I wondered if this would go on indefinitely: every item, every experience, something unexpected and taken for granted. Wild.
My phone buzzed from where I’d left it beside the sink. Neither of us made a move to look at it.
“How long, do you think, before everyone knows?” she asked, one side of her mouth quirked up as she leaned against the counter. As if she could sense the texts coming through.
Not long. Not here. As soon as someone saw her, it would be on the message board—if it wasn’t already. When you purchased a home in the Hollow’s Edge neighborhood, you automatically became a member of the Hollow’s Edge Owners’ Association—an official, self-run group with an elected board that decided on our budget, collected our dues, made and enforced the rules.
From there, you were also invited to join a private message board, not officially regulated, initially set up with the best of intentions. It became a different beast after the deaths of Brandon and Fiona Truett.
“Do you want them to know?” I asked. What are you doing here? How long are you staying?
“Well, I guess they’re bound to notice eventually.” She crossed one foot behind the other. “Is everyone still here?”
I cleared my throat. “Plus or minus a few.” The renters had all gotten out when they could, but the rest of us couldn’t sell without taking a major loss right now. The Truett house was still empty next door, and Ruby Fletcher, longtime resident of Hollow’s Edge, had been convicted of the killings. It was a double hit. Maybe we could’ve recovered from one or the other, but not the combination.
Tate and Javier Cora, my neighbors to the left, were looking to move, but they were two doors down from the crime scene and had been advised by their realtor to wait it out. But there were others who had slowly disappeared. A fiancé who had left. A husband who was rarely seen.
Breaking the case had broken a lot of other things in the process.
Instead, I said: “The Wellmans had their baby. A boy.”
Ruby smiled. “Guess he’s not such a baby anymore.”
I pressed my lips together in an approximation of a smile, unable to figure out the right thing to say, the right tone. “And Tate’s pregnant.”
Ruby froze, beer bottle halfway to her mouth. “She must be unbearable,” she said, one eyebrow raised.
She was, but I wasn’t about to tell Ruby that. I was always trying to decrease animosity, smooth over tension—a role I’d long inhabited in my own family. But these were safer conversations than what we could’ve been discussing, so I ran with it. “And Charlotte’s oldest just graduated, so we’ll be losing one more by the end of the summer.” I was filling the silence, my words coming too fast, practically tripping over one another.
“Can we vote someone else out instead?” she asked, and I laughed, imagining the many names Ruby might propose, wondering which was at the top of her list. Chase Colby, most likely.
It felt like no time had passed. Ruby was always like this: disarming; unpredictable. A hypnotic personality, the prosecutor had declared. As if we were all the victims and therefore blameless in our allegiance.
It was something I repeated to myself often, to absolve myself.
But then I realized why she was asking about everyone, about who was here and who would remain: Ruby was planning to stay.
* * *
IN TRUTH, I HADN’T given much thought to where Ruby would go after her release. It hadn’t occurred to me that here would even be on her mind, with everything that had happened. We hadn’t spoken since that day in the courtroom after I testified, and that could barely count—she’d just mouthed the words Thank you as I passed.
I’d pretended I hadn’t noticed.
If I’d had to make a guess, it might have been that she’d go to see her dad in Florida. Or hole up in some hotel suite funded by the legal team who had gotten her released, working the case angles with her lawyer. I would’ve thought she’d be more likely to disappear entirely—seizing her chance, reemerging in some faraway place as someone new. A person with no history.
I checked the clock over the fridge, saw it creeping past noon, drummed my fingers on the countertop.
“Expecting company?” she asked. She was looking at the spread on the counter again.
I shook my head. “I was going to bring this to the pool.”
“Great idea,” she said. “I missed the pool.”
My stomach plummeted. How many things had she missed—the cool blast of the refrigerator, the pool, me. Would she keep listing them off, twisting the knife?