Page 83 of Such a Quiet Place
CHAPTER 25
IHAD THE BOX WITHthe carbon monoxide detector tucked under one arm, and I fumbled for the phone in my back pocket.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice called from the bottom of the stairs. “Is someone in here?”
“Charlotte?” I called back, heading for the stairs.
She was all in shadow, standing on the second step from the bottom. “Oh my God,” she said, stepping back, laughing slightly to herself. “You scared me to death. What are you doing in here, Harper?”
I descended the steps, though she still had a grip on the railing, like she needed it to orient herself in the dark.
“I found something,” I said, arm tight around the box. Proof. Proof that Ruby was innocent.
“In here?” she asked. “Did you break in here? I heard something, and the back door…”
I looked down the hall, where the back door was fully ajar. “No,” I said. “Ruby did.”
Charlotte scoffed. “Of course she did.” Even in the dark, I could see her hair moving over her shoulders as she shook her head. “And what’s that, Harper?” She pointed to the box under myarm. But there were things I had to explain to her first. Things I had to know.
“Can we just… can we get out of here? Go back to my place?” It was so hot, and I couldn’t breathe inside this house, and I couldn’t read the expression on her face.
I reached around her, to unlock the front door, to getout—but her hand circled my wrist, stopping me. There was barely any force behind it, but the intent was clear.
“You’re trespassing, Harper,” she said in that calm, unwavering voice. “Tell me now what it is you found.”
Even in the heat, I felt entirely cold. This was my neighbor, and I’d known her forever. Had been in her house, taken her advice, accepted her help—
But right now she was a stranger to me.
“I found Ruby’s car,” I said. Something true, something innocuous, that would get us both out of this house. I wished for the cameras out front. For the perception of safety, the threat of being watched. “I can show you.”
But Charlotte didn’t move, and she didn’t release her grip on my wrist. Her fingers felt cold against my skin in the oppressive heat of this house.
“She had a car?” she said. “God, she really had us all fooled. She really was a terrible person, Harper.” Just like I’d said to her at the party. Charlotte’s grip loosened, and I pulled my arm back. But she still stood between me and the front door and made no indication to leave.
“She didn’t do it,” I said, taking a step back. There was another door, another way out—
“She did. And she’s dead now. It’s time for us all to move on, to heal.”
My neighbor who was the voice of reason, who was in complete control, calm and efficient, who said,I think it’s best to ignore Ruby.
“Harper, stop,” she said. Only then did I notice I’d been backing slowly down the hall and that she’d been matching me, stride for stride.
“Listen,” I said, hand held up to keep her back, though I didn’t know what I feared her doing to me. We were the same size. We were not violent people here. We ignored confrontations, performed them in thinly veiled comments instead. “I know Whitney was out there the night the Truetts died. She was in my house that night, too. I thought it was Ruby, but it wasn’t. Whitney was in my house.”
I heard only her sharp intake of breath in the silence. “Do you have any proof?” she asked. But I was chilled, wondering why she wanted to know. What she was after. The threat of proof could keep me safe. Safe, until she found it for herself.
“You knew,” I said. “You thought it was Whitney, too.” Mr. Monahan had told her she was out that night—
Charlotte stepped closer, lowered her voice like there were people listening even now. “You would do the same,” she said. “One day, when you have children of your own, you’ll understand.”
“Did you ask her, Charlotte?” I said, my voice rising with the horror of it. “Did you even ask her?”
“Sometime, when they’re teenagers, you lose them,” she said, like she was back in her typical role, giving advice. “They go quiet, and you just have to pay attention, have to anticipate their needs.”
My God, everyone here, not talking to each other. Not asking each other directly. And look what we had become. Look what we had created.
“Whitney didn’t do anything,” I said. “She was out at a party on the lake. Ruby heard them down there.”Someone else was out there,she’d promised, to anyone who would hear. “Whitney came to our house after because Ruby told her she would always be welcomethere. But Ruby wasn’t there.” That tight time line we’d traced of Ruby’s path. Like she’d gone down there only to dispose of evidence before heading right back.
