We had always looked more similar than either of us would’ve preferred: large brown eyes and a downturned mouth; high cheekbones and a smile that felt familiar, reflecting back. At times, it made me believe we were closer than we really were.
And so I’d told him, in the dim glow of the yellow light beside the back door, with the voices muffled on the other side. My roommate was found guilty of killing our neighbors, I’d said, breaking the silence. I testified.
Kellen looked at me with an expression I’d never seen before. Like he wasn’t sure who I was, the secrets I kept. You knew she did it? he asked.
No, I said. I wasn’t sure.
His expression shifted again, to something darker, introspective. His breath escaped in a fog of chilled air. Shouldn’t you be sure before you testify?
But I’d thought that was the purpose of the trial. To present each piece as one, and to know beyond all reasonable doubt. I only told the truth. I’m not the one who found her guilty. As if we could each individually absolve ourselves.
The conversation had ended awkwardly, and I’d flown out early the next morning without saying goodbye.
But he’d called me a week later, on New Year’s Eve, close to midnight—holidays, the most acceptable times for reaching out—and apologized, as if he’d been thinking about it. Said he was projecting, then tossed in a self-deprecating line about himself—Like I should talk, right?—and some comment about how no one could ever be sure what other people were capable of. We’d said Happy New Year and hung up the phone and, in another Nash family tradition, hadn’t connected again since.
Now I heard the echo of his question: Shouldn’t you be sure? I wasn’t even sure what she was doing here now. But suddenly, with Ruby out, I saw the opportunity.
This time I approached her room with purpose.
Since the main door to her bedroom was closed, I entered the bathroom, like I had this morning, so as to disturb as little as possible. I took a closer look. On the counter were the essentials we had purchased online yesterday: fresh toothbrush and toiletries, half of them piled in the far corner, unopened. Humidity lingered in the bathroom, condensation clinging to the mirror, like she’d only just stepped out. I flipped the exhaust fan to circulate the air, and something fluttered overhead.
Above, a tight wad of paper had been wedged between the vent blades. I closed the lid of the toilet and stepped up carefully, balancing with one hand against the wall. Reaching up, my fingers brushed against the edge of a paper—a twenty-dollar bill that had unfurled, flapping with the gust of the fan. I leaned to the side, getting a better look at the roll of cash. If those were all twenties, that was far more money than I would’ve thought the lawyer would give her to get herself started.
From what I could see from this angle, there was an assortment of small bills—fives, tens, twenties. Like a hand had reached into a bucket of cash and randomly pulled. I couldn’t imagine her lawyer opening her wallet, counting out her assorted cash, and handing it over with a shrug, but I couldn’t figure out where else Ruby would’ve gotten it.
I quickly flipped the fan switch off.
My heart raced as I opened the cabinets under the sink, looking for more things she might’ve hidden, when I spotted a bright yellow pouch tucked behind the plumbing. I knelt on the ceramic tile and pulled it out. A small drybag, like we used when we were kayaking, to keep our phones and keys safe and dry.
It was empty.
She must’ve found this in the storage compartment of her kayak, buried under fourteen months of junk. Suddenly, I understood. This money hidden in the bathroom; the empty drybag under the sink; her fear that I’d gotten rid of the kayak and her insistence on taking it out—she had hidden her money there before her arrest. Maybe she’d been planning to make a run for it.
And now she was back for it.
A chill ran through me at the realization that maybe the neighbors hadn’t been paranoid with the rumors after her arrest. Their claims of money that had gone missing from a wallet, a purse, a house during a party. Maybe I had never known Ruby as well as I’d thought.
But I could feel my pulse slowing again, because I could finally make sense of her actions. She’d sneaked inside that first day, shoes in her hand, empty luggage in the hall. She was here, in my house, for the things she’d left behind. This was a series of steps I could trace forward and back, understand her motivation, see it through to its inevitable end: with her leaving this place.
Koda leaped off the edge of her bed in the connecting room, and I jumped, startled.