“Ruby?” I called, before taking a step inside the bathroom. The bed was a double pushed up against the far corner, and the turquoise comforter was thrown back haphazardly. The blinds were tilted shut so that streaks of light filtered through the gaps onto the floor.
Last night, after the news program with her lawyer, Ruby had taken a phone call and disappeared upstairs, never to reemerge. I’d heard her through the closed door—the low, periodic sounds of a conversation—but couldn’t make out what she was saying. Only her tone: clipped words, rising voice, before the room fell into a prolonged, unnatural silence.
Her room was empty now. I wondered how long it had been this way. Whether she’d gone out last night after I’d fallen asleep.
I backed out of the bathroom quickly, not wanting her to find me snooping, then descended the steps, hoping she was in the kitchen or lounging on the couch.
I didn’t see Ruby anywhere, and my heart rate slowly increased. She had no car—there were only so many places she could be. None of them good options.
My eyes scanned the downstairs for anything irregular—the front door was still locked, but the back… I walked closer until I could be sure: The back deadbolt was unlocked.
I threw open the door and there she was, on the worn white Adirondack-style chair that she’d moved to the opposite corner of the yard, into the single square of sun, her feet up on the matching wooden ottoman. “There—”
She put her finger to her lips, cutting off my comment. At first I heard only the birds, animals leaping from branch to branch in the trees behind us. But she tipped her head toward the high white fence that separated my yard from the one next door. There were voices, slightly muffled—I could just barely make them out. Not in the yard itself, more like someone had left a window open at their house.
Slowly, as we listened, the voices rose, gaining clarity in steadily rising emotion.
In all the years I’d lived next door to Tate and Javier Cora, I had never heard them fight. Argue, sure, in a gently teasing way—what they must’ve learned to do in front of others at the local middle school, where they both worked. If only you had remembered to take out the trash and Try not to forget the appointment this time. But never voices raised, accusations thrown. Not even during the investigation, when tensions were high and relationships were fracturing, fissures exposed everywhere. Tate and Javier had remained a united front.
Oh, but not today.
“You’re not thinking, Javi.” Tate’s words sounded like they were forced out through clenched teeth.
“I’m not thinking, I’m not paying attention—I’m always not doing something, according to you. Maybe you should be the one changing. Maybe you should just calm the fuck down for once.”
Ruby’s mouth fell open in exaggeration, eyes wide with glee. I felt my expression mirroring her own—a shared, delighted shock. I couldn’t imagine anyone, let alone Javier, telling Tate to calm down.
A beat passed, and then two—long enough for me to think they’d moved to another room—before Tate’s voice, high and tight, cut through the still morning. “Maybe you should get the fuck out of here.”
And then the sound of their back door being thrown open, Javier’s feet on the steps, and his rapid breathing, so close, on the other side of the fence. A flash of bright blue from his shirt as he passed back and forth.
We were stuck. I was standing at the bottom of the brick steps, trying not to give myself away. Ruby sat on the chair, one hand raised comically in mid-motion. She pressed her lips together. I felt myself holding my breath.
The unmistakable sound of texts being sent and received chimed from his side of the fence; he kept moving, a blur of blue passing through the slats. I wished I could see him, see what he looked like—whether his fists were balled up, whether his face had reddened—but the only way to see into your neighbor’s yard was from the second floor, and even then you could see only the back corners of the patio, where the gate gave way to the rise of trees beyond the fence line.
When Aidan and I moved in, Tate and Javier Cora became our closest couple friends. We spent evenings in their yard or ours, drinking beers, grilling, laughing. The guys would go out sometimes in the evenings together, and Tate and I would meet up at the pool, drinks in hand, chairs turned toward the lake, faces angled into the breeze.
After Aidan’s departure, it became clear they had known for a while that he’d been considering leaving me; neither of them seemed surprised. When I told Tate—the first person I wanted to see; I showed up on her front porch with righteous anger and a bottle of wine—it was obvious that someone had beaten me to it. And it was then I understood that, at some point along the way, Tate had decided not to tell me that my fiancé wasn’t in it for the long haul.