauseated, staring at the food. At him. “Chase said—”
He dropped the spoon, turned to face me. “Chase isn’t even part of the investigation. Alcohol is a type of poisoning, right?”
“He said foul play,” I whispered.
Mac took off his hat, ran a hand through his light brown hair. “Hey, I’m here, and Chase is going to take over for Tina on watch tonight. We’re all safe, Harper.”
But I didn’t know how he thought that was true. All these deaths that had happened on our street. Maybe it was the degree of removal in them—as though there was nothing to fear if it wasn’t where we could see it. As though that didn’t make it something scarier at heart—that we couldn’t see it coming; couldn’t see where the danger might be hiding.
The poison; the carbon monoxide. As if someone preferred to kill without having to look at the victim while doing it. A level of deniability. Something that required the hand of fate, absolving you of guilt.
A car turned on; a death that could occur only if you kept on sleeping. Poison left for someone else; but it required the other person to consume it.
He stepped closer, hands on my shoulders, but I shook him off. “It’s all horrible, but I’m not sure what else we can do right now other than eat dinner, go to sleep, face tomorrow.”
We brought our plates to the kitchen table and ate in silence. Or rather, I watched him eat, and I moved the food around my plate. Nothing but the sound of utensils scratching against the dinnerware and the ticking of the mantel clock echoing through the room.
“Thanks for dinner,” I said, standing from the table and clearing our plates.
“Do you want me to stay?” he asked, slowly rising from his chair. “I don’t mean… I mean, I could just, stay. You look like you haven’t slept.”
“You don’t look so hot yourself,” I said, feigning levity. “Thanks, but I think I’m about to crash.”
Because all I wanted was to be left alone. Alone with my fears. Alone to work it through. To trace each thread through the night of the party, as if something new would suddenly emerge.
Because as he was eating, I’d felt myself fracturing. My thoughts had disconnected from the present, circling back to the events of the last few days.
I saw Ruby again, holding her purple mug in the air—The gang’s all here!
I couldn’t stop my mind from taking the alternate path. Step by step, from the day Ruby had returned to the day she had died.On the lounge chair, being lowered to the ground, my blue cup rolling across the concrete—
Foul play.
Poison.
Working it through, day by day, to its inevitable end.
To the sudden fear that maybe this ending wasn’t meant for her but for me.
