I nodded, started emptying boxes from the closest tote bag. Because what could one say when she was in your house, with your keys, and she’d been locked up for the last fourteen months?
“I really am sorry, Harper,” she said, voice lower, more confessional.
“You scared me,” I said, our eyes locking over the span of counter between us.
She held my gaze, unmoving, until I looked back to the tote bags. There was something almost eerie about the groceries she’d purchased. She knew exactly what I’d been needing. A new carton of eggs, the type of orange juice I drank, everything that was running low—she’d gotten it all and then some. I thought of the money in the bathroom. How much more of it did she have? She’d come back in new clothes with new food. I assumed she’d stayed at a hotel near her meeting, but maybe I was wrong.
“Go,” she said, and I was shocked by the word—the one I’d been thinking to say to her instead. “Go relax. I’ve got this. Please, let me do this.”
When I didn’t move—because it was my house, my kitchen, my cabinets she was currently opening—she pulled out the wine from the last bag. “Here,” she said, “still your favorite?” And something softened inside me, because it was. Because, fourteen months later, a lifetime later, she still knew this. And I remembered the other side of her, before the investigation: how thoughtful she’d always been. When I’d had a bad workday, when Aidan had left, she’d somehow known exactly what to say or do.
She’d brought me flowers—lilies, my favorite, in an assortment of colors that brightened the room. She’d stood on my front porch with the vase in her hands and said, He’s an asshole, and I’m sorry. I’d invited her in, and she looked around my half-empty house, and it was then, seeing the empty spaces that needed to be filled, that she asked if I could use a roommate. When all I could feel were the people who had been our friends, who were no longer reaching out, as if my heartbreak might be contagious.
It wasn’t a roommate I needed in particular, but Ruby filled up the space with her things, her laughter, her thoughtfulness.
Ruby checked the right drawer on the first try, held up the corkscrew, and opened the bottle, pouring me a healthy portion. I took it from her hand, our fingers brushing.
“Now,” she said, with a crooked grin, “let’s see if I remember how to use a stove.”
This time I smiled, too. I went along with it, leaning into the awkwardness, the way she just embraced it, made it a part of her, didn’t try to fight it or pretend it didn’t exist—the opposite of Charlotte, in so many ways.
I took the glass of wine out back, sat in the Adirondack chair with the chipping white paint, watching the shade creep across the brick patio. Thinking about how the trial had painted her, the way they wanted to make her into a manipulative villain instead of someone fully formed. Who could be both generous and careless, fearful and feared.
Next door, I could hear the daily monotony of Tate and Javier’s dinner routine—banging cabinets, the rattle of a pan on the stovetop, Javier’s muffled voice. Whatever had happened yesterday, they seemed back on track today.
I curled my toes on the wooden stool, watching the bees darting from flower to flower in the mulched garden against the house. The far-right corner of the mulch bed was disturbed—Ruby was right, though it wasn’t obvious unless you sat at a distance. An abrupt gap between the flowers and the edge of the brick, the mulch between them dark and overturned.
When Ruby swung open the door a while later, her face was shiny, and the scent of garlic and oregano trailed after her. “Dinner is served,” she said with a flourish of her arm, beckoning me inside. She was brimming with nervous energy, watching for my expression as she led me past the kitchen.
She’d set the dining room table off the front foyer, which we never used. It ended up functioning as a holding area for mail or packages, usually. We typically ate at the kitchen table, or standing at the counters, or on the couch with plates balanced on our laps, wineglasses on the coffee table.
Now the chandelier looked like a candelabra, dimmed and atmospheric. Half the lights had burned out over time, and I’d never found the replacements, which gave the room a certain ambiance, shadowed and quiet.
“That’s you,” she said, pointing to the place setting against the far wall, without the wineglass. Her glass was poured fresh, next to her dish in the place beside mine, facing the front window. She had made shrimp and pasta, a salad, garlic bread. With intense formality, she gestured for me to sit first. She was watching me closely, every movement, waiting for my reaction.