Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda

CHAPTER 20

IT WAS ONE A.M. and the key ring lay before me on the kitchen table, drying on a heap of paper towels, after I’d run them under the sink—mud and sludge and dirt sliding down the drain. I went through the labels more carefully this time, making a list of each key:

• T—Truett (Tina?)
• B—Brock
• S—Seaver
• M—Monahan (Margo? Mac?)
• C—Cora? Chase Colby?

I was betting on the letter being the initial of the last name; it seemed to be a pattern that fit with each name, though there were some with more than one possibility. And there was one easy way to check—as long as the bank hadn’t changed the locks after taking ownership of the house next door.

There was no way I was going to be caught out front, trespassing at the Truett house. Not with the cameras and people walking by, the neighbors not sleeping, watching out their windows instead. Not when the police were questioning us and what we were each doing. Charlotte might still be on watch, and I’d already evaded her once.

I knew the Truett fence had somehow become unlocked; I’d seen it swinging ajar my night on watch. As if someone else had been in there.

Maybe someone was able to jimmy it with a golf club from above.

I left through my back patio, but in the dark, I collided with the white Adirondack chair on the way to the gate, forgetting that Ruby had moved it from the other side of the yard. I cursed to myself, hoped Tate and Javier hadn’t heard me—or the wood scraping against the brick patio—then hoped they didn’t hear my own gate creaking open in the stillness. Tate had said noises woke her the last several nights, that pregnancy was starting to affect her ability to sleep.

I latched the gate carefully behind me, then peered once into the trees before sliding along the edge of the fence to the back gate of the Truetts’ house.

Their gate was easy to unlatch from the outside, without the lock engaged. But the squeal of the hinges through the night made me cringe. I left it ajar, so as not to create any more noise than necessary. Charlotte’s house was just on the other side, and her master bedroom was downstairs, near the back.

Key ring in hand, I walked up their patio steps. I slid the T key into the lock, but it was unnecessary. I could tell before even attempting to turn the key. The handle moved freely, and the deadbolt lock had sharp gouges around the edges. So did the wooden strip where the door met the frame.

I twisted the key back and forth, just to check, but it wasn’t working. Either it wasn’t the key for this house, or the bank had indeed changed the locks.

But someone had been inside here. From the look of the deadbolt and surrounding wood, someone had forced their way in.

I ran my finger along the deep grooves, the wood splintered in sections. Wondering who had been in here. If they’d tried to force their way into my place, too.

I’d noticed the unlatched gate here a few nights ago. My own gate had also come unlatched, swaying loose in the wind, though I was always careful to keep it locked. It seemed likely that both had been opened by the same person. Like someone was spying on each place. Or like someone was moving back and forth between our patios.

Ruby had gone out back the first night she was here—I’d heard that creak of the back door. And the next morning, she’d been sitting in the Adirondack chair, her feet up on the wooden ottoman, while Tate and Javier were arguing next door.

She’d moved the chair, I thought, for the single square of sunlight on the patio. But maybe she’d moved it sometime in the night. The base of the chair was solid wood, and the arms were sturdy, and it was now positioned just beside the Truett fence.

Maybe, after looking for the keys and finding them missing, she’d decided to find a way in by any means necessary.

I shook the fence between our properties to check for stability. It didn’t budge. These fences were meant to withstand storms and wind and wear and accidents, connecting from yard to yard, reinforcing the strength.

I felt a chill running down the length of my arms, up my back. Like she was here with me now. Of course it was her. It was always her.

I could picture her clearly, her determination: Unlocking my back gate, to be able to return after. Dragging the chair to the other side of my patio, perching on the base, climbing on the armrest, slinging a leg over the sturdy flat-top posts of the fence, falling to the bricks on the other side, where I now stood.

The marks around the deadbolt—my knife in her hand to wedge her way inside.

Ruby had been here, I was sure. Ruby had gotten inside.

I walked up the brick steps again, twisting the handle, following her trail. Desperate to know what she had found, what she had discovered.

The door pushed open on the first try.

Inside, I was hit by a wave of thick humidity and uncirculated air. I flipped the switch on the wall, but nothing happened. The electricity had long since been cut. And with that, the air-conditioning and any hope of circulating air. I breathed shallowly into my sleeve, like I’d done that day when we’d found them.

Shadows emerged from the darkness as my eyes slowly adjusted. Random pieces of furniture that had been left behind after Brandon’s brother had either sold or donated what he could—a hard-backed chair against the wall, a coffee table in the middle of the room, a stool at the kitchen counter—creating the skeleton of a house.

Even breathing into my arm, there was something off about the smell. Everything in this house reeked of wrong.

I used the light on my phone to guide the way, looking for any signs of an intruder here. But the silence and the stillness had their own presence.

I passed the kitchen window that I’d once thrown open in a panic. I kept the light pointed down so no one would see me in here.

Next, the garage door, where Chase had yelled for me to hit the automated opener—the responding mechanical hum painfully slow in the chaos—while Charlotte had run for the living room windows, throwing open the back door, too.

I followed the hallway, swooping my light up to the ceiling, to that small, discolored circle where the carbon monoxide detector had once been. The stairs to the right, where I’d followed Chase.

I’d found him at the foot of their bed. I’d never forget the look on his face. Sometimes I couldn’t look at Chase without picturing them, too. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to break in here now. Especially Ruby.

At the end of the hall, the scent suddenly changed. It became something beachy, more fragrant. A scent to mask another smell. The closer I moved to the front of the house, the more the scent grew.

The Truetts had converted the formal dining room at the front of the house into Fiona’s office, with French doors. One of those doors was ajar, and the source of the smell revealed itself: a blue candle in the middle of the wood floor, currently extinguished but burned all the way down to the melted wax. The label declared it Ocean Breeze.

I approached it slowly, this single sign of life in an otherwise barren house. The office was empty except for a stand-alone desk shoved against the far wall, and I didn’t want to use my flashlight in here—too visible, with the uncovered windows, from the front sidewalk.

I almost didn’t see it in the shadows: the heap of fabric in the back corner under the desk, stuffed against the wall.

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 JOURNALwith 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.