Ruby was taken back to her apartment in a squad car; she sat in the back and apologised for dripping rainwater onto the seat, and tried not to cry when Smith, the female officer, assured her she’d done a great job today. ‘Truly, you did everything right, Ruby,’ Officer Jennings agreed over his shoulder. Ruby had been so relieved to see their flashing lights approach, to hear the sirens as they got closer. She doesn’t know how long she was alone by the river before they arrived. Five minutes, maybe a little more. She spent that time sitting, standing, crouching, her phone pressed to her ear, a stranger’s voice on the end of the line telling her to stay calm, reminding her that help was on its way. Ruby paced in the smallest circles throughout the call, trying not to look across the water. Careful not to touch or move anything around her.
‘Keep as still as you can,’ they said on the phone. And she knew what they meant by that.
Someone was there before you, Ruby. Please don’t disturb anything they left behind.
They left behind a girl in a purple T-shirt. Face down on the rocks. And it was clear someone hurt the girl, someone did this to her. And maybe, it occurs to Ruby, that someone was still there in the park, watching as she waited for the police to arrive. Maybe that someone heard her stumble as she tried to explain where she was, where the body was in relation to her. When she couldn’t give street names or directions, could only look around and describe her surroundings, trying, desperately, to give the police the help they needed to find her.
‘There’s an overpass. I passed the boats. There are wooden posts sticking out of the water. There’s a road above us. I can’t see any signs. I was trying to find a way out!’
Maybe this someone was watching Ruby the whole time, or maybe they were already long gone, and the girl had been dead for hours. Nobody said. How did the girl get down to the water’s edge, anyway? Ruby had hurt herself trying to climb over the railing, she saw the investigators scrambling, too, slipping on the wet rocks, struggling to find their footing as they approached the body. Was the girl already down by the water when she was killed, or did someone drag her off the walkway and throw her over the railing? How strong would you have to be to do that?
Why would anybody do that?
（We both ask this question over and over.）
The shower has been running so long that the water has gone cold, and Ruby makes herself think of Ash, heads for the only loop in her mind that feels familiar, her one reliable distraction. Remembering when she last saw him in person, she tries to focus on something alive and breathing and real. She has to think of Ash, or the heaving, bone-shaking sobs will start again, the ones that felled her when she first stood under this shower in her muddy running clothes, the water so hot it stung all over. Ruby’s hands were trembling so badly she couldn’t get them to cooperate, couldn’t make her fingers unclasp her bra, or lift her saturated top over her head. As she struggled to undress, the hot, hot water needled at her newly exposed skin, and the sobbing came up out of her as a howl. Something animal and angry, something rage-filled, until it all emptied out, and Ruby was left sitting naked on the shower tiles, hyperventilating. It was as if she couldn’t remember how to breathe. She kept seeing the body, kept feeling the terror of waiting out there alone, with that yellow hair swirling in the water, sky thundering above her. And then, just as suddenly as the crying hit, Ruby clicked over into a kind of numbness, found an empty space behind her eyes she had never known was there, a place where she could stare, unblinking, letting the water cool over her. Just so she could tremble in a different way.
Better to think about Ash, about the mess her life is in, because she can control that, she can live inside a comprehensible drama. She can be that woman. The mistress. The woman with no self-respect. She does not know how to be this other person. How to be someone who discovered a body. She does not know how to be someone who stood across from that body, waiting for the police to arrive, counting to ten over and over, answering the questions the 911 operator asked, and all the while staring at the girl on the rocks, wishing she would just lift her head, say Hey! back at her, even as Ruby knew, looking at those exposed legs, the twist of the girl, that it was too late. That there was no point climbing down onto the rocks, because the girl was already dead.
I found a dead girl today.
This is the text Ruby sends Ash when she finally gets out of the shower. She types out the words, and then switches her phone to silent, feeling that strange emptiness settle behind her eyes again, before getting into bed, still wrapped in her towel. She stares at the ceiling, listening to the rain outside, not even flinching when thunder shakes through the walls.