But she didn’t leave, and I didn’t ask her to. It seemed that what we both wanted was for her to stay. We had developed an allegiance of convenience, if only for someone to feed the cat.
I’d grown accustomed to the solitude since she’d been gone. I’d grown to value my independence and my privacy, on my own for the first time since college. Knowing that everything here belonged to me.
When she came downstairs wearing my clothes—the maroon tie of a bathing suit top visible under my black tank dress—I didn’t have much of a position to argue from, after getting rid of her things. She was taller, and now slimmer, than I, but our clothes were the same general size.
Koda followed her down, weaving between her feet, the traitor. She had been Aidan’s cat first, was firmly antisocial, and seemed to spurn attention from all humans except Ruby.
Ruby gathered her hair into a short ponytail, one of my elastics on her wrist. “Do you have an extra pair of sunglasses?” she asked.
I blinked at her. This was like watching a car crash in slow motion. “What are you doing?” I asked.
In answer, she opened the drawer of the entryway table—the same place we’d always kept the keys—the same place Ruby had also kept the Truetts’ key, when she walked their dog. For a brief second’s pause, I thought she was looking for it, but then she grabbed the electronic pool badge that granted us entrance through the black iron gates. “Going to the pool. Aren’t you?”
“Ruby,” I said in warning.
Lips pressed together, she waited for me to continue.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea right now,” I said. She had to know it. Of course she knew it.
She turned her face away, but not before I caught what I thought was the glimmer of a smile. “I’m ripping off the Band-Aid,” she explained as she opened the front door. But that wasn’t quite right. Prison had softened her metaphors. She was flirting with an inferno. She was dousing a gaping wound in vinegar.
She walked out barefoot, front door left ajar—an offering that I had no intention of taking. Not in broad daylight. Not on this street. Not in this neighborhood.
It was bad enough she was here, in my house.
But I stepped out onto the front porch, watching her walk past the front of the Truett house without a glance toward the empty porch, the darkened windows. No hesitation or change in her stride as she passed the house she’d once allegedly let herself inside in the middle of the night, let the dog out, started the old Honda in the garage, and left the interior door to the house ajar, so that Brandon and Fiona Truett died silently of carbon monoxide poisoning in the night.
My house was situated at the center of the court, six homes around the half-moon edge, a wide-open circle of pavement with a grassy knoll in the middle, with a scattering of trees that blocked the view of the lake in the summer but not the winter.
The pool was on the main neighborhood road, bordered by the woods and overlooking the lake, and from a certain vantage point, with a generous frame of mind, it could pass for an infinity pool.
As Ruby strode by each house, I imagined the security cameras catching her. Watching her. Recording her in jolts of time that could be pieced together later to track her every movement. The Brock house, whose video feed had picked up a noise that night. The house on the corner, belonging to the Seaver brothers, whose doorbell camera had caught the hooded figure striding past, and who had plenty to share about Ruby Fletcher besides.
Ruby was out of sight now, probably passing the Wellman house, whose camera had identified Ruby sprinting into the woods, toward the lake.
I was listening hard to the silence when I sensed movement from the corner of my eye.
Tate was standing at the entrance of her garage next door, half in, half out, arms crossed over her abdomen. Our separate houses were only a few yards from being townhomes with shared walls. We were practically side by side. I felt her staring at the side of my face.
“I didn’t know she was coming,” I said.
“How long is she staying?” Tate asked.
I thought of the empty bag in my house. “Not sure yet.”
Officially, Tate and Javier Cora hadn’t seen or heard anything that night—they’d gotten home from a friend’s party after midnight, and there was nothing on their camera. Unofficially, they weren’t surprised. Now I could sense her teeth grinding together, but I wasn’t sure whether it was from anger or fear.
Tate was maybe five feet tall, and small-framed at that. I’d learned it wasn’t her true first name only during the investigation. It was her maiden name, but she and Javier had met in college, where she played lacrosse, and everyone had called her Tate then. So did he. She still wore her thick blond hair in a high ponytail with a wraparound athletic headband, like she might be called onto the field at any moment. I could picture it well. She could summon an intensity that compensated for her size.
Everyone knew Tate and Javier as the gregarious couple of the neighborhood. They hosted weekend barbecues and helped plan the neighborhood social events.
“Do something,” Tate said, making her eyes wide. Pregnancy had turned her less gregarious, more demanding. But we’d all hardened over the last year and a half. We’d each become, in turn, more skeptical, wary, impenetrable.
I nodded noncommittally.
We both stared in the direction Ruby had gone. “Chase is going to lose his shit when he sees her,” she said before retreating inside.
Though Tate was prone to overreaction, this was not one of those times.
If Chase saw her there—
If no one had warned him first—
I grabbed my things in a rush, taking off after Ruby.
CHAPTER 2
IT’S FAIR TO SAY that no one here had loved Brandon and Fiona Truett.
On the surface, everything was fine. We smiled, we waved. But we didn’t really socialize with them.
Brandon was the head of admissions at the College of Lake Hollow, where many of us worked, and he believed vigorously in a separation between work and relationships. He was standoffish, and judgmental of the rest of us who did not adhere to his personal code of conduct, and kind of an asshole. Fiona was standoffish by proxy, judgmental by proxy, an asshole by proxy.
We liked them more in hindsight. In sympathy.
Their house had been unoccupied since the day they were found. It belonged to the bank now, but no one was offering, and so it sat—empty, haunting. A constant reminder.
In the months after, the yard had run wild and overgrown until we coordinated a schedule to keep up appearances, like we did after Charlotte Brock’s accident and knee surgery. We did not have altruistic intentions; we were not such good people. But we cared enough about our own status not to let the property go to hell, bringing us all down with it. We were all dependent on one another here.
The neighborhood of Hollow’s Edge hugged a finger of Lake Hollow, a semicircle of fifty closely packed homes oriented toward the water, half-moon courts set off from two main roads. The development had been completed about five years earlier, and many of the homes were occupied by their original owners. They were similarly designed and modestly priced; there weren’t large industries in the area to commute for. Most of us in Lake Hollow worked for the college, or Lake Hollow Prep, or the public education system.
We were highly educated, though not highly compensated. But we had this: the view, the convenience of a suburb, and the ambience of our own private stretch of nature—you could hear it coming alive at night, down by the water. And the summer: Administrative positions required year-round employment, but the rest had the expanse of mid-June to mid-August for themselves. Two-plus months of unstructured, unaccountable hours. Though I technically had a year-round position at the college, the days turned flexible in the summer, the hours more like a suggestion than a requirement.
There were other, more exclusive subdivisions on the opposite side of the lake, closer to the college: larger homes, more established communi
ties, with lake access and boat docks. Our neighborhood didn’t officially have direct access, though there was a cleared path through the wooded area across from the Wellmans’ home, a gently sloping path where people dragged kayaks and canoes. A strip of plywood atop the rougher section, to ease anything over the roots without damage.
There weren’t many young children here yet, the neighborhood self-selecting based on its facilities. The lack of playground. The pool with no lifeguard. The proximity to the lake. All hidden dangers that parents could see. We were mostly young professionals, upwardly mobile, still establishing ourselves.
Aidan and I had fit right in. We’d been welcomed into the fold as soon as we’d unloaded our things, fresh out of the large academic setting of Boston University, where we’d first met, enamored with the possibilities of the life we would build for ourselves here. We’d both grown up near the water—me, a mile from a stretch of cape where I’d learned to fish and sail and keep time by the tides; him, on the Gulf Coast of Florida, where he’d developed an affinity for biology and boating. We’d felt a pull here, a faint familiarity, like there was something in it that recognized us, too.
Five years later, I could name every family on the street as I walked to the pool, as I followed Ruby.
I thought about stopping at Mac’s house on the corner to make sure he’d gotten my message, but it remained dark, the blinds tilted shut. In fact, the stretch of road behind me and in front of me remained still, unnaturally silent, only the cicadas starting up again in the trees, calling out to one another. I was used to hearing my neighbors.
Our backyards collided, high white fences in a grid, granting the illusion of privacy. We couldn’t see one another, but we could hear everything, though we pretended we couldn’t. Everyone was reduced to a caricature of themselves on the other side of the fence, winnowed down to their most defining features. Sometimes you could see colors moving through the thin slats, the movement of a person, when you thought you were alone.
On a typical weekend morning around this time, most people were up, working on house projects or reading in their backyards. Others would ride their bikes around the lake into downtown, or go for a walk before the heat really kicked in.
But on this particular Saturday, the neighborhood appeared quiet. Sleepy is what the news reports once called us, as if we were collectively lazy, oblivious to the danger among us.
In truth, summers here were always dangerous. In their luxury. In their sleepiness. With their lack of structure and sudden influx of time. Time to notice the things we were too busy for during the rest of the year. Time to fixate. Time to make a change.
Anything taken to an extreme was dangerous. Here, in the summer, there was nowhere to hide—not from others and not from yourself.
On the surface, Hollow’s Edge could still give the illusion of a quiet little neighborhood, but that was a lie. Even if it had been true at one time, the reality was a very different thing now. One thing I could say for sure: We had all awakened.
* * *
THE POOL WAS NOT crowded, for which I was grateful. Ruby had already claimed a blue lounge chair, setting herself up by the pool steps. But she had my key, and I couldn’t get in without calling her attention.
Chase, thankfully, wasn’t here. Neither was Mac.
There was a man in the far corner, a dark hat pulled low over sunglasses, chair angled directly toward the sun, tanned arms resting beside his pale torso. Preston Seaver. Mac’s younger brother. I wasn’t surprised; he could usually be found at the pool on the weekend, probably on a mission to even out his tan. Preston worked in security at the college during the week and always seemed to know what was happening, in and out of work—and he was usually all too willing to share.
Preston Seaver, who had told the police how one time, when Ruby and Mac were fighting, someone had broken into their home and smashed some dishes, establishing a pattern. Preston, who now held me at arm’s length, like I was not to be trusted.
But it was a mutual distrust, and I wasn’t sure which of ours was the strongest. The way he’d turned on Ruby so fast. I warned my brother, he’d told them. As if he had always sensed some menace lurking in her, threatening to emerge.
Sometimes, when he looked at me, I wondered if he saw in me something untoward. Something worth warning his brother about, too.
Now he remained perfectly still, but I couldn’t tell whether he’d noticed Ruby or was sleeping. They had never gotten along, not even before. Preston believed Ruby was full of herself; Ruby believed Preston was irrelevant, an unfortunate extension of Mac’s existence. Even before, they could circle each other without interacting. It was a skill, but it worked only by joint agreement, some sort of pact they had entered into together.
Margo Wellman had noticed Ruby, though. She had the baby in the pool, and every few seconds she sneaked a glance—but she didn’t change her own plans. She was pulling the baby—a toddler now—in a yellow float, in lazy circles.
I stood at the gated entrance, not wanting to call Ruby’s name—not wanting to declare an allegiance, disrupt the balance—when she approached the edge of the pool, crouching down. “Is this your little one?” she asked Margo.
Margo didn’t move any closer, but she didn’t retreat, either. She was just out of reach of Ruby, and she pulled the float subconsciously closer. “Yes, this is Nicholas.” Nicholas had the same curly red hair as his mother, fine and wispy but undeniably hers. Margo had her hair tied up in a bun on top of her head to keep dry, though tendrils had come loose and clung to her neck, waterlogged.
“Hi, Nicholas,” Ruby said, waving. She smiled when Nicholas waved back, all chubby arms and baby-faced delight. “Congrats, Margo, he’s precious.”
“Thank you,” Margo answered.
Nothing about Ruby being out or here. No apologies or condolences or congratulations. Their entire interaction was exquisitely, painfully civil. Nothing about the fact that it was Margo’s camera, with its wide-angled view of the lake and the path cutting into the woods, that had caught Ruby running down through the trees that night—making us wonder if she might’ve been disposing of some evidence in the lake or the surrounding woods, though nothing was ever found.
When she stood back up, Ruby noticed me at the gate and smiled as she let me in. “Look who decided to come after all.”
“Hey,” I said. I held up my pool bag. “I have towels and sunscreen. And the food.” As if her lack of preparedness was my reason for coming. The scorching summer Virginia sun, which she might’ve forgotten about.
“I can always count on you,” she said.
Margo caught my eye as I passed. I wanted to explain. To tell her I was here to diffuse any sort of situation. To keep my eye on Ruby; to deescalate.
With her free hand, Margo hitched the navy blue strap of her swimsuit farther up one shoulder, then the other, her gaze trailing after us. It seemed like Margo’s body kept changing by degrees ever since the baby was born, month after month, in subtle realignments, so that she was constantly fidgeting with a strap, or cinching a waistband, or holding a neckline in place.
Once I settled in a lounge chair beside Ruby, Margo returned her focus to the baby, gently humming. I handed Ruby the sunscreen, passed her the fruit, watched the gated entrance.
It was easy to fall into old habits—the purple insulated cup, hers; the blue one, mine. The chair closer to the umbrella would be for me, for the shade, because I was more likely to burn than she was, though I never noticed until it was too late.
It was so easy to pretend that everything was normal. We’ve always been great pretenders here.
When I looked over at Preston, he had his phone propped on his stomach, peering down like he was reading something on his screen. But then I thought, from the angle, that maybe he was taking pictures of us. Recording us. It was not the first time I’d thought he was taking photos of people at the pool.
He tilted his phone slightly, and he pressed his lips together, as if trying not to
smile. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I sat up straighter, staring straight back at him. His expression didn’t change, until I wondered whether I was being paranoid. Whether he was watching a video—he had earbuds in, after all—or reading an article, or texting his brother: Guess who’s sitting on the other side of the pool right now…
He grinned, then placed his phone facedown beside him, resting his head back once more.
No one said anything. Margo kept pulling the baby around the pool; Preston remained almost motionless, only his fingers giving him away, tapping out some beat on the side of the lounge chair.
I wished someone would break. Say what they were thinking. None of us were strangers here. We’d all known Ruby since she was just barely on the cusp of adulthood. And last fall, we’d all testified at her trial.
I’d first met Ruby when I was twenty-five, working in the admissions department, and she was a twenty-year-old student staying with her dad in the summer. That was when Aidan and I moved in, and she was a kid bringing her friends to the pool.
People complained, covertly, passive aggressively, on our message board: What’s the policy on guests at the pool? For example, how many underage college kids can be drinking before someone should say something?
Flirting, even then, with Mac, who was older than I was and wouldn’t give her the time of day, just a nod as he passed with a can of beer in his hand.
I’d always had a soft spot for her. She reminded me of the best parts of my brother. The fun and the joy and the excitement that teetered on recklessness—the parts I imagined must still exist in him, if you stripped all the rest away.
After Ruby graduated, she’d gone on to get her master’s, working part-time in our department, giving student tours, and I got to know another side of her. We started having lunches together. She talked about her future.
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