“Tate,” I said. Remembering what Ruby’s lawyer had said on the news program, that there was evidence that had been destroyed. And Chase telling them to keep it simple. The fight I’d heard between Tate and Javier, their voices carrying out the kitchen window. The tension brewing behind these walls. “Did you see her that night?”
She dropped the cup on the counter too hard, so the liquid splashed out over the rim. “She’s dead. It doesn’t really matter anymore.”
“It does, it matters,” I said. Because someone had killed her, and I had invited myself into the house of the people who might’ve destroyed evidence, and Javier would be coming back soon.
“No, I promise you. It doesn’t.”
“Was there someone else on your security camera? One of Charlotte’s daughters?”
Her expression jolted in surprise. “Charlotte’s daughters? No, why would you say that? It was her, it was only ever Ruby.”
The truth, then. Mr. Monahan was right. And Ruby had been on Tate and Javier’s camera.
“Then why did you hide it?”
“Because!” She threw her hands in the air. “Because there’s no way to just turn in a thirty-second clip of Ruby walking by. Because I’d have to turn over the entire evening. From midnight to two, that’s what the police wanted, right?”
I nodded, not understanding.
“I am a teacher,” she said. “A middle school teacher. We both are, me and Javier. You can’t have anything”—her voice broke, nearly a whisper now—“anything on your record. Nothing.”
“Tate, I’m not following you here.”
She finished the lemonade, then twisted the cup back and forth on the counter, looked me dead in the eye as if deciding on something. “We got back after midnight,” she said.
I nodded, encouraging her. I’d heard this much, after all. “You were at a friend’s party.”
“We were. And we drank too much.”
So they’d been caught on camera, stumbling in the front door, a little drunk? I hardly thought the police would care. I hardly thought they’d be able to charge the Coras with anything and make it stick.
“We hit a deer.” As soon as she said it, her eyes wide, the rest of the words started spilling out, like she’d been holding it back for too long. “It was bad, Harper. The car was a mess. Like we needed a new bumper. Like we’re lucky we got home in one piece.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “We’re lucky we got home at all. It was a horrible, horrible idea. But we kept driving after, figuring we just needed to get home, and that’s what you’d see on that camera out there.” She pointed to the front door. “Us, practically falling out of the car, barely able to stand. We moved the other car out of the garage to hide the damaged one inside. Because we couldn’t bring it to get fixed until we were sober. Because we had to pretend we’d hit a deer another time. We decided we’d say it happened the next day. And then we’d go into the shop and get the car fixed.”
Her hand went to her mouth, her fingers trembling. “It was supposed to be simple,” she continued. “But then the police arrived early in the morning, and at first I thought it was about us. I’d had nightmares that night—that we’d hit something other than a deer. How close we had come… to ruining our lives.”
A shudder ran through her, transferring straight to me. All the little things we hid to protect ourselves. All the small mistakes that could lead to the incrimination and ruin of someone else.
“Javier had to get a rental from the dealer, and the neighbors wanted to know why, of course, because they didn’t know why there was a vehicle they didn’t recognize lingering on the street. Scared Charlotte’s girls, even. We were all so scared back then, remember? So we said we bought it. Traded the old one in. Kept this one instead. So yes, it was reckless and stupid, but it was unrelated, I promise. It wouldn’t have exonerated her. All it would’ve done was ruin our lives.”
“It did matter,” I said. Ruby’s time line was the only thing that mattered. And they had to make it stick. “No one knew she had been out front. It didn’t add up in the time line.”
“That was your fault,” she said, turning on me—a new place to shift the blame.
“What?”
“Your insistence that she’d come in at two in the morning. Maybe you heard wrong—the front door, the back door, you were upstairs, right? But the timing was off, from what you were saying. We were going to tell the police we saw her, just not say it was on the video. We were going to tell, because we thought it was the right thing to do. But Chase said it was best to keep it simple. It wouldn’t change anything. And cameras counted more than a witness.”