In the drought over the last few months, though, something had gotten lost. The hidden edges of the shore had slowly been revealed, the roots and mud and dirt and debris. The trash brought out on boats and left behind, washing up, catching on the decaying logs. Secrets rising from underneath.
Sometimes, at night, you could hear rats scurrying out from the edge.
Sometimes I thought all of this was because of Brandon and Fiona Truett. That nothing beautiful could ever last here again. That the story we told ourselves about this place was rotten, and now this, too, must rot.
* * *
RUBY WAS OUTSIDE.
She stood on the corner of my street, in front of the Seaver house. Currently no less than six feet from Mac, who was halfway down his walkway, rocking back on his heels, hands on his hips.
Five feet now, as he stepped even closer.
I tapped my brakes as I approached, then eased to the curb. Ruby was turned away from me, but Mac was smiling at something she’d said. His expression didn’t change as he saw me pull up beside them.
I lowered the window. “What’s up?” I called.
Ruby turned quickly, ponytail whipping behind her. “What’s up with you?” she asked. “I woke up and you were gone.”
“Had to grab some things from work for later,” I said, and Ruby frowned, quick and fleeting. I said to Mac, “I ran into Preston on campus. Thought maybe you’d be working this morning, too.”
His hands were in his pockets as he shook his head. “Not me. The project is off this week. Half the crew was on vacation anyways.”
I shifted my gaze to Ruby, who made a show of stretching, leaning to the side, hands on hips. “Well, I’m running,” she said. “Preparing to run. Thinking about running.” She laughed to herself, and I heard Mac’s laugh in echo.
“If you wait a minute, I’ll catch up with you,” I said. Even though it was too hot and I was nursing a hangover. Ruby, on the other hand, seemed fully recovered.
“Oh, no,” she said, “I’d better embarrass myself on my own. Enjoy the peace and quiet, Harper!” And then she took off, slowly but confidently. I watched her in the rearview mirror until she disappeared down the road. Mac was watching, too.
“What did she want?” I asked.
“To say hey, I guess.” He scratched at the side of his face, in need of a shave. “I thought it would be worse if I ignored her. You know how she is. Persistent.”
Didn’t we both. “Hey?” I said, arm hanging out the window, practically searing against the hot metal in the sun. “That’s all?”
“Harper, come on,” he said, glancing to the side quickly before approaching my window. He bent down, tan arm resting beside mine on the window frame, his free hand tucking the hair behind my ear. “You’re the one who kicked me out the other night.”
I brushed his hand away. “Mac, seriously, what did she say to you?” I said. With Mac, I had learned to ask things directly, knowing he would be direct in response.
“I think she said, Hey, Mac, long time. How’s it been?” He smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling. I rolled my eyes, and he squeezed my arm. “Be fair, Harper. I’d think by now you’d do me the favor of at least acting like you trust me.”
And that right there was the reason I had stayed in this casual limbo, even though neither of us seemed interested in taking it any further. I did trust him, in a simple, straightforward way, and there was something to appreciate in that. He didn’t hide who he was or what he was interested in. I wouldn’t wake one day to find him halfway out the door with half my furniture in tow. It was the easy path. The simple path. The one that required no commitment and no promises.
He tapped the car door once as he stood. “Although,” he said, “she also wanted to know where you were. She asked if I’d seen you. Maybe she knows. Maybe it’s fine.” He lifted one shoulder in a slow shrug, half his mouth in a careless grin.
My eyes widened. Ruby had my number. She could’ve called if she’d really wanted to know. I hardened my gaze. Made sure he knew I was serious. That this was serious. “Mac, it never happened,” I said.
His expression shifted—confusion and something else. Resignation. Acceptance. He nodded once. “If you say so,” he said, stepping back, erasing all that had come before. Like we could rewrite history, undo our missteps, go back and take a different path. And it was like we both understood, right then, that it was over.
Our end, as easy as our beginning.
He looked toward the woods. “Better get out of here, then,” he said. “Before she makes it back around and wonders what you’re still doing here.”
* * *
THE NEIGHBORS HAD STARTED emerging again. Whitney, sitting cross-legged on the top porch step, smiling at the phone in her lap; Tina, pushing her dad in his wheelchair with her mother beside her, waving to someone out of my sight. There had been a shift; a return to normal.
People could get used to any change. All we needed was time.
* * *
THERE WAS A PHONE ringing somewhere in the house. Muffled, but with a high-pitched generic ringtone, coming from upstairs.
Ruby’s phone.
I carried my files from work upstairs but went straight to her room first. Her phone sat on the edge of her bed, facedown. I flipped it over before I could talk my way out of it, wondering who might be calling her.
An ID flashed on the screen—BB, a name she had added to her contacts. It took me only a second to work it out: Blair Bowman. It had to be. The lawyer whose name I’d seen on the television screen. The phone stopped ringing, now showing the message 5 Missed Calls.
The phone chimed once in my hand as I was staring at the display. A text this time, from the same caller: We need to talk. Pls call me back ASAP.
Definitely the lawyer, who couldn’t be bothered with the extra milliseconds needed to type out the word please.
A door opened downstairs, footsteps heading across the foyer. I dropped the phone back on her bed, hoped I got the positioning right, and rushed out of her room. I was just passing the top of the stairs, files still in hand, when Ruby started up in her new jogging shoes.
“That was quick,” I said.
Her steps slowed as she approached, a sheen of sweat over her exposed arms, the top of her chest. “What are you doing?” she asked, looking at the files.
“Work,” I said. “Grabbing my laptop.” Like I needed to account for any movement in my own house. And then, like I could beat her to it, save myself with a piece of the truth: “Hey, I heard a phone ringing. You just missed it.”
She stepped to the side, pacing through the loft. I could see the muscles in her calves, in her upper arms. The tendons in the back of her neck. “Probably spam,” she said. “I think I was given a phone number that must’ve recently belonged to someone else.”
I wanted to tell her, No, it was the lawyer. I wanted to hear what she had to say. But there was no way to do that without giving myself away.
She pulled one leg back into a stretch. “I barely made it around the block. It’s too hot to run,” she said. She started to laugh. “But Mac, my God. He acted like…”
I waited, hanging on her every word. Desperate to know what she saw, what she knew.
She wiped her face with the bottom of her green tank top. “You know,” she said, “he came to see me once.”
I shook my head slowly before finding my voice. “No, I didn’t know that.” I wondered if it was before or after the day he’d shown up in my kitchen, telling me about Ruby’s call.
More than that, I didn’t like where the conversation was going—the guilt that had lodged deep inside and was being dragged to the surface. I hadn’t gone to see Ruby. Not once. Cutting her out after the trial as someone who had existed and then no longer did. How easy it had been for the rest of us.
“I guess he wanted to make clear that we were over. Just in case I wasn’t sure,” she said.
I tried to picture it, Mac sitting on the other side of some plast
ic shield or maybe across a table—I didn’t know how it had gone. Ruby crying. Or not crying. Narrowing her eyes at him. Laughing at the situation, at his cowardice.
But no, I was the coward. Mac had been brave, had gone to see her where I had not. I had read him all wrong, pegged him as someone who avoided adult responsibility, when really, he’d been the only one to do what the situation called for.
“Now I look at him and I don’t remember what I saw in him,” Ruby continued. She smiled to herself. “Well, I do remember.” A single high-pitched laugh. “I remember, anyway, when I was too young for him. God, I loved the chase. Loved it because I knew he was always looking at me, even when he wasn’t supposed to.”
I flinched. Ruby hadn’t been a kid when they’d met. She’d been nineteen or twenty. Too young for him, yes, but not that young. From my perspective, he’d barely tolerated her back then. I wasn’t sure which of us was misremembering.
“Something about those Seaver boys, huh?” she asked. She gave me a look halfway between a grin and a wince. I didn’t know what she was implying. “They love them around here, those boys who never seem to fully grow up. Not the girls, though. Not people like me.”
She was right. Hitting on exactly how the neighbors here viewed her. Maybe it was because Ruby had been in college when we met her. She’d walked dogs and brought in our mail, come home late or not at all, owned roller skates and laughed loudly, spoken more from impulse than from tact. Maybe it was because her father never seemed to have a handle on her himself, always asking if we’d seen her.
“How’s your dad?” I asked her. As if she needed a reminder that she had somewhere else to go. Somewhere else to be now that she’d gotten what she’d come for. One of those missed calls, of course, could’ve come from him.
Her expression darkened, her eyes narrowing on the edge of mean before her gaze flicked away. “He died,” she said. “I thought you knew that.”
“Oh. Oh, no.” I shook my head, a sudden wave of grief washing through me, though I hadn’t had much contact with Mr. Fletcher other than when he’d neglected to accept Ruby’s things. He’d seemed too mellow for his daughter, too lost, like he’d given up attempting to control her long ago. The path my own father had taken with my brother, whereas my mother had gone to the other extreme.
When Mr. Fletcher retired, he moved to Florida. Perhaps figuring Ruby was old enough to figure things out on her own, like the rest of us. And she’d shuttled herself the two blocks over, to me.
“I didn’t know,” I said. I closed the distance between us, placed my hand awkwardly on her upper arm. “I’m sorry.”
“Well,” she said, stepping away, “I’m gross right now, sorry. I really need a cold shower.” And that was that.
Maybe the calls from the lawyer were about her inheritance. Maybe her staying with me was a waypoint on her journey, then she would ultimately collect her father’s estate and start fresh.
Ruby retreated to her room, but I settled on the love seat in the loft, listening for the call I knew she’d be returning. About her case, or her dad’s estate, or whatever she planned to do with the rest of us—the people who were going to pay.
But she remained silent. There was nothing, nothing, from the other side of the wall, until the sound of the water in the pipes. And then, moments later, the faint hum of her off-key tune in the shower.
CHAPTER 13
RUBY DID HER LAUNDRY.
Ruby made French toast for lunch, the scent of syrup permeating the downstairs.
Ruby went for a walk down by the lake—for some fresh air, to clear her head—and had to clean the mud from the bottom of her new white sneakers after.
In the late afternoon, Ruby ran her fingers over the books on the built-in shelves on either side of the television, pulling out titles she’d never read. Flipping to the back cover, opening to a seemingly random page, skimming the words.
My gaze trailed her through the house from my spot at the kitchen table. I had set myself up with my laptop open, files stacked on the table beside me, pretending to work, distracted by her every move.
She did not mention her phone or any calls. She did not talk at all unless responding to a direct question. The silence had grown into something solid, something that took on too much meaning, too much possibility. All the things I was keeping hidden. All the things I thought she might know. A tension building throughout the house until it had to break.
“I’m on watch tonight,” I said, clearing my throat.
She turned from the bookshelf, crossed the room, long strides and silent steps. “Whose idea was that?”
“I told Charlotte to put me down whenever they needed me. I guess they needed me tonight.”
She laughed once. “Of course it was Charlotte’s idea.” She sat in the chair across from me, fingers splayed on the stack of blue file folders between us. “What are you watching for, Harper?”
I shook my head. “Suspicious activity, obviously,” I said. I tried to get my smile to mirror hers, like we were in on the same joke.
“Let’s make a bet,” she said, slouching back in the wooden chair. “Let’s keep it fun. I’ll write down what I think you’ll see out there tonight, and you can tell me how close I was after.”
At least this was better than her offering to come with me, which had been my first fear.
“What do you get if you win?” I asked. Because there had to be a trade. Every game had a winner.
“The knowledge that I was correct,” she said, eyes boring into mine. “That I can still guess every little thing happening around here.” She punctuated each word carefully, deliberately. “Write it down, Harper. You’ll see.”
A chill ran through me, but I forced a grin. “There won’t be anything to report,” I said, trying to match her nonchalant posture. “Everyone’s going to be staying in tonight.” That was the whole point of a watch in the first place. We knew people were out there, and we all stayed put, a self-imposed deterrent.
She tilted her head, almost smiled. “Oh, I am willing to bet anything that you won’t be the only one out there tonight.”
I flinched, remembering the noise from the patio when Mac was here; the still-frame image left behind while I was at the clubhouse meeting; the knife I’d found under Ruby’s mattress.
She was probably right. Hadn’t we learned that before? In Hollow’s Edge, someone else was always watching.
* * *
I PREPARED TO LEAVE for my first pass at dusk.
Ruby was lying on the couch, head resting on a folded arm, watching the evening news. I kept thinking she was waiting for something. Blair Bowman with a new announcement, maybe; or an update on the case, a shift in a new direction. But the main topic of discussion was the drought, the current level of the lake, the fact that we might have to implement water restrictions, our squares of lawn turning brown and brittle.
I pulled the front door quietly shut behind me without saying goodbye. In the settling darkness, I saw an unfamiliar car at the curb, a figure walking up the porch steps at the Brock house. “Hey, Charlotte,” I called as I headed her way, but the figure didn’t pause. The car drove off in the other direction, and it took me a second to realize it wasn’t Charlotte on the porch but Whitney, arriving home. Long hair covered the side of her face as she threw open the front door, just as Charlotte’s disappointed tone carried out into the yard. “You missed dinner.”
The rest of the neighborhood appeared to be winding down. Lights had started turning on in the houses down the street, illuminating my path.
A figure approached from the corner, slowly moving up the road. Tina, pushing her father in a wheelchair, his hands folded in his lap.
“How you doing, Harper?” she asked as they approached. She brushed her dark bangs to the side of her forehead.
“Okay,” I said. Her friendliness and sincerity were a welcome relief. “I’m on watch tonight, just getting started.”
“That girl back?” her dad asked, suddenly alert
. Mr. Monahan had a stout frame, his head sunken almost directly into his broad shoulders. He looked like someone who had once been strong. Tina had that same frame, short and broad, her loose clothes camouflaging her strength—I’d seen her load the wheelchair into the back of her vehicle like it was weightless. Her mother, on the other hand, was petite and frail-looking and probably would’ve had difficulty caring for her husband even in her youth.
“Dad,” Tina said in warning.
“She is,” I said. No point lying when we all knew the truth.
Mr. Monahan raised a hand to his thinning white hair, his fingers trembling as he smoothed a few flyaway strands to the side.
Tina sighed. “I better get him home soon or my mom will worry,” she said.
“You don’t have to talk about me like I’m not here,” Mr. Monahan said with a childish roll of his eyes. Tina squeezed his shoulder, then gave me a small smile as they continued toward home.
“Good night,” I called after them.
“Be careful,” her father called back.
As I continued my walk around the perimeter, I took stock of the routines of our community: Paul Wellman turning his silver sedan into his driveway, pulling straight through to the garage, the mechanical door lowering before he’d even exited the car. A couple leaving the pool at closing time, barefoot and wrapped in towels, their laughter trailing behind them.
Porch lights turning on, fragmented scenes visible through the open curtains. Flashes of television screens, the scent of burgers cooking on a grill, as I walked the road that backed to the high white fences of our patios.
When I arrived home, I debated how many more passes I really needed to do.
“All safe on the home front?” Ruby called. She seemed to be in exactly the same position on the couch.
“All clear.”
The television was tuned to the same news station, though the volume had been lowered, more for background noise than active listening. She had a book in one hand—a paperback, cover folded over so I couldn’t read the title.
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