Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda

CHAPTER 22

IWASN’T THE ONLY ONE who got messages.

Someone had been leaving messages for others, making us all on edge. For Margo Wellman. For Preston Seaver? Judging by his post, I’d been completely wrong. Maybe that note I’d found on the floor of their office—I SEE YOU—hadn’t been meant for me but had been left for Mac or Preston. Something one of them had found and balled up in a rage.

The line between culprit and victim kept shifting.

How much had I misinterpreted because I’d held my secrets close? We all had.

Ruby was right about that—how none of us ever talked face-to-face. How we talked around one another, about one another, aired our grievances in thinly veiled comments on the message board. One-upping each other in passive aggression.

How long had others been receiving the notes? How many more of us were there? All of us frantically keeping them a secret. Fearful and ashamed of what they might expose—until Preston, of all people, had the guts to mention them.

I WANTED TO TALK to them. But Preston seemed to hold me at arm’s length. And I didn’t have Margo’s cell. All this time living on the same street, and we communicated by message board or when our paths crossed.

It was Monday morning, and Margo would probably be home. I could catch her before I left for work if I hurried.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I threw open the door—then jolted backward from the figure standing on my front porch.

Agent Locke stood there, blue eyes sharp, mouth a tight line. He was dressed the same as the last time I saw him, in the uniform button-down and black tie, but there was a graying stubble along his jawline today, which made him seem older, more solemn. “Am I interrupting you, Ms. Nash?” he asked.

“I was heading out…” I trailed off. “I have work.” I didn’t see his dark car, but it must’ve been parked around here somewhere. Like Tina had warned, he must’ve been going door-to-door.

“I just wanted to share some updates with each of you,” he continued as I stepped out on the porch, pulling the door shut behind me. “But it seems like most people are out this morning,” he added, with a glance toward Tate and Javier’s house. Javier’s truck was no longer in the driveway.

I didn’t reply, didn’t feel the need to explain why my neighbors may or may not be home on a Monday morning. The pause stretched awkwardly until he said, “The medical examiner is calling Ruby’s death a homicide.”

I swallowed nothing, could feel a cold sweat breaking out. “Oh,” I said, the panic rising, even though I’d known this call was coming.

He raised his eyebrows, motioned to my front door. “Are you sure you don’t want to take this inside?” He looked up and down the quiet street as if I should fear what he was about to share. As if I should fear being seen with him. Maybe he understood this place better than the rest of us did.

I shook my head and gestured for him to continue.

He sighed, shifting on his feet. “There was an insulated cup found beside her,” he said. “Since it seems everyone got their drinks from the same pitchers and appeared just fine, we have to wonder if the cup itself was the source.”

I nodded, even as my eyes drifted shut. Just as I had imagined. My blue cup with the poison inside.

“There are a lot of fingerprints on that cup besides hers,” he said, and my eyes shot back open. “Seems like it was handled by a bunch of people.”

“The cup is mine,” I said, trying to get ahead of it. Because of course my prints would be among them. “Everything she used was mine. Everything in this house was handled by me.”

I kept it to myself that the blue cup had been the one I was using that night, because it didn’t seem like the truth would set me free. It seemed like it could trap me, corner me: Someone who had access to that cup. Who had it in her possession. Who had motive and opportunity.

“Of course,” he said, nodding slowly. “That’s the impression I’ve been getting.”

I didn’t know whom he’d been talking to, or what they’d been saying, but I worried how easy it was for them to tilt the investigation my way. How much sense it would make—to the police, to the neighbors. They were fighting; that was Harper’s cup; she had plenty of time to poison the drink.

“Did you notice anyone else handling it?” he asked.

I shook my head. “People put their cups down on tables. You know what it’s like at a party. People move cups around. Serve drinks to each other. We all do it.”

Anyway, if you were going to poison someone, my guess was you’d be careful not to leave your prints on the cup, but I kept that thought to myself. It was probably a good thing that people weren’t answering their doors this morning.

“We’d really like you to come down to the station and give an official statement. Clear up any discrepancies.”

Discrepancies. I didn’t know to what he was referring, and it seemed he wanted me to ask. But he was forgetting—we’d been through this before. We’d seen it happen to Ruby. We knew the steps and understood how truth was determined by the evidence presented, and even then, it was subject to the way it was framed.

I had no idea what he was looking for. Whether these threatening notes, and all they implied, had found their way to the state police, too. I needed to know what was happening here before I spoke to him further. Before I gave any statement binding me. I had to be sure.

“This is all so horrible,” I said, the catch in my voice authentic. “But I have work. There’s so much to catch up on after the holiday week. And… my mind has been scattered, with everything.”

“Tomorrow, maybe?” he asked, and when I didn’t agree, he added, “I’ll give you a call, Harper.”

“Thanks for letting me know,” I said.

After a beat, he finally took a step down the porch. “Well,” he said, “I’ll let you get on your way.”

I remained on my porch as he walked down my front path, and I watched as he strode past the Truett house, heading for Charlotte Brock’s house next.

I needed to wait until he was gone before trying to catch Margo. It was too late to ask about those pictures before he rang her doorbell. And I’d just told him I needed to be at work.

I wondered how many of us here were checking in our garages, under our kitchen sinks, over the laundry room cabinets, to see whether we had antifreeze in our homes.

How many of us would look at the people we lived with and wonder.

I HAD JUST COME back out with my purse, heading for my car, as Javier’s truck pulled up at the curb behind me. Tate stepped down from the passenger seat before he took off again. She hitched her bag onto her shoulder, keeping her eyes down.

“Hey,” I called.

Tate froze on their front path, gaze flicking my way. “Hey,” she said back.

“That guy from the state has been going around. He just tried your house.”

She nodded, continuing up the path.

“Everything okay?” I asked, gesturing at the spot where Javier’s truck had just been.

She eyed me suspiciously. “I had a doctor’s appointment,” she said, hand to her stomach again. “All good, except for the endless sugar craving. Javi’s getting donuts.”

I walked closer, halfway across her yard, and felt like I was encroaching on her life. “Tate,” I said, lowering my voice. “Have you been getting notes, too?”

She crossed her arms, gaze sharp, with none of the vulnerability I’d witnessed yesterday. “Have you?” she countered.

“Yes.” I peered over my shoulder again but couldn’t see Agent Locke anywhere. “It’s a homicide, Tate,” I said, his words echoing back, the fluttery panic in my stomach. “It’s official.”

She looked at her front porch, at the camera pointed in our direction. Her throat moved. “Do you want to come in?” she asked.

Inside, Tate and Javier’s house had started to transform. They’d repainted the walls a warm gray, added a low table to the open area of the kitchen. A pale green glider with matching ottoman was positioned in the corner of the living room, where there had once been a bar cart. Everything seemed softer inside, as if they were rooting out any potential sharp edge.

We were standing in front of the kitchen window while Tate leaned gently against the counter, shifting from foot to foot. From here, I could see directly into my living room: the arm of the couch, a corner of the television screen.

I’d heard their fight, carrying from this very window, last week:

Maybe you should just calm the fuck down for once.

Maybe you should get the fuck out of here.

“I saw the comments on the message board this morning,” she said. “But I haven’t gotten any notes.”

And here, I’d thought she was preparing to make a confession about notes left for her or Javier. “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “I had thought maybe it was all of us.” I shook my head. “I thought it was Preston at first who was leaving them for me. I found a paper at his house that looked like the one left for me, but going by his post this morning, I think he or Mac must have received it.” Though Preston seemed to be the one who had found it, I wasn’t sure which of them it was meant for.

“God, it sounds like something Ruby would’ve done,” she said, pushing off the counter.

“Well, it’s obviously not Ruby anymore,” I said, staring out the window, straight through to my house. And yet the notes had accomplished what Ruby would’ve wanted—turning us against one another, suspicion mounting. Keeping us on edge. “Why us?” I asked. They were left for me and Margo and one of the Seavers, at least. “Why go after the group of us?”

“Well, what did it say?” she asked. Her head was tilted gently to the side, like she was genuinely curious. Curious to know whether I’d answer. Whether any of us trusted one another with our secrets here.

“I found the key,” I said, forcing the words out as Tate’s eyes grew large. I put my hand up, palm out, a proclamation of innocence. “I didn’t find it back then, during the investigation. I found it this spring when I was digging in my garden. But it wasn’t just the Truett key.” I lowered my voice as if someone were listening, just below the window frame, hidden out of sight. “She had more keys than just that one. She had a lot, Tate. Keys to most of the houses on this street. She must’ve hidden them during the investigation.”

I wasn’t sure if Ruby had hidden them because of the Truett key or whether she understood what they would imply: She was not an innocent person. She might not have been a murderer, but not everything she did was legal, either. The police could probably arrest her on one thing while working to build a case on the other.

“You didn’t tell the police?” Tate asked.

“What was the point?” I said. “She was already in jail. Convicted. I was afraid the keys would be used against me somehow. I didn’t know what to do, so I went down to the lake to get rid of them, and someone saw me. Someone took my picture.” I let out a slow breath. “That’s what I keep receiving. That picture of me with the keys.” And the implied threat within.

“Was my key one of them?” Tate asked.

“I think so,” I said. Ruby had probably copied the one I’d had from long ago, when we were friends.

I saw a quick flash of anger cross her face before it subsided.

“So that’s me. I have no idea about the rest of them, though. What they’re so scared of…”

Tate drummed her fingers faintly on the counter beside her. “Margo’s even jumpier than usual. I thought it was just Ruby being back, but who knows.”

“She used to be much more mellow,” I said.

“She also used to sleep,” Tate said with a grimace. Her eyes darted to the side, and her hand went to her stomach, and I could see, for the first time, fear. Fear, maybe not just of this but of what was to come.

“Paul seems like he’s shit at helping, to be fair,” I said, because I worried Tate was seeing her own future, the person she might become against her will. And Javier was nothing like Paul.

“There’s that,” she agreed. She bit the side of her thumbnail, eyes narrowed at the window. “This isn’t about Margo, but.” She cleared her throat. “There were some rumors… from the girls on the team I was coaching in the spring.”

“About who?” I asked, my spine straightening.

She ran her fingers along the base of her collarbone, like she was too hot. “Preston.” She put her hands out in defense, like she’d already said too much. “They didn’t exactly say it, but I sort of put it together. I heard some of the girls talking about one of the guys in security, the guy who uses the weight room.” She lowered her voice. “How he takes pictures in there sometimes.” She cringed even as she said it. “I don’t know for sure if it’s him, but I reported it. So someone at least keeps an eye out.”

“Do you think it’s him?” I asked.

She raised one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “I’ve heard things before. Little things. How he breaks up parties and drives some of the students home. It’s the way they talk about it, you know? Just sounds a little too friendly.” She shifted her jaw, and I remembered his date at the July Fourth party—Tate had asked him if she was a student, then given him a cutting look.

“You think someone else who works at the college knows? That they’re leaving him notes about it?” I asked.

“Honestly, I don’t have a clue. I’m just telling you what I know.”

“I sometimes got the feeling Preston was taking pictures at the pool,” I said. “I thought I was paranoid.”

I heard Ruby’s words echoing back: Something about those Seaverboys, huh? And this unspooling suspicion that she knew something. If only I had pressed her on it. But I hadn’t asked, because I’d wanted to avoid the conversation, wanted to veer away from any reference to Mac.

Tate scrunched up her mouth, shook her head. “I feel so bad for that girlfriend of his. She has no idea.”

I blinked twice, feeling the hot pulse of shame roaring to the surface again. All the things Tate must’ve known and chosen to keep hidden.

“Did you know about Aidan? That he was going to leave?” I asked. The past suddenly right beside us. “You didn’t seem surprised.”

She looked off to the side and shook her head, her high ponytail swishing back and forth. “No, not me. Javi told me right before you showed up. He said Aidan finally decided to leave, to leave you, and then the doorbell rang. I didn’t know how long he’d known, but I swear I had just found out. Just a few minutes before you told me, that’s all.”

“I thought you knew about Aidan all along. I was mortified that you knew and hadn’t said anything.”

“You acted so standoffish after,” she said. “I thought you needed time. But then it seemed like maybe you only wanted to be friends as a pair. That I wasn’t worth it on my own.”

“That’s not what I thought,” I said. “You totally ignored me after.”

She whipped her head in my direction. “I did not ignore you. I was giving you time. I sent you flowers.”

“What?” And then, as it slowly dawned on me, “Did you send the lilies?”

Her eyes widened in a gesture I used to know so well, like Of course I sent the lilies. “Yeah, I left them on the porch. I wrote you a letter. I signed my name to it, Harper. It really wasn’t a mystery.”

But I was shaking my head, wanting to go back in time, to see the simple truth when it counted. “I never got it,” I said. “Ruby told me they were from her.”

Tate’s expression turned sharp, her jaw tensed, and I knew that if Ruby were alive, Tate would’ve made her pay. It was Ruby who had caused that divide between us. Who’d pushed that narrative. Telling me that my friendship with Tate was unhealthy. Letting me believe that she was the one who cared. The only one.

I wanted to ask Tate what the letter had said. What she’d wanted to tell me. I wanted to reach out to her, go back, make different decisions that would land me in a different place. But it felt impossible, too large a gap to bridge—how one small move led to another, until you were too far down a path to undo it all. Wondering how to even begin.

“Well,” she said. Well. Here we were, all the same.

We fell to silence—the hum of the refrigerator, the click of the air-conditioning unit turning on, white noise circulating, keeping our secrets.

“Tate, can I ask you something?” I said, voice low.

“Shoot,” she said in her straightforward way.

“Mr. Monahan said he saw Ruby that night,” I began, easing my way to the question.

“What night?” she said, turning away fast, her ponytail whipping behind her, like she’d just forgotten something. Like she knew what I was going to ask.

“The night the Truetts were killed,” I said.

“Okay,” she said, opening the fridge, taking out the lemonade, pulling two cups from the cabinet. “Do you want some?”

“No, thanks,” I said as she poured, one hand at the base of the pitcher to hold it steady. “He said Ruby was walking up the front of our street on her way home. But then she would’ve been on your camera, too. Right?”

She eased the pitcher down, sipped from her drink, then tipped the cup back further, gulping it down. “God, this doesn’t really do the trick anymore.” She laughed to herself, then stopped.

“Tate,” I said. Remembering what Ruby’s lawyer had said on the news program, that there was evidence that had been destroyed. And Chase telling them to keep it simple. The fight I’d heard between Tate and Javier, their voices carrying out the kitchen window. The tension brewing behind these walls. “Did you see her that night?”

She dropped the cup on the counter too hard, so the liquid splashed out over the rim. “She’s dead. It doesn’t really matter anymore.”

“It does, it matters,” I said. Because someone had killed her, and I had invited myself into the house of the people who might’ve destroyed evidence, and Javier would be coming back soon.

“No, I promise you. It doesn’t.”

“Was there someone else on your security camera? One of Charlotte’s daughters?”

Her expression jolted in surprise. “Charlotte’s daughters? No, why would you say that? It was her, it was only ever Ruby.”

The truth, then. Mr. Monahan was right. And Ruby had been on Tate and Javier’s camera.

“Then why did you hide it?”

“Because!” She threw her hands in the air. “Because there’s no way to just turn in a thirty-second clip of Ruby walking by. Because I’d have to turn over the entire evening. From midnight to two, that’s what the police wanted, right?”

I nodded, not understanding.

“I am a teacher,” she said. “A middle school teacher. We both are, me and Javier. You can’t have anything”—her voice broke, nearly a whisper now—“anything on your record. Nothing.”

“Tate, I’m not following you here.”

She finished the lemonade, then twisted the cup back and forth on the counter, looked me dead in the eye as if deciding on something. “We got back after midnight,” she said.

I nodded, encouraging her. I’d heard this much, after all. “You were at a friend’s party.”

“We were. And we drank too much.”

So they’d been caught on camera, stumbling in the front door, a little drunk? I hardly thought the police would care. I hardly thought they’d be able to charge the Coras with anything and make it stick.

“We hit a deer.” As soon as she said it, her eyes wide, the rest of the words started spilling out, like she’d been holding it back for too long. “It was bad, Harper. The car was a mess. Like we needed a new bumper. Like we’re lucky we got home in one piece.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “We’re lucky we got home at all. It was a horrible, horrible idea. But we kept driving after, figuring we just needed to get home, and that’s what you’d see on that camera out there.” She pointed to the front door. “Us, practically falling out of the car, barely able to stand. We moved the other car out of the garage to hide the damaged one inside. Because we couldn’t bring it to get fixed until we were sober. Because we had to pretend we’d hit a deer another time. We decided we’d say it happened the next day. And then we’d go into the shop and get the car fixed.”

Her hand went to her mouth, her fingers trembling. “It was supposed to be simple,” she continued. “But then the police arrived early in the morning, and at first I thought it was about us. I’d had nightmares that night—that we’d hit something other than a deer. How close we had come… to ruining our lives.”

A shudder ran through her, transferring straight to me. All the little things we hid to protect ourselves. All the small mistakes that could lead to the incrimination and ruin of someone else.

“Javier had to get a rental from the dealer, and the neighbors wanted to know why, of course, because they didn’t know why there was a vehicle they didn’t recognize lingering on the street. Scared Charlotte’s girls, even. We were all so scared back then, remember? So we said we bought it. Traded the old one in. Kept this one instead. So yes, it was reckless and stupid, but it was unrelated, I promise. It wouldn’t have exonerated her. All it would’ve done was ruin our lives.”

“It did matter,” I said. Ruby’s time line was the only thing that mattered. And they had to make it stick. “No one knew she had been out front. It didn’t add up in the time line.”

“That was your fault,” she said, turning on me—a new place to shift the blame.

“What?”

“Your insistence that she’d come in at two in the morning. Maybe you heard wrong—the front door, the back door, you were upstairs, right? But the timing was off, from what you were saying. We were going to tell the police we saw her, just not say it was on the video. We were going to tell, because we thought it was the right thing to do. But Chase said it was best to keep it simple. It wouldn’t change anything. And cameras counted more than a witness.”

“Chase said that?” He had lied. When he’d told Javier to keep it simple, he was, indeed, trying to close up her time line. Trying to make it stick.

“What time?” I asked.

She looked to the clock over the oven, then back to me. “Four a.m.”

“You’re sure,” I said. “You’re sure it was her. That she was coming back home at four a.m.”

She shrugged. “That’s what we saw.”

It didn’t make any sense. It was possible Ruby could’ve left again, come back. But she would’ve stayed hidden. It was inconsistent, and Ruby was nothing if not consistent—in the way she tainted my friendship with Tate, in the way she sowed discord; she thought she was better than all of us here. She would not have made that mistake.

There was only one answer, and it nauseated me. Made me take a step back even as Tate called after me. “I have to go,” I said.

“This is why we didn’t say anything,” she said. “It only complicates a simple case.”

But she was wrong. The explanation was alarmingly simple. Horrifyingly clear.

Ruby had come home at four in the morning, not two.

Someone else had been out there, just like she said.

And whoever was out there had been the one to sneak in the back door of my house that night.

Whoever I’d heard—it was not Ruby.