Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda
CHAPTER 5
THE DELIVERY BOXES WERE stacked on my front porch by the time we arrived back home—all in my name but meant for Ruby. We dropped the kayak in the front yard, and Ruby darted up the porch steps. She scooped up the boxes like a child on Christmas, bringing each upstairs to her room one at a time.
“I’ll pay you back,” she said as she balanced the final box on her hip. “Promise.”
“It’s fine,” I said.
“I have some cash, but there’s not much left.”
“You have cash?” This detail, above all, caught me by surprise.
“Yeah, my lawyer gave me some to get me here. To get started.” Of course. How else had she taken a cab? Maybe that’s why she was here, to retrieve what was left behind. But I’d gotten rid of her things, ruining her plans—and suddenly another path presented itself to me.
“Do you need more?” I asked. The prosecutor had made her out to be a grifter, a thief, a sociopath—take your pick. Maybe I needed to accept that possibility, too. I might be a victim, but I was a willing victim. I held my breath, hoping she would take the offering and move on, move out. Leave Hollow’s Edge and never look back.
Ruby paused, one hand on the stair rail. “You’ve done enough,” she said. “But maybe you can get me a job in the meantime?” I stared at her—her expression unreadable, eyes fixed firmly on mine—until finally, she added, “You are the director of admissions now, right?”
The air between us felt charged, alive. “Right.” A pause. “We’re not exactly hiring right now…”
Her face split into a smile. “I’m kidding, Harper. Oh my God, can you even imagine?” she asked. “Can you imagine if I worked in that department now, after everything? How that would look?”
She said it with levity, but I couldn’t shake the chill, rooted to my spot. I wasn’t sure how she knew that—what sort of information she’d had access to or why she’d been searching: What I had been doing for the last fourteen months. The role I’d acquired. My life, continuing on, while she was locked away—
I needed to get out of this house. Clear my head. But I didn’t want to leave her unattended.
When she disappeared upstairs, I stepped outside but stayed close.
I hosed off the kayak, hosed our shoes, muddy water streaming down my driveway. Waiting for one of the neighbors to come out—Tate, demanding to know what Ruby was doing here; Charlotte, filling me in about the meeting—but the street remained empty and quiet.
A dog started barking from somewhere down the street, and—like always—my shoulders tensed, my stomach turned. A sign. A warning. An unshakable reminder that something unspeakably terrible had happened here.
THAT CRISP MORNING LAST March, I’d been outside; I’d gone for a run. When I’d left, I heard the dog barking next door at the Truett house. And I’d thought: Of all people to neglect their pet. Look who’s violating the noise ordinance now.
When I’d gotten back, thirty minutes later, the dog was still barking out back—louder now, a periodic whimper, and this time I thought: Maybe Ruby was supposed to walk their dog and forgot. It was the first day of spring break, and maybe the Truetts were heading out of town. Maybe they’d left the dog out back, assuming Ruby would be over shortly.
But then I’d thought of Ruby getting in at two a.m., the sound of the shower running, and hadn’t wanted to wake her if I was wrong.
It was nearly seven a.m., but they were typically early risers. Still, I knocked gently, not wanting to wake anyone on a vacation day. Especially not my boss, who didn’t like running into me outside of our work environment.
It was then, as I’d waited on their front porch, that I heard the hum from the garage. The running car, like maybe someone was getting ready to go. I’d waited for the garage door to slide open, but it didn’t. I kept waiting until I knew, in my gut, that too much time had passed.
I rang the bell this time, twice in a row, and still no one came to the door.
My hand shook as I reached for the handle. It was unlocked.
I pushed the door open, and I knew. Immediately, I knew.
I did not go in. I stumbled back, looked frantically around, saw another jogger at the corner, and recognized the familiar stride. I screamed for him—Chase! Chase!—and there must’ve been something in my tone that warned him. Because he shifted direction, his stride faster, more erratic. Charlotte must’ve heard me, too, because she came outside in her pajamas, met me on their porch. The car has been running, I said, and her hands rose to her face.
It was Chase who covered his mouth and nose with the crook of his arm as he raced inside to turn off the car engine, yelling at us to open the doors and windows.
It was too late.
Ever since, the sound of a dog barking put me on edge, brought me back to that moment—the moment before I knew, and everything changed.
Thinking about that time was like thinking of another version of this neighborhood, when the perception of our own safety was shattering. When we were realizing that here—with our lazy summers, with our neighbors who were also colleagues and friends, with our cop down the street—we had only convinced ourselves that we would be protected.
This was not the same place anymore, and we were not the same people.
WHEN I WENT BACKinside my house, I heard the shower running upstairs, and I tried calling Charlotte. When she didn’t pick up, I texted instead: Heard about the meeting. Anything I can do?
I’d long since learned that the best way to get what you needed from Charlotte was to offer to help. As the head of the owners’ association, she had enough people stopping her outside or coming by her house at all hours, asking her questions or complaining. Between that and her job as a counselor at the college, she was surrounded by other people’s problems.
A door upstairs crashed open, and Ruby came running. She stumbled down the steps in such a rush that a sense of panic spread through the room. The tags were still on her clothes, and her hair was wet and unbrushed, and I looked for the danger, for who was after her. But she stopped in the living room, frantically moving the couch pillows. “It’s on, it’s on.”
“What? What’s happening?” I stood beside her, trying to help, but had no idea what she needed.
It was then I noticed the phone in her hand. A phone I’d never seen before and didn’t know she had. She held it up to me. “My lawyer called. The news. They’re doing a program.”
“You have a phone?” The wrong comment. The wrong question.
“Yes, my lawyer gave it to me. I don’t have anyone’s number, though.” She was half-paying attention, her gaze roaming around the room until she found the remote.
It was the first time since she’d arrived that I saw behind Ruby’s carefully constructed facade. A tremble in her fingers as she turned on the television, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. She was practically breathless, standing in front of the couch, shifting back and forth on her feet.
“That’s her,” Ruby said, pointing the remote at the screen. “That’s my lawyer.”
The woman had sleek dark hair, cut blunt to her collarbone, angled cheekbones, a sharp suit. Her name was displayed on the bottom left of the screen in bold print: Blair Bowman. And now her words were coming through: “A grave miscarriage of justice. Evidence that could’ve exonerated her early on had been destroyed by those who should’ve known better. The crimes against Ruby Fletcher go back further than the trial itself. She never should’ve been arrested.”
Ruby eased onto the couch, perched forward. On the screen, Blair Bowman was sitting at a table with a man and another woman, discussing the facets of the case. How one of the neighbors was a cop and never should’ve been professionally involved; how he’d tainted the investigation from the start, advising others on what to say and what not to say. How the video evidence did nothing but prove Ruby was in the vicinity—and of course she was, she lived there, it wasn’t a crime to be outside. How witnesses had lied. “The relationships between all of these neighbors were contentious from the start,” the lawyer said, punctuating her point with her hand on the table.
A noise escaped Ruby’s throat, and the tension in my shoulders ratcheted up another notch. It hadn’t been me. I hadn’t lied. I’d been called by the defense—the only neighbor called by their side—to vouch for Ruby, and that was my plan. I thought I’d done the right thing, the good thing.
But in the witness box, in that moment, whatever you were thinking up to that point, it changes. What you say is between you and your god—or your faith in a system. A belief all the same. That the system we built would not wrongly convict or wrongly acquit. That justice can be served only if all play by the rules. And you play by those rules as a belief in something greater than you.
So I told them: Yes, she sometimes walked their dog; yes, I believed she had a key; yes, she was out that night, and I’d heard her come in at two a.m. through the back door, had heard the shower running soon after.
But I also told them she had no reason to do it. I told them we had all known Ruby for years. I told them she was a good roommate and reliable, and there was no animosity between her and the Truetts, no more than the rest of us. I told them the Truetts trusted her.
But I didn’t know what the others had said. I didn’t know about the footage that was shown. The very tight time line we had created. I did not hear Chase’s testimony.
How he’d told them that, on the morning we’d found the Truetts, all the neighbors came running. In the commotion, every one of us came out. Everyone except Ruby. As if she already knew the scene we had uncovered.
I didn’t know about the map that was shown of where each of us lived. The evidence attached to each house and the very clear path, established by each witness, of a closed loop—from the scene of the crime to Ruby’s return home: Charlotte Brock. Preston Seaver. Margo Wellman. Me.
When I went into the courtroom, I didn’t think they had enough. Neither did Ruby, it seemed—who, without bail, had pushed for a fast trial, believing she’d soon be out.
In that moment, on the stand, I did not know I was providing the final missing piece that would convict her.
Ruby leaned forward now, chin in her palm, rapt with attention.
Her lawyer was closing out the discussion. “We are looking into options, but rest assured this is not the last you’ll be hearing from us.”
Ruby shifted to face me then, practically drunk with some unnamed emotion—excitement or power. “We’re going to sue,” she said.
She smiled then, and I recognized it—her first real smile. The authentic Ruby Fletcher. The one I remembered. And suddenly, I knew why she was here. Knew exactly what she was doing, what she wanted. Even before she said it, I knew: “Someone’s going to pay.”