“You can’t think she would kill over that? Come on.”
“Is there a good reason to kill them, Harper?” She took a slow breath, started again. “Look, something like that gets out… we’re all so connected here. The college. The school. Our jobs. Even small things have big repercussions here.”
I couldn’t stop my mind from drifting, then, to every time I thought I’d misplaced something. Of the times I’d been surprised to be short on cash or I’d found a piece of jewelry in a different place than I thought I’d left it. Things I’d attributed to being busy, not fully focused on the simple actions of the day. Now I was seeing something else: Ruby, hand in my jewelry box, thumbing through my wallet, seeing what she could get away with. Watching my reaction for her own entertainment.
“Ruby never liked Fiona,” Charlotte said, voice lowered.
Like she was any different, any better. I didn’t say what I was thinking: that none of us did. On a good day, we rolled our eyes at them, emboldened by our shared sentiments, bonding the rest of us together. It made us feel more righteous, more right. On a bad day, Brandon and Fiona represented something bigger, something that preyed on our insecurity—that there was something unworthy about the life we were living.
A creak in the ceiling directly overhead cut through the silence: someone walking in the loft, if their upstairs layout was the same as mine. We both looked up.
Charlotte checked her watch. “About time,” she said. Then, to me, “I think you should go before the girls come down. I don’t want them to hear us. I don’t want to upset them.”
Though, judging from my conversation with Molly the other day, Charlotte had already managed to do that herself.
I nodded, heading down the hall. “Thanks for the coffee, Charlotte.”
“Of course,” she said. “And, Harper?” I looked back, hand on the doorknob. “Tell her to go.”
“I will,” I said.
* * *
IT WAS BROAD DAYLIGHT, midmorning, but no one was outside. There was something off about the entire street, like an abandoned set.
The Truett house, blending in with the still surroundings. Nothing, except for the lack of curtains, to set it apart. Nothing to declare: This is the murder house. In the months after the trial, people would drive by, slow down, watch. Try to see something inside now that the danger had passed.
I’d never peered inside those open windows myself—I’d already seen inside once, and that was enough. The reality burned on the inside of my eyelids. The bedroom upstairs; Chase’s expression. The scream rising in the back of my throat.
Something caught my eye now as I passed. A flash of movement in the dark windows. A trick of the light. My memory and imagination overlapping.
But I found myself walking up those porch steps again, listening closely.
I pressed my ear to the door—the rumble of the car engine, a dog barking from the backyard—but there was nothing. This time, when I reached out to check the handle, it didn’t move. It was locked. My imagination, then.
I released the handle, backed away, could see the gleam of my thumbprint left behind on the brass knob. During the investigation, Ruby’s fingerprints had been found on this handle, along with mine, Brandon’s, Fiona’s, and more. I thought about that now—about how much of ourselves we leave behind in every interaction. How every place we’ve been, everything we say, can be used to craft a story.
But Ruby’s fingerprints had also been found on the back door, where the dog was left. On the bedroom handle upstairs, like she had peered in on Brandon and Fiona sleeping before steeling her nerve. Her cold gaze, her cold heart. And on the car door in the garage, the most damning place of all.
Ruby’s defense was just that—of course she’d been in their house. She had walked their dog when needed. She couldn’t tell what she might’ve touched or when. If she might’ve brushed against the car when it was out in the driveway.
She was just out that night. For a walk, she said. And why not? Was that such a crime? She’d left her phone behind because who was she planning to call in the middle of the night? What did she have to fear here? This was a safe place. Lake Hollow Prep was on spring break. She was twenty-five years old. There had been other people out there, she told anyone who would listen, she’d heard people down at the lake and gone to check it out.
This was the point she kept maintaining: There were other people out. She wasn’t alone that night. But the cameras did not back up her claim.