Page 10 of Such a Quiet Place
But all I could think of was that other night. The one we had to keep revisiting, with the cops, with ourselves—when I’d heard that same creak of the back door and the shower running around two a.m.
It hadn’t meant anything to me then. Not even after we’d found them.
No one was afraid at first. Shocked, yes. Upset, of course. But not afraid. Or at least not afraid of anything more than ourselves, what we might’ve missed. Because when Brandon and Fiona were discovered deceased, we didn’t yet know it was a crime—well, nothing further than a domestic crime of murder-suicide (and we could make a case for it going either way). A crime that was self-contained.
But slowly, in the days that followed, the scene shifted.
The carbon monoxide detector—the same model in every home—was no longer in its place, or in the house at all.
The police started coming door-to-door, asking where we were that night, what we’d heard, what we’d noticed. And finally, we understood: Someone else had been in that house with Brandon and Fiona Truett.
Someone who had killed them.
