Because negatives were harder to prove. Absences, harder to find.
I burst out into the road, not worried about being seen anymore. Not even looking for Preston, or the investigators from the state, or the neighbors who might be watching out their front windows, who might hear my frantic breathing on the other side of the back patios.
There was only one thing that mattered anymore.
That house. What had happened in that house.
I didn’t stop at my backyard, continuing on to the Truetts’ house instead. Opening their back gate, sprinting across their patio, where the dog had been left. Where he might’ve been left all night—
Pushing open the back door and stepping into the living room, where I was hit by a wave of humidity again. Walking to the center of the hallway, looking up. At the discolored circle left behind. Not removed by the killer, but by the Truetts, days earlier: an incessant beeping that wouldn’t stop, a malfunction that needed to be replaced—
Stopping at the garage door at the base of the stairs that had been left ajar. Fiona’s car keys in the ignition, which had been hanging beside the garage door.
Fiona leaving in the car, Brandon trying to get her to stop, closing the garage door—
A fight. The bang of her car door, picked up on the Brocks’ footage, as she followed him back inside, just for a second—
Please, just let’s talk about this…
An argument that had trailed into the kitchen, up the stairs, not realizing what they had forgotten.
I followed them now—the ghosts of them—up the steps to the front master bedroom. Over the garage.
Imagining them succumbing to exhaustion, emotionally spent, not thinking. Or succumbing to something else. A slow but heavy fatigue setting in.
I stared into the empty room from the same spot I’d stood long ago, where they were both found—not in separate rooms, as Ruby had promised us—but together.
I took a slow, wavering breath in, my throat hitching from the memory—and heard it.
A creak at the base of the stairs, shattering the stillness.
My shoulders tensed, everything on high alert.
Another step, and then I was sure: I was not alone.
TUESDAY, JULY 9
HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE
Subject: Did anyone else hear that??
Posted: 12:13 a.m.
Margo Wellman: Was that a fucking GUNSHOT?!?
CHAPTER 25
I HAD THE BOX WITH the carbon monoxide detector tucked under one arm, and I fumbled for the phone in my back pocket.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice called from the bottom of the stairs. “Is someone in here?”
“Charlotte?” I called back, heading for the stairs.
She was all in shadow, standing on the second step from the bottom. “Oh my God,” she said, stepping back, laughing slightly to herself. “You scared me to death. What are you doing in here, Harper?”
I descended the steps, though she still had a grip on the railing, like she needed it to orient herself in the dark.
“I found something,” I said, arm tight around the box. Proof. Proof that Ruby was innocent.
“In here?” she asked. “Did you break in here? I heard something, and the back door…”
I looked down the hall, where the back door was fully ajar. “No,” I said. “Ruby did.”
Charlotte scoffed. “Of course she did.” Even in the dark, I could see her hair moving over her shoulders as she shook her head. “And what’s that, Harper?” She pointed to the box under my arm. But there were things I had to explain to her first. Things I had to know.
“Can we just… can we get out of here? Go back to my place?” It was so hot, and I couldn’t breathe inside this house, and I couldn’t read the expression on her face.
I reached around her, to unlock the front door, to get out—but her hand circled my wrist, stopping me. There was barely any force behind it, but the intent was clear.
“You’re trespassing, Harper,” she said in that calm, unwavering voice. “Tell me now what it is you found.”
Even in the heat, I felt entirely cold. This was my neighbor, and I’d known her forever. Had been in her house, taken her advice, accepted her help—
But right now she was a stranger to me.
“I found Ruby’s car,” I said. Something true, something innocuous, that would get us both out of this house. I wished for the cameras out front. For the perception of safety, the threat of being watched. “I can show you.”
But Charlotte didn’t move, and she didn’t release her grip on my wrist. Her fingers felt cold against my skin in the oppressive heat of this house.