Such a Quiet Place

by Megan Miranda

  Keeping my light off, I got down on my knees, inching closer, hand extended toward the fabric. A rustle of material, the shape of something rolled up—

  A sleeping bag that had been tucked into the corner space.

  Like someone was squatting in here. I’d heard of this problem in other abandoned places, people breaking in and taking up residence. But not here. Not in this neighborhood. Not with everyone so close to others who would notice people coming and going, who would hear something in the night.

  I slid the sleeping bag my way, and a small black notebook dislodged from where it had been balanced within. I took the notebook and backed out of the room to where I could use my flashlight without fear of being seen.

  A pencil marked a page in the middle like a bookmark. Opening to the marked spot, I recognized the handwriting immediately. Knew for certain who had broken in and who had been staying here.

  This belonged to Ruby.

  At the top of the page was a date. The day before the party. The day before she died: July 3. Her notes seemed to be written in a complex system I couldn’t quite work out. Letters and arrows, dates and times.

  I flipped to the front page to see if I could make sense of it. In faint print, she’d written a series of numbers on the inside cover: 62819

  6-28-19.

  The date of her release.

  I turned the page, and a square of folded paper slipped out.

  I unfolded it to reveal an old computer printout. Like something from our message board.

  But it wasn’t recent. I recognized it from long ago. This was a screenshot of our message board from the early days of the investigation:

  HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE

  Subject: CHECK YOUR CAMERAS

  Posted: 4:48 p.m.

  Chase Colby: You all saw the video from the Seavers—looks like Ruby, but it’s not a clear shot with her hood pulled up. What we need is footage between midnight and 2 a.m. We need to track Ruby, and it has to be airtight. Check your doorbell cameras, any security footage, anything that picks up noise… let me know what you’ve got.

  Margo Wellman: What if we find something else?

  Chase Colby: Don’t.

  Javier Cora: Lol

  Preston Seaver: He’s just being honest. There can’t be anything else. A lawyer will take that and try to cast doubt, twist the story around so that it’s someone else instead. Anyone who might’ve stepped outside. Suddenly you’re the other suspect. Just saying.

  Chase Colby: He’s not wrong.

  Tina Monahan: It’s obviously her.

  Charlotte Brock: Delete this.

  This exchange had barely appeared on the message board before Chase went back and deleted it. But it was enough. And Ruby had it.

  The post that had kicked everything off. The focus on her time line that ultimately led to her conviction, yes. But also her release. The screenshot that found its way to the lawyer months after the trial, that started the internal investigation into the police. That got her conviction overturned.

  Ruby had a copy of it, and as with a list of suspects, she was watching them all.

  The paper shook in my hand as I scanned through the names. My neighbors, people who once were my friends. It had seemed so innocent then: an idea slowly gaining momentum—evidence conforming toward its support.

  I had thought everyone had good intentions. But maybe I was wrong.

  The people of Hollow’s Edge, subconsciously conspiring against her, to end her. To put her in her place. To show: Here—look what we can do. That we, as a collective group, were powerful. And once we began, it was a steamroller gaining momentum, and there was no stopping it.

  She had come out of prison on a mission. Had lied and broken into this house; followed us, watched us. Taunted us with what she knew.

  This neighborhood may have become something different in the time since she’d been gone, but oh, so had she.

  I wasn’t sure if she would’ve done this before or whether prison had changed her. Or if everything that had happened before had changed her view of the justice system. What was the point of playing by the rules if you were the only one? If the system had failed you?

  Not that I was ever sure Ruby had played by the rules. She’d had these keys, after all.

  But two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have been here. I wouldn’t have dug up the keys and let myself into this home that did not belong to me.

  Turned out, we were all so close to criminal. All you needed was a good enough motive.

  * * *

  I TOOK THE JOURNAL with me. Had no intention of staying in this house any longer than necessary. Wasn’t sure how Ruby had managed—in the oppressive heat, with the stifling scent—knowing all that had happened here. I couldn’t lock the back door, since the key didn’t work, but I retraced my steps, out the patio gate, back through my own, and then sat on the edge of my couch, trying to make sense of Ruby’s notes.

  CHAPTER 21

  BY NOON, I HADN’T slept, but I believed that I had worked out Ruby’s system; that I knew what she was doing in that house at night, curled up in a sleeping bag in the front room.

  Ruby was watching us. Tracking each of us.

  She’d been in that house even when I thought she was gone.

  From her journal, it was obvious she’d been here all along, watching us.

  Under the heading for each day was a list of initials, and arrows, and times, kept in columns. I realized she was keeping track of who was passing in front of the window and in which direction. She watched us during the day, and she watched us at night.

  I wasn’t sure when she slept, other than the few times I’d seen her in the upstairs bedroom of my house.

  I could find myself, even, on these pages. HN, passing the front window of the Truett house, going to the right—when I was heading to the pool or to Charlotte’s. A chill ran through me as I realized I’d seen Ruby there once. That the chill at the back of my neck had always been her: a flash of movement in the front window as I passed. The feeling that someone was watching me.

  She noticed Mac coming and going, too. MS to the left—to see me. A wave of nausea rolled through me, even though she was gone. Of course she’d known. She must’ve known about Mac almost from the start.

  In the evenings, she marked the movements of the people on watch: Mac and Javier and me, passing by, on each shift.

  All these mundane movements—she’d been keeping track of them all.

  Beginning June 29, she knew there was nothing quiet about this neighborhood. She knew she’d caused a stir with her return and that people would show themselves, reveal themselves. Believing we’d be afraid.

  And we were.

  Not of the physical things she was capable of but something more—something she might know. The year before, we had been a steamroller gaining momentum, but that momentum had shifted direction. She had endured, she had returned, and she knew what we had done.

  This time, she had the power, and we were afraid.

  * * *

  I WASN’T SURE WHAT she’d done with my car in the days when I’d thought she was gone. Why she wanted to take it from me. Whether she wanted to trap me here.

  Or maybe she just wanted time when people weren’t looking for her, looking at her—to watch, one-sided, without the fear of being watched.

  We didn’t need cameras in Hollow’s Edge. We only needed to open our eyes.

  The notebook captured page after page of this activity. As if Ruby had lost herself in these details, circling deeper, so sure that some pattern, some truth, would emerge from the page.

  But the part that struck me as odd was the way she’d been keeping track of Margo. The MW at night, always followed with a question mark, like she couldn’t be sure what Margo was doing. Like there was something that struck her as odd. Something worth noting.

  We knew Margo wasn’t sleeping much. The baby kept her up, she’d told us as much. And she and Paul were obviously having issues. Maybe she took the baby f
or a walk when he woke in the night, to lull him back to sleep. Maybe she went out by herself, for the freedom, whenever she could.

  But Ruby marked her name often, and only late at night. With an arrow pointing left.

  Always heading toward me, toward Tate and Javier Cora, toward Tina Monahan—to the left.

  * * *

  FROM THE MESSAGE BOARD, I could see that Margo was up late last night. But so were others: Javier, Charlotte. Me. None of us seemed to be sleeping much.

  Ruby had kept that post, using those names to guide her way. She’d had keys to most of their homes. Must’ve known that our neighbors were hiding things.

  Now those keys were in my possession. There was a certain power to the feel of the ring in my pocket as I walked out back again. To imagine Ruby doing this as well—listening in.

  The secrets we told inside our high back patio gates, as if that protected you. The arguments that carried through open windows or poorly insulated glass. The churning air-conditioning units outside that acted like a white-noise machine before abruptly cutting off, exposing you.

  The things people revealed when they were afraid.

  I passed Tate and Javier Cora’s yard—silent, empty—but heard Tina Monahan’s parents on their back patio, arguing about lunch. About whether to wait for Tina, to see what she brought back from the store. Tina was gone. No one would be inside her house right now. My muscles twitched with nervous energy, but I had to know.

  It was curiosity, mostly. I had no intention of going inside. Just wanted to see whether the M was for Monahan or Margo. Both their names had been on the message board post that Ruby had kept.

  And her repeated note—MW?—kept haunting me. The way she was tracking Margo made me nervous. Like I was missing something.

  I wanted to know whose privacy Ruby had invaded. Who might’ve had something to hide back then—and something still worth keeping hidden.

  At the corner, I circled back to the front of the street, turning up the path to Tina’s house. Not worried about being seen at the Monahan house—What would I need a security camera for, Officer?—as I walked up their front steps, hand on the keys in my pocket.

  I planned to check quickly. Slip the key into the lock and turn, before heading away. Pretend I was just knocking, and no one had answered, with Tina at the store and her parents out back.

  I gripped the ring of keys in my hand, sliding the one marked M into the lock—

  The front door swung open with force, dislodging the key, still tight in my grasp. Mrs. Monahan stood in the entrance, wide-eyed and friendly. “I thought I saw you heading up the steps, dear,” she said. “It’s been so long since we talked!”

  My hand dropped quickly to my side as I attempted to hide the entire ring of keys in my closed fist. “It has,” I said, pasting a friendly smile onto my face. I could hear my own heartbeat echoing in my skull. Feel it pounding against my ribs. The fear. The rush. The thrill of coming so close—

  “Is Tina home?” I asked, dropping the keys back in my pocket.

  “No, she’s picking up food. But we could use your help if you have a minute. Come,” she said, not waiting for my response.

  I found myself following her deeper into the house, passing the kitchen, through the living room, to the back door, left ajar.

  “George is stuck,” she said, peering over her shoulder as she opened the back door to the patio.

  “I’m not stuck,” he said from the edge of the wooden patio ramp. He frowned when he saw me, like he’d been expecting someone else. It was the same look he’d given me when I ran into him and Tina during my watch shift. The only thing he’d asked me then was if Ruby was back.

  “He is so stuck,” Mrs. Monahan whispered.

  Mr. Monahan’s wheelchair was wedged at the base of the wooden ramp. The bottom lip of the ramp looked like it had broken or chipped, and it seemed neither could maneuver the front wheels up the incline.

  “Chase said he was going to help us fix the ramp this weekend, but I think he got distracted. Understandably. But it’s gotten worse, and I can’t quite manage it on my own,” Mrs. Monahan said.

  “No problem,” I said, heading down to the base of the patio. I leveraged the seat back and then forward, easing it over the start of the wooden ramp.

  “There we go,” Mrs. Monahan said, following us inside.

  “Chase was going to come?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, he helps out a lot. Whenever Tina isn’t around. He’s a good man, that one.”

  I wasn’t sure she’d agree if she knew everything that had happened during the trial. If she understood that he was under internal investigation, that his hand in the case had tainted everything.

  “Do you want something to drink while you wait, dear?” she asked as Mr. Monahan moved farther down the hall, toward the dining room at the front of the house.

  “No, thank you, I’m sure I’ll catch up to her later—”

  “That girl is back,” Mr. Monahan said, eyes narrowed at the dining room windows, facing the front yard.

  A shudder rolled through me. The same thing he’d said when I was out on watch that night, when he was with Tina, asking if that girl was back home.

  “What?” I said. I turned, expecting to see the ghost of Ruby. If anyone could return, fake her own death, convince us she was gone when she was really still here, it would be her. I caught a streak of dark hair—a blur at the edge of the window—and then it was gone.

  He grunted. “She thinks she’s so clever. Hugs the front porches so the cameras don’t catch her, so no one will see her. But we do. We see her.” He moved closer to the window, and I stepped beside him, peering out.

  “George, don’t make trouble,” Mrs. Monahan called. He waved off his wife, though she couldn’t see him.

  “Who was that?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “One of Charlotte’s girls. She figured the trick,” he said, eyes narrowed as he kept watching. “Stay close enough, and the motion lights don’t catch you, the cameras look right past you.” He shook his head. That girl back? he’d asked just after one of Charlotte’s daughters had been dropped off at home—not asking about Ruby at all.

  “Where is she going?” I asked.

  “Down to the lake. Cuts through the trees. There.” His finger jabbed at the windowpane, and my gaze followed. The trees across the way. The other side of the inlet, with the dirt access road, the abandoned campfire.

  “Ha,” Mrs. Monahan called from the kitchen. “Like you would know. What, you following her now?”

  “No, but people talk around me like I’m not here. Like if I’m not on your eye level, I can’t tell what you’re saying. I can hear just fine,” he called back, raising his voice. “She and that young man were making plans at the pool party, standing right over me. Before…” His words trailed off. Before the fireworks. Before Ruby was found dead. Before she was poisoned.

  Before someone poisoned her.

  But I was stuck on his earlier comment. “What young man?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said, waving his arm, seeming to search for something. Mrs. Monahan entered the dining room and gave me a knowing look. Like his mind wasn’t all that it should be anymore. Like I should take whatever he said with a hefty dose of salt. “She told him there was a party out there. That they were meeting at the pit the next night. Asked if he’d be showing up this time.”

  The pit. That must’ve been what they called it—the small clearing on the other side of the inlet. Where Javier thought the kids were launching a boat. Where I’d seen the shadowed figure watching the kids on the lake last night.

  “They’re just kids, George,” Mrs. Monahan said. “You weren’t even sure which girl it was.” She turned to me. “They look so similar, don’t they? For a long time, George called them both Whitney.”

  “No,” he said with a grin. “I called them both Molly.”

  I saw Ruby’s journal again. The initials she put in the page at night with a question mark.
r />   Not Margo Wellman.

  She couldn’t be sure whether it was Molly or Whitney. Ruby had seen one of them sneaking by in the evenings—and so did Mr. Monahan.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “it’s the older one. The one we had the graduation party for. She’s the one who was making plans to meet up at night. She’s the one who sneaks out there.”

  “Whitney,” I answered.

  “You sure you don’t want something?” Mrs. Monahan asked, a polite way of telling me it was time to go.

  “No, thank you,” I said. I opened the front door, and Mrs. Monahan retreated to the kitchen.

  “I told Charlotte,” Mr. Monahan said in the entrance, one hand on the door. He lowered his voice. “I wouldn’t want my daughter out there with everything going on. Scary enough she was out there that night.”

  I blinked twice, trying to process. “What night?”

  “The night the Truetts…” He trailed off, hand to his hair again, as if trying to keep track of something.

  “You saw Whitney out that night?” I asked, keeping my voice low in response. Ruby had claimed she heard someone else out there, and maybe this was it. Maybe she had been telling the truth about that all along.

  “Yeah, I told Chase that. Saw one of Charlotte’s daughters heading down there earlier in the evening.” He shook his head again. “I saw her and Ruby both. But we don’t have cameras, and apparently, an eighty-five-year-old in a wheelchair is not the most reliable witness in the middle of the night. Like I said, I’m not blind. I could’ve helped. But I guess they didn’t need it.”

  “Wait,” I said, eyes closed. I knew it by heart: the path she had taken that night. The direction she’d gone. The direction she’d returned. The tight time line of it all. “You saw Ruby?”

  She’d gone down to the lake to the right, past the Brocks, the Seavers, the Wellmans. She’d come back home from the other direction, behind our homes. Sneaking in the back gate.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Monahan said. “Clear as day. She tripped the motion light in our driveway. Guess she didn’t know the trick. Shielded her eyes at the house and scowled.” His eyes widened. “You know how she could scowl.” He seemed so sure, but he must’ve had it wrong.