Yes, we were as powerful as we had imagined, in our search for the danger, our yearning to lock it up. We had deluded ourselves. Turning ourselves into liars and worse. Buying in to our brand of reality. Because we had to believe it—accept that there was a killer, one who must’ve lived so close, right here.
It could just as easily be one of us. It could just as easily be you. Every one of us, inching one step closer.
It had to be someone else.
We’d conjured monsters from nothing. Manifested fear.
Truth by mob; death by fiction.
“Is no one going to call the police?” I yelled, my voice wavering. “Seriously?”
And Tate, with the gun, arms wide, gesturing to all of us like a threat. “You heard her. Call the fucking police!”
Javier made a show of patting at the sides of his boxers, then turned for the house. Preston had his phone out in his hand now.
But I was suddenly afraid. Of what they would say. Of whom they would protect.
Of what they envisioned as safety.
I slid my phone out from my back pocket, fingers shaking. Everyone watching as I pressed the buttons. No one stopping me as I held it to my ear. As I told them where to come. “This is Harper Nash. There’s a situation in Hollow’s Edge.”
Everyone kept watching, the tension growing. This realization that we were all complicit. That we’d made mistakes or told tiny lies—little things that added up. That ended with the conviction of an innocent person.
That we’d all had a hand in the events that led to her death.
“My neighbor killed Ruby Fletcher,” I said, so it was clear, so it was on tape somewhere.
A pause.
“Charlotte Brock.”
We stood there waiting, the call of a siren coming closer.
All of us staring at one another, trying to unravel the steps that had gotten us here. To Tate, with a gun. And Charlotte, with her hands up, begging us not to call the police. And me, with the proof.
To three of us dead, and the rest of us standing out back in the middle of the night like we were seeing each other for the first time.
We had searched so hard for the evil lurking under the perfect veneer, the thing we were so sure existed. Like we had conjured it here.
We were good people with bad intentions. Or bad people with good intentions.
We imagined ourselves judge and jury, protectors of our community.
Turned ourselves into monsters, to murderers.
We became the very thing we feared.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 1
HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE
The page you are looking for does not exist
CHAPTER 26
I WAS STAKING THE FOR-SALE sign in the front yard when the car pulled up behind me.
I heard the window lowering, the questions beginning: “Harper Nash? Can I get a moment of your time?”
“No comment,” I said with barely a glance over my shoulder. The reporters were becoming less frequent, but a few persevered.
“You sure about that?”
The sound of her voice registered first, and I stood slowly, wiping my hands on the sides of my shorts.
Blair Bowman smiled tightly from behind the wheel of a black SUV as she turned off the engine.
I looked quickly up and down the street as she approached, sleek dark hair tucked behind her ears but dressed casually in jeans and a T-shirt, like she was just out for a drive.
“Let’s take this inside,” I said.
Her smile grew. “I thought you might reconsider.”
* * *
INSIDE, BLAIR BOWMAN PEERED around the house carefully, like she was imagining Ruby here.
But the house had changed since I’d prepared it to put on the market. The downstairs smelled of fresh paint and polished floors. I’d already removed half of my things to make the space look bigger. Upstairs, Ruby’s old room had been converted back into an office. There were no personal touches anywhere—a blank slate for other people to imagine their life, their future.
Some days, if I was lucky, I wouldn’t see her ghost.
“So, you’re moving. Where are you going?” she asked.
“I’m not sure yet,” I said. But I felt the pull of some trajectory, away from all of this. From Ruby, and Lake Hollow, and the life I’d built here. The possibilities that existed elsewhere. “My brother lives close,” I said. “I’m going to visit him for a while.”
She nodded. “That’s probably a good idea right now. Though I guess you’ll be back eventually, if there’s a trial.”
There wasn’t much yet to prove it was Charlotte—just the things she’d said that night: to me, to Tate, to the neighbors who were listening. Just the antifreeze in her garage （in so many people’s garages）。 It was still so early in the process. Too early to know what she would do, what others would do. Whether she’d take a deal. Whether there would be enough to convict.