“Yeah, I mean. I don’t know. I think so.” My own voice seemed to carry in the silence.
“I wanted to come by last night to check on you, but the police were outside. I didn’t want them to see me going to your house after they took all the statements,” he said.
“No, that’s fine. That’s okay.” I cleared my throat. “How are you?”
I heard him breathing into the phone. “It’s crazy. I can’t believe it. Did you see what happened?”
“No, I was back at the house. I’d left early.”
“Me, too,” he said. “As soon as the fireworks were over. I told the police that. I didn’t see anything. Preston and his date barely made it through the fireworks show before leaving, too. Charlotte didn’t see anything.” A pause. “None of us did.”
“You talked to them?” I’d gone straight back home on autopilot after giving my statement. Had walked upstairs and stood in the shower until my skin had begun to prune. Had found myself in her room after, in her bed, staring up.
“For a little bit, outside, yeah. After we gave our statements. Listen,” he said, and his voice dropped, his mouth pressed closer to the phone. “No one said anything.”
In the silence, I imagined what he was implying: my fight with Ruby; the things we’d said or at least insinuated; the way she’d turned on all of us, fingers pointed and accusations hurled.
“No one is going to say anything,” he added, like a promise.
I felt a lump in my throat. Felt the memory of Charlotte’s hand squeeze my shoulder, Preston chuck me under the chin, Chase lean against the gate beside me. “What happened to her? Did the police say anything?”
“No one knows. Maybe it was the alcohol. She was drinking so much she could barely stand. Tina said she had thrown up. And she was lying on her back…” His words trailed off, and I saw her there, head tipped back, the red glow of the fireworks reflecting on her exposed skin—
“And none of us checked,” I said.
“Harper,” he said, gentle and close, like he was propped up on one elbow beside me in bed. I closed my eyes, thinking how easy it would be to slide back into this. “Don’t do this to yourself. You’re a really good person, and you did all you could for her.”
But I hadn’t. I’d needed her gone. Told her she was a terrible fucking person. Wanted her far away and out of my life, never to return.
“What did she say to you down by the lake?” I asked, thinking that whatever she’d confided to him there were the last words she’d ever spoken.
“Nothing really,” he said, but I was picturing his arms wrapped around her, the way her body had folded into his. “She was drunk, and sad, and not really making any sense.”
“Shit,” I said, hearing the catch in my voice.
He sighed. “I’ll come by tonight, okay? Help you go through her things? I’ll even bring dinner.”
The silence was messing with my thoughts—a buzzing in my head I couldn’t contain, an emptiness that only seemed to expand. But Ruby’s things were already packed up, and I’d ended things with Mac. I didn’t want to go back. “I’m doing that now,” I said. “But thanks for the offer.”
The doorbell rang, jarring me back to the present. “I gotta go,” I said before hanging up.
From my spot on the couch, I opened the laptop to see who was out there. A man I didn’t know stood on my porch, looking up at the camera—staring back.
* * *
I KNEW THEY’D BE coming.
The police had taken our statements the previous night when we were all out there, in the street. They’d looked at the angle of the houses, the corners of the clubhouse, asking if there was any footage.
But it was Margo who shook her head. Who explained it was a policy not to record at the pool, where we were half-dressed. Who shared that none of the houses on the street had a good angle anyway.
The group of officers from the Lake Hollow Police Department scanned the crowd of us, and we stared back, wide-eyed and silent. Every one of us understanding: She had died in plain sight, with no one noticing, in the one place there were no cameras, with no witnesses.
How very different from what the police had experienced after the Truetts’ deaths. Where everyone here was a witness with something to say, something to share, something to prove.
So I was not surprised to see a man on my front step now. This man, so obviously part of the investigation with his gray button-down and black tie, regardless of the soaring temperature and humidity. This was where Ruby had been staying, and I’d told them as much last night.