It took me a second to remember what I was doing, why I was so disoriented—waiting for Ruby; watching for whomever had been lurking.
I pushed myself out of bed, steadied myself in the open doorway. “Ruby?” I called, walking toward her room—dark and stale and empty—before heading down the stairs. Still in my pajamas, I opened the front door, even though I knew what I would see: an empty street, the vacant driveway. My car and Ruby still gone.
But the street wasn’t dead, despite the hour. Preston Seaver was heading in the opposite direction, head down, hands in the pockets of his gym shorts, striding toward home. He didn’t notice me on the front porch, didn’t change pace, just continued toward his house on the corner. Probably covering the last part of Mac’s shift from the night before.
Despite the adjusted summer schedule, Mac worked early mornings—earlier than the rest of us, getting a head start on the outdoor work. Last I’d heard, he was overseeing the brickwork being redone across the quad in center campus.
I eased the door shut, running through my options: report the car missing; find that lawyer’s information and contact her about Ruby’s whereabouts; wait.
Maybe Ruby just did not think of others as I thought of her. Maybe she got lost in the freedom of it—fourteen months with no one dictating her schedule, accounting for her every move. Or maybe she was telling me something.
I got rid of her things, and she took my car. Everything a push and pull.
Like she said, someone was going to pay.
* * *
I LOOKED AT THE clock; I was due at Charlotte’s for coffee in fifteen minutes. When I first moved in, I loved the standing coffee dates she would organize at her place. The promise of close friendships and secrets kept. There was something about Charlotte that made you want to open up—it was probably what made her so good at her job as a counselor at the college. Or maybe it was a trick she’d learned in her training. Either way, it was common to be welcomed into Charlotte’s home for coffee only to leave with half your issues addressed, feeling lighter.
All of us were different now. Held tighter to our secrets and our trust.
I left my hair to air-dry—Charlotte would probably be put together, but there was no point in me pretending. When I stepped outside, Javier was sitting on his front porch in a worn gray T-shirt and blue pajama pants. He had a coffee beside him and a cigarette in his hand. I knew he’d supposedly quit years ago and that Tate wouldn’t put up with smoking in the house. I also knew the scent carried through the slats of the back fence some nights, long after she must’ve gone to sleep.
“Morning,” I said, heading down my porch steps. He tipped his cigarette toward me in faint acknowledgment, not speaking. I wondered if Tate was still inside, sleeping.
Javier Cora leaned into summers with conviction, so different from the persona he adopted on school days, with his quirky bow tie and loafers and dark hair tucked behind his ear, as if shrugging on the costume of Favorite Teacher. He would probably be unrecognizable to them with his summer hair, longer and unstyled; a beard he shaved only once a week, if that; the cigarette, a scandal to middle school parents everywhere.
Here, to our neighbors, we revealed a side of ourselves that we kept hidden from our colleagues and acquaintances. The person we were at five a.m. on garbage day; the hours we kept; the lives we led. We were closer to being a family than not, knowing each other’s schedules, and visitors, and insecurities.
We knew who didn’t make it in to work （and whether they lied about the cause）; we noticed whose cars didn’t make it home at night; we saw whose recycling bins were overflowing at the edge of the driveways （though we were rarely surprised）; we listened to the arguments carrying from open windows and backyards, feeling more like confidants than voyeurs.
I rang Charlotte’s doorbell precisely at nine. She answered the door barefoot, in leggings and a flowing tank over a sports bra, like she had been working out. Though there wasn’t any evidence other than the clothing. Her hair was shiny and blow-dried straight, and her house smelled of coffee and freshly cut flowers. There was no evidence of the luggage from yesterday in the hall, or her daughters.
“Hi,” she said in a faux-quiet voice. Then she gestured to the staircase behind her. “The girls are still sleeping.” A quick roll of her eyes. “Teenagers in the summer. Come on in. They won’t hear us in the kitchen.”
I followed her past the stairway, down the hall, into the kitchen, where three barstools were tucked under the counter dividing the kitchen from the living room, the lack of a table opening up the space.