Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda
CHAPTER 19
THEY WEREN’T MINE.
That was the defense I had worked through, sitting in my backyard patio, key ring in hand. What I’d tell the police. What I’d tell the neighbors.
They weren’t mine.
But they’d been in my house, and my fingerprints were all over them, and this wasn’t just the Truett key. Oh, no. If only it had been, maybe I would’ve called someone, turned them in.
But this was something more, and I heard the echo of Chase’s advice, his low words through the fence: Keep it simple.
Get them out of the house.
Away from you.
Now.
I’D FOUND THEM THREEmonths ago, in the spring, planting flowers in the mulch bed of my patio. Spade in the soil, digging beneath the mulch into the cool earth.
My shovel struck something hard six inches down—something I thought at first was an accumulation of small stones. But I reached my gloved hand into the soil, and my fingers hooked into a ring. A glint of metal in the sun as I pulled it out.
A large ring of keys, deliberately hidden in the corner of the garden.
That dog-bone key chain was the first thing I recognized, attached to a larger ring by a small loop. But the large ring was full of keys. Each labeled with a small black letter written in Sharpie.
I pieced through them one by one, wiping the dirt and grit from the surface of each key to reveal what was written below.
The T, the B, the S, the C… I was halfway through the key ring before the realization settled in: that these were the keys to other houses on the street. The T for Truett; the B for Brock; the S for Seaver; the C for Cora. On and on they went.
I didn’t know what this meant. Why Ruby had all of these keys. I assumed she’d hidden them during the investigation after denying she’d had the Truett key. Asking me to back her up, to tell the police: I don’t have their key anymore.
A bold-faced lie, while she buried the truth.
Not only did she have the Truetts’ key, she also had the keys of nearly everyone on the street. And they probably had no idea.
I could only imagine that this was an accumulation of keys she had amassed over the years, living here. From all her time walking dogs, or bringing in mail, or house-sitting. The keys that were left for her under doormats, or spares that were temporarily lent her way. Either she hadn’t returned the keys, or she’d copied them. My guess: copied them. So that no one knew she had them anymore.
But these were also more keys than I thought she’d had access to. There were plenty of people who had never trusted Ruby, wouldn’t have left her in possession of a key. But we were all connected here. Access to one house could grant her access to another—a neighbor’s spare key, for emergency, labeled and hung on a key hook on the wall or in a kitchen drawer.
Years ago, Tate and I had swapped keys in case one of us was ever locked out. Though our friendship had cooled, we’d never asked for them back. Such an admission would be too direct. Too confrontational. And so Tate and Javier Cora’s key was still buried at the back of the top drawer of the entryway table, should they ever need it.
Ruby had plenty of chances to find it, copy it, use it. From the look of it, she had gotten us all. Every one. And now this set of keys was in my hand.
I’d debated what to do with the ring of keys that day, sitting on the brick patio, as the late afternoon turned to evening. And then I thought of the lake, of fingerprints disappearing—a hand of fate that might or might not drag them to the surface someday in the future, freeing me of any role or suspicion.
So I’d headed that way in the dark, passing the closed front doors, the glow of porch lights. The jangle of keys in my pocket was too jarring in the quiet night. I’d clenched them tightly in my palm, cut down the path in the woods by the pool, heading toward the water. Believing I was alone.
But someone had seen me. Someone had stood at the back corner of the concrete pool deck, watched as I ran by—and caught me.
NOW I KNELT ONthe cold wooden floor of the front foyer, this photo in hand, with all the things I knew it could imply—all the ways it could be twisted against me. Wondering why someone was taunting me with this and what they were planning to do with it now.
Though Preston and Mac shared that upstairs office space, Mac had been with me at the meeting. He’d already been there when I arrived. It was Preston who came in late. Who had time to leave this threat in my door.
Preston had been so quick to turn on Ruby after the Truetts were found dead. And when Ruby was gone, his distrust seemed to transfer to me, by rule of proximity alone.
Preston, who had been at my place of work, watching me. Preston, who had a master set of keys at work. Who had printed other warnings in his office, the I SEE YOU crumpled under his desk. Preston, who lived three doors down, who had walked straight through my front door when I’d been out on watch.
I’d thought these warnings had been to try to push me to get Ruby to leave. A threat that, if I did not, this could be revealed—to others, to Ruby herself.
But Ruby was gone now, and this newest picture had still arrived. And I no longer knew whom I could trust.
I didn’t know whether Mac was a part of this somehow. I didn’t know how much the brothers shared with each other, whether family mattered above all else. I felt entirely afraid and alone.
I was remembering the way Mac came over at the start of summer break, beer in hand, crooked smile on his face—the coincidence of his timing. Whether the rumors of Ruby’s case had brought him to my front door once more. And if so, what he was truly after.
I called my brother again, sitting on the cold floor of the foyer, the photo in my hand.
This time he answered on the first ring. “Harper? Is it Dad?”
“Sorry, no, everyone’s okay,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Good.” He paused for a beat. “It’s just, you’ve called twice on a Saturday. I have a missed call from you from earlier.” Our calls were infrequent, our relationship existing primarily on holidays and via parent updates.
“What kind of person would you say I am?” I asked abruptly. I was staring at a photo of evidence I’d hidden. Had listened as Ruby called me an opportunist, unable to be happy as myself.
“Are you drunk?” he asked as answer.
“No. Just if you had to describe me to a friend. Like My sister is…”
“The good one,” he said without pause.
“Ha,” I said.
I heard his sigh through the phone. “I guess I would say: I wish I knew her better growing up, but I fucked up our family pretty good. I would say: She gave me more chances than I deserved, and she’s a better person than me.”
I’d forgotten this about my brother: that he was direct and honest, always trying to atone for himself but unable to stop the cycle. I was wrong—nothing existed in him that reminded me of the true Ruby.
In the silence that followed, he said, “Is everything okay? You’re not having some sort of breakdown, are you?”
“Well,” I said, thinking of how to even begin. How to present this without inviting judgment. And then I stopped worrying. It was my brother, and I’d seen him at his worst, and maybe it was only fair that he saw me at mine. “The verdict in my neighbors’ murder was thrown out.”
“Oh, shit,” he said.
“Ruby came back here. To my house. It was a mess, and she’s dead.” Silence on the other end. “The police think she was poisoned.”
More silence.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Are you in trouble?” he asked, quick and low.
“No.” A pause. “I don’t think so. I don’t know. Kellen, my God, it’s all horrible.” A horrific mess, with three people dead and an investigation just beginning.
“You should come visit me.”
I laughed. “I don’t need Mom breathing down my neck right now, too.”
“No, I’ve got a new place. God, it’s been a while, Harp.” Our last real conversation was the one on New Year’s Eve, I thought now. Over seven months with neither of us reaching out. “I’m in Philadelphia,” he said. “Well, close to Philadelphia.”
“What?” That was six hours away.
“Long story. But I have a job here, and other than dealing with Mom’s constant calls, it’s a pretty quiet time.” Quiet times was the term Mom used for his good times. As if quiet were a positive thing and not an immense blanket of deception covering what was potentially brewing below.
But I was stuck on his prior statement. “You moved to a new city, you’re only six hours away, and you didn’t tell me?”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“You wouldn’t be,” I said.
“You weren’t always thrilled to see me when I came to visit Dad…”
Because my dad expected too much of Kellen, was never able to let the past go. He’d bring it up somehow—on day two or day three—and I’d have to watch my brother harden, never able to exist in the present. “Not because of you,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “I also don’t have a car right now, either.”
I laughed then, remembering how his excuses always existed in layers. But knowing I could reach him in a day’s drive if needed. “I’ll call you later,” I said. “It’s good to hear your voice. Just don’t tell Mom and Dad, okay?”
He laughed then, too. “Harper, it is my absolute pleasure to begin repaying that debt to you.”
And then I pushed myself off the floor with that photo in hand. I wondered what Ruby felt the first day when she was home, reaching her hand deep into the soil—coming up empty.
The first day Ruby was back, even before she’d gone to the kayak for the money, she’d gone into the backyard in the middle of the night and reached her hand down into the dirt, looking for this.
I was seeing her more clearly now: She wanted access to all of us here—our secrets, our lives.
When I’d found the keys this spring, Ruby had already been gone for so long. She had been convicted.
Back then I’d wondered what she had been doing with those keys. Whether she used them to piece through our lives, stirring up gossip with a throwaway line—if our discomfort had been all for her entertainment.
Chase told me the guys had wanted to bring up the rumors they knew but couldn’t prove during the investigation. And now I was thinking again about the way Aidan had left, so fast, desperate to escape something.
Chase was right: She had always been dangerous, just not in the way I had assumed.
I remembered Preston telling the police that Ruby had once been inside, broken dishes, while Mac and she were fighting. And Fiona looking in her wallet, confused. How everyone was quick to throw suspicion on Ruby after her arrest, in a myriad of ways. The access she had, not just to our things but to our secrets.
They sleep in separate rooms, you know,she had said about the Truetts. And none of us asked how she knew. None of us doubted the veracity of her claim, either.
Because we all believed that Ruby knew things. We just didn’t always know how.
IF PRESTON TOOK MYphoto as I ran down to the lake, I wondered if he knew what I’d done with the keys. If he’d seen me after, as I stood at the edge of the lake, surrounded by the noises of the night, moonlight glinting off the metal.
If he’d seen that I had not tossed them into the water at all, afraid of the sudden openness, the currents, the cameras that might place me down here. The way beer cans washed up the morning after kids had tossed them from their boats at the mouth of the inlet.
How I’d gone deeper into the woods instead, letting the darkness protect me, the noises insulate me. Farther around the inlet, where I believed that no one could see or hear me. To the boundary of our woods, with the sign on the tree warning us: PRIVATE PROPERTY.
The roots of that tree were thick and exposed from the soil, and I’d used my bare hands to dig out a spot at the base of the gnarled trunk. Then I’d wiped the keys carefully of any prints before depositing them in the earth, and pushed the dirt back over the top, dispersing the leaves and the twigs.
Ruby had buried them, and so had I. But out in the woods, they couldn’t be traced back to me.
And then I’d kept going, to the other side of the inlet. Through the trees, with the dense underbrush, to the plot of land cleared but never built upon. A dusty circle of dirt with the remnants of an old campfire in the center, though all that remained was ash in a pit.
The dirt access road dipped and curved, marred by large rocks and mangled roots, and my footing was unsure in the dark. But in that dark, from the distance, I could see the lights from our neighborhood through the trees. I cut through the woods, hands in front of me, until I emerged across the street from the house on the corner where Tina Monahan and her parents lived.
I returned home from the other end of our street, feeling lighter, like I had rid my life of the last of Ruby Fletcher.
But in that moment, for the first time, I could see how she did it: The keys, to the Truett house, to the lake. The woods, to the clearing, to the access road, following the lights home. Sneaking around back to hide what she had done.
In that moment, a year after her arrest, months after her conviction, I finally believed she had done it.
I HAD NO IDEAif the keys remained, especially if Preston had seen me down there. And now I feared that someone might’ve had access to our homes all along—finding that key ring for themselves.
I had to wait for dusk, though we still had a neighborhood watch going. It was supposed to be Charlotte’s turn tonight.
It was easy enough to wait for her on my webcam. To watch as she passed my house on her way back home.
Thirty minutes later, I went out, locking the door behind me.
I did not try to remain hidden; that never worked out for us here. I strode right in front of the homes, right past the cameras—just taking a walk, like Ruby once claimed.
At the Seaver brothers’ home, I saw flashes of the television screen through the blinds. I turned at the path across from Margo and Paul Wellman’s house, remembering the camera that had caught Ruby running. I walked slowly down the dirt path, careful not to make much noise. But I turned my face to the pool as I passed by, imagining someone standing there once before, watching me. Now the pool appeared vacant.
To my left, the noise in the underbrush, down at the water’s edge, grew louder. A cacophony of insects and animals that drowned out my footsteps. Trying to keep myself hidden, I used the light from my phone only once to judge the way.
I had just reached that sign, my fingers brushing over the warped metal edges, the nail protruding from the trunk, reminding us to keep away, when I heard footsteps echoing over the plywood on the path in the distance.
I ducked down, stared back, and saw the outline of long hair and long legs in fragmented glimpses through the trees. I thought it was either Whitney or Molly, and I remained perfectly still, hoping she hadn’t seen me—and wouldn’t ask what I was doing down here, in the woods, in the dark.
She moved closer, her steps resounding on the plywood, not trying to remain hidden at all. She seemed to stare directly at me. “Whitney,” she said. “Whitney!” A little louder this time. She took out her phone and used the flashlight to illuminate the area to my right, down by the water.
I held my breath, and she took another step—off the plywood path, into the rougher terrain. This was Charlotte, then, thinking her daughter was out here in the woods.
A sharp peal of laughter echoed off the water—high-pitched and fast—before being smothered by the other noises. The crickets and frogs, a low buzzing that seemed too loud for an insect.
“Shit,” Charlotte mumbled. I could see her clearly now, illuminated by the screen of her phone. She held the phone to her ear, but no one must’ve picked up on the other end. “I see you out there,” she said before hanging up.
She stood there, hands on hips, staring into the darkness over the water, before turning back for home.
My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see the shadow of a boat out there in the moonlight. Whitney and her friends, then. What Javier must’ve heard, his night on watch. If only Charlotte would’ve told him as much—that it was probably Whitney out there—we wouldn’t have thought it was someone keeping an eye on Ruby.
The pool gate at midnight, footsteps trailing away, the car driving off: They could all be traced to a group of teenagers, bored in the summer.
There was truly no one else to blame out here. There was only us.
I was tracing my hands over the roots of the tree, making my way to the base of the trunk, when I heard someone cough. Closer than the kids on the lake.
I stood slowly, staring out at the water, looking for movement. Another one of their friends, maybe, planning to meet them out there.
At the other side of the inlet, I thought I saw the shape of a man. But I couldn’t be sure. He did not call out to them, but the shadow moved slowly and deliberately, as if trying to remain undetected.
None of us was alone out here.
So much for this quiet little neighborhood. All of us were alive, at night, in the dark. All the things we needed to keep hidden during the day, set loose at night, when we revealed ourselves.
From the distance, I couldn’t tell if the person at the edge of the lake had seen me, too. If they were turned my way even now. A prickle on the back of my neck, and I ducked down quickly, with the sudden feeling that he was looking straight at me, too.
I held my breath and scratched my nails at the surface, tearing away chunks of compacted dirt. Then I reached my hand down into the cooler earth, deeper, deeper, panicked that I was wrong, that I’d forgotten, that time or animals or someone else had been here first. That rainwater had washed it away. But my index finger brushed something cold and curved.
I hooked my fingers into the ring and pulled.