“You don’t look so hot yourself,” I said, feigning levity. “Thanks, but I think I’m about to crash.”
Because all I wanted was to be left alone. Alone with my fears. Alone to work it through. To trace each thread through the night of the party, as if something new would suddenly emerge.
Because as he was eating, I’d felt myself fracturing. My thoughts had disconnected from the present, circling back to the events of the last few days.
I saw Ruby again, holding her purple mug in the air—The gang’s all here!
I couldn’t stop my mind from taking the alternate path. Step by step, from the day Ruby had returned to the day she had died. On the lounge chair, being lowered to the ground, my blue cup rolling across the concrete—
Foul play.
Poison.
Working it through, day by day, to its inevitable end.
To the sudden fear that maybe this ending wasn’t meant for her but for me.
SATURDAY, JULY 6
HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE
Subject: Meeting today
Posted: 8:02 a.m.
Charlotte Brock: For anyone who was at the party. Noon, at the Seavers’。 Tell any neighbors not on the board. I’ll be deleting this ASAP.
Preston Seaver: BYOB, friends Tate Cora: Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Preston Seaver: Sorry, I deflect with humor Charlotte Brock: Humor implies something is funny.
Javier Cora: I mean, I thought it was a little funny…
CHAPTER 18
NOTHING WAS ANY CLEARER by the morning. Whether I was safe; whether I was in danger.
Alone, in the middle of my kitchen, with the chill of the tile floor under my feet, the emptiness, the quiet—I felt the need to call someone. To tell someone else what was happening here and what I was afraid of. So someone would come looking for me should I disappear. So it wouldn’t take a barking dog for people to realize that something was wrong.
My friends from work would be home from their trip by now, unpacking their luggage. But what could I say? Ruby came back while you were gone, and now she’s dead, and I’m afraid. They’d missed too much, were too connected to Brandon. And my position at work made that type of confessional friendship no longer possible.
My dad had always been the person I went to for advice—I’d stayed primarily with him after my parents separated—but we’d distanced since Aidan. I couldn’t stand that he was right. That he’d seen the worst in Aidan, and it had played out exactly as he’d predicted. When I called him after Ruby’s arrest, I could feel his words, so close to the phone: Jesus Christ, Harper, you’ve got to stop taking in people like this. You’ve got to cut out this affinity for people who walk all over you. And look now. Look who you were living with. I could’ve gotten a call from some stranger telling me my daughter is dead—
He’d choked on his words, half anger, half fear, and I saw myself as my brother then. Understood that my father could never handle this sort of role, could not accept a future of uncertainty. He spoke like there were pieces of me that existed outside my own control. Forces at work that were always looking for a weakness. He seemed to feel that the world endangered you just by your existing within it, and it would look for your faults to exploit.
And I hadn’t even told my mom about Ruby’s arrest in the first place. Wasn’t sure how much she knew, either from my father or from Kellen. I’d always worried she had too much on her plate with Kellen, and I’d never wanted to add to it.
I laughed to myself, close to delirium, thinking how the most unreliable person I knew was suddenly the only person I could trust.
Maybe this was why I’d told him about Ruby and the trial the first time, at Christmas. Maybe it wasn’t the eggnog or the lack of sleep but this need for someone else to know—just like now. Maybe I’d needed someone else to tell me I had done the right thing. But instead, all I’d gotten was a questioning look, a questioning statement: Shouldn’t you be sure? Something that had kept me from confiding in anyone else.
I held the phone with two hands as it rang. My stomach dropped as the call went to voicemail. I was about to leave a message when my phone chimed with an incoming text. Thinking it was my brother—Why are you calling me so damn early, Harp??—I hung up.
But it was from Charlotte: Just making sure you saw the note on the boards about the meeting.
How different things were now from last weekend. When I had been kept out of the loop, not part of their meetings.
I’ll be there, I responded, dropping my shoulders back, starting the coffee.