“You saw Ruby heading that way, down to the lake?” I pointed to the left, toward the trees across the street, in the direction he’d just seen Whitney going.
“No,” he said. “No. Heading home.” Thumb jutting to the right.
I started walking down the porch steps as he closed the door behind me. Trying to make sense of it, I stood in their yard, staring down the street. Past Tate and Javier Cora’s house. Straight to mine.
No wonder Chase didn’t believe him, didn’t trust him.
If Ruby had been heading home, she would’ve been on Tate and Javier’s camera. She would’ve been on their feed. But neither one of the Coras had seen or heard anything that night. They’d come in late, there was nothing on their camera.
Behind me, a car engine rattled as Tina pulled into the drive. Shit. I was stuck in the yard, working through an excuse—Just checking in on everyone—when Tina spilled out of the driver’s seat, already speaking.
“Did you tell them?” she asked, and I shook my head because I had no idea what she was talking about.
“My God, it’s so horrible,” she said. She glanced to the front porch, then back at me. “Chase called me. I’m not sure how I’ll tell them.” She looked even more haunted than the last time I’d seen her. “Antifreeze,” she whispered, shaking her head, her eyes drifting shut.
I felt the blood draining from my face, pooling in the pit of my stomach. The word buzzing in my head. “Are they sure?” I asked, pretending I was in on the information, that yes, of course, I’d come here to make sure she had heard, too.
“They found evidence of it in her system,” she said. “It’s in the autopsy report.”
And Chase had called her. I hadn’t heard any texts coming through, any calls. And I started to fear that they understood—that I would be the main suspect—and had started to distance themselves accordingly.
“Wouldn’t she have felt sick?” I asked, feeling on the verge of illness myself.
Tina must have been feeling the same, because her hand was on her stomach, and her face seemed pale, her skin dehydrated. “More likely, she would’ve seemed drunk at first,” Tina said. “And she was drinking.” She crossed her arms, rubbing her hands over the exposed skin of her forearms, as if chasing away a chill. “It might’ve tasted sweet, we learned about that in school… it’s a common cause of accidental poisoning because of that.” Her eyes closed, but I could see them moving behind the lids. “She had thrown up when I found her—”
But this—this was not accidental. This was at a pool, at a party, after a fight—when we were all afraid. Antifreeze could be in any of our garages, with the sudden winter freeze and the cars left out in the cold.
Something anyone could’ve done.
The police, I knew, would be coming back. Would be looking closely. Going through our lives, searching for our motives, shaking out our secrets.
The Coras’ front door swung open, and Tate came out, hurrying our way. “Did you hear?” she asked, arms crossed over her abdomen. Her face was pinched and her eyes were bloodshot, and I could tell from her expression that she’d been crying.
“My God, it could’ve happened to any of us,” she said. “We were all there. We were all drinking…”
The pitchers of lemonade, the sangria—we had all been drinking from the same sources. Our cups left out. The communal ice in the chest below that we scooped into our glasses.
Tate looked to each of us, wide-eyed, so unlike how she usually seemed, focused and determined. She seemed suddenly vulnerable and exposed. This realization that we didn’t know where the danger was—that we hadn’t been able to see it coming. Had stood nearby while it worked its way in silence, slowly killing her.
“Someone at the pool,” Tina said in a whisper, and I saw Tate’s throat move. The lines we’d stuck to at the meeting, the things we wanted to believe, were no longer possible.
There was no escaping the truth now.
It had to be one of us.
“How can there be two people willing to kill…” Tate said, hand to the base of her throat. Like she couldn’t believe it. The darkness at the heart of us here, with our view of the water and our lazy summer days. Our barbecues and friendships and parties. Such a close familiarity. Such a quiet place.
I caught Tina’s eye, and I knew she was thinking the same thing. There were not two killers here. There never had been. There was always just the one.
* * *
I TRIED TO STAY up that night. Watching out my bedroom window, like Ruby must’ve done. But the sleepless nights caught up with me, the fear like a spike of adrenaline, rapidly subsiding. I saw Preston Seaver walk past around ten, taking his turn on watch. But now I wasn’t sure what he was watching for.
I checked the locks. Pulled the curtains. Dreaded what I might find waiting for me in the morning. But I was drifting, and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.
All I could do was lock all the doors and windows, keep my phone close, sleep with a paring knife under the mattress, and wait.
MONDAY, JULY 8
HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE
Subject: They’re back
Posted: 9:06 a.m.
Tina Monahan: Going door-to-door for follow-up statements. Just a heads-up.
* * *
Subject: STOP
Posted: 9:23 a.m.
Preston Seaver: Whoever is leaving these baseless, threatening notes, knock it the fuck off.
Margo Wellman: Seconded.
CHAPTER 22
I WASN’T THE ONLY ONE who got messages.
Someone had been leaving messages for others, making us all on edge. For Margo Wellman. For Preston Seaver? Judging by his post, I’d been completely wrong. Maybe that note I’d found on the floor of their office—I SEE YOU—hadn’t been meant for me but had been left for Mac or Preston. Something one of them had found and balled up in a rage.
The line between culprit and victim kept shifting.
How much had I misinterpreted because I’d held my secrets close? We all had.
Ruby was right about that—how none of us ever talked face-to-face. How we talked around one another, about one another, aired our grievances in thinly veiled comments on the message board. One-upping each other in passive aggression.
How long had others been receiving the notes? How many more of us were there? All of us frantically keeping them a secret. Fearful and ashamed of what they might expose—until Preston, of all people, had the guts to mention them.
* * *
I WANTED TO TALK to them. But Preston seemed to hold me at arm’s length. And I didn’t have Margo’s cell. All this time living on the same street, and we communicated by message board or when our paths crossed.
It was Monday morning, and Margo would probably be home. I could catch her before I left for work if I hurried.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I threw open the door—then jolted backward from the figure standing on my front porch.
Agent Locke stood there, blue eyes sharp, mouth a tight line. He was dressed the same as the last time I saw him, in the uniform button-down and black tie, but there was a graying stubble along his jawline today, which made him seem older, more solemn. “Am I interrupting you, Ms. Nash?” he asked.
“I was heading out…” I trailed off. “I have work.” I didn’t see his dark car, but it must’ve been parked around here somewhere. Like Tina had warned, he must’ve been going door-to-door.
“I just wanted to share some updates with each of you,” he continued as I stepped out on the porch, pulling the door shut behind me. “But it seems like most people are out this morning,” he added, with a glance toward Tate and Javier’s house. Javier’s truck was no longer in the driveway.
I didn’t reply, didn’t feel the need to explain why my neighbors may or may not be home on a Monday morning. The pause stretched awkwardly until he said, “The medical examiner is calling Ruby’s death a homicide.”
I swallowed nothing, could
feel a cold sweat breaking out. “Oh,” I said, the panic rising, even though I’d known this call was coming.
He raised his eyebrows, motioned to my front door. “Are you sure you don’t want to take this inside?” He looked up and down the quiet street as if I should fear what he was about to share. As if I should fear being seen with him. Maybe he understood this place better than the rest of us did.
I shook my head and gestured for him to continue.
He sighed, shifting on his feet. “There was an insulated cup found beside her,” he said. “Since it seems everyone got their drinks from the same pitchers and appeared just fine, we have to wonder if the cup itself was the source.”
I nodded, even as my eyes drifted shut. Just as I had imagined. My blue cup with the poison inside.
“There are a lot of fingerprints on that cup besides hers,” he said, and my eyes shot back open. “Seems like it was handled by a bunch of people.”
“The cup is mine,” I said, trying to get ahead of it. Because of course my prints would be among them. “Everything she used was mine. Everything in this house was handled by me.”
I kept it to myself that the blue cup had been the one I was using that night, because it didn’t seem like the truth would set me free. It seemed like it could trap me, corner me: Someone who had access to that cup. Who had it in her possession. Who had motive and opportunity.
“Of course,” he said, nodding slowly. “That’s the impression I’ve been getting.”
I didn’t know whom he’d been talking to, or what they’d been saying, but I worried how easy it was for them to tilt the investigation my way. How much sense it would make—to the police, to the neighbors. They were fighting; that was Harper’s cup; she had plenty of time to poison the drink.
“Did you notice anyone else handling it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “People put their cups down on tables. You know what it’s like at a party. People move cups around. Serve drinks to each other. We all do it.”
Anyway, if you were going to poison someone, my guess was you’d be careful not to leave your prints on the cup, but I kept that thought to myself. It was probably a good thing that people weren’t answering their doors this morning.
“We’d really like you to come down to the station and give an official statement. Clear up any discrepancies.”
Discrepancies. I didn’t know to what he was referring, and it seemed he wanted me to ask. But he was forgetting—we’d been through this before. We’d seen it happen to Ruby. We knew the steps and understood how truth was determined by the evidence presented, and even then, it was subject to the way it was framed.
I had no idea what he was looking for. Whether these threatening notes, and all they implied, had found their way to the state police, too. I needed to know what was happening here before I spoke to him further. Before I gave any statement binding me. I had to be sure.
“This is all so horrible,” I said, the catch in my voice authentic. “But I have work. There’s so much to catch up on after the holiday week. And… my mind has been scattered, with everything.”
“Tomorrow, maybe?” he asked, and when I didn’t agree, he added, “I’ll give you a call, Harper.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” I said.
After a beat, he finally took a step down the porch. “Well,” he said, “I’ll let you get on your way.”
I remained on my porch as he walked down my front path, and I watched as he strode past the Truett house, heading for Charlotte Brock’s house next.
I needed to wait until he was gone before trying to catch Margo. It was too late to ask about those pictures before he rang her doorbell. And I’d just told him I needed to be at work.
I wondered how many of us here were checking in our garages, under our kitchen sinks, over the laundry room cabinets, to see whether we had antifreeze in our homes.
How many of us would look at the people we lived with and wonder.
* * *
I HAD JUST COME back out with my purse, heading for my car, as Javier’s truck pulled up at the curb behind me. Tate stepped down from the passenger seat before he took off again. She hitched her bag onto her shoulder, keeping her eyes down.
“Hey,” I called.
Tate froze on their front path, gaze flicking my way. “Hey,” she said back.
“That guy from the state has been going around. He just tried your house.”
She nodded, continuing up the path.
“Everything okay?” I asked, gesturing at the spot where Javier’s truck had just been.
She eyed me suspiciously. “I had a doctor’s appointment,” she said, hand to her stomach again. “All good, except for the endless sugar craving. Javi’s getting donuts.”
I walked closer, halfway across her yard, and felt like I was encroaching on her life. “Tate,” I said, lowering my voice. “Have you been getting notes, too?”
She crossed her arms, gaze sharp, with none of the vulnerability I’d witnessed yesterday. “Have you?” she countered.
“Yes.” I peered over my shoulder again but couldn’t see Agent Locke anywhere. “It’s a homicide, Tate,” I said, his words echoing back, the fluttery panic in my stomach. “It’s official.”
She looked at her front porch, at the camera pointed in our direction. Her throat moved. “Do you want to come in?” she asked.
Inside, Tate and Javier’s house had started to transform. They’d repainted the walls a warm gray, added a low table to the open area of the kitchen. A pale green glider with matching ottoman was positioned in the corner of the living room, where there had once been a bar cart. Everything seemed softer inside, as if they were rooting out any potential sharp edge.
We were standing in front of the kitchen window while Tate leaned gently against the counter, shifting from foot to foot. From here, I could see directly into my living room: the arm of the couch, a corner of the television screen.
I’d heard their fight, carrying from this very window, last week:
Maybe you should just calm the fuck down for once.
Maybe you should get the fuck out of here.
“I saw the comments on the message board this morning,” she said. “But I haven’t gotten any notes.”
And here, I’d thought she was preparing to make a confession about notes left for her or Javier. “Oh,” I said, disappointed. “I had thought maybe it was all of us.” I shook my head. “I thought it was Preston at first who was leaving them for me. I found a paper at his house that looked like the one left for me, but going by his post this morning, I think he or Mac must have received it.” Though Preston seemed to be the one who had found it, I wasn’t sure which of them it was meant for.
“God, it sounds like something Ruby would’ve done,” she said, pushing off the counter.
“Well, it’s obviously not Ruby anymore,” I said, staring out the window, straight through to my house. And yet the notes had accomplished what Ruby would’ve wanted—turning us against one another, suspicion mounting. Keeping us on edge. “Why us?” I asked. They were left for me and Margo and one of the Seavers, at least. “Why go after the group of us?”
“Well, what did it say?” she asked. Her head was tilted gently to the side, like she was genuinely curious. Curious to know whether I’d answer. Whether any of us trusted one another with our secrets here.
“I found the key,” I said, forcing the words out as Tate’s eyes grew large. I put my hand up, palm out, a proclamation of innocence. “I didn’t find it back then, during the investigation. I found it this spring when I was digging in my garden. But it wasn’t just the Truett key.” I lowered my voice as if someone were listening, just below the window frame, hidden out of sight. “She had more keys than just that one. She had a lot, Tate. Keys to most of the houses on this street. She must’ve hidden them during the investigation.”
I wasn’t sure if Ruby had hidden them because of the Truett key or whether she understood what they would imply: She was
not an innocent person. She might not have been a murderer, but not everything she did was legal, either. The police could probably arrest her on one thing while working to build a case on the other.
“You didn’t tell the police?” Tate asked.
“What was the point?” I said. “She was already in jail. Convicted. I was afraid the keys would be used against me somehow. I didn’t know what to do, so I went down to the lake to get rid of them, and someone saw me. Someone took my picture.” I let out a slow breath. “That’s what I keep receiving. That picture of me with the keys.” And the implied threat within.
“Was my key one of them?” Tate asked.
“I think so,” I said. Ruby had probably copied the one I’d had from long ago, when we were friends.
I saw a quick flash of anger cross her face before it subsided.
“So that’s me. I have no idea about the rest of them, though. What they’re so scared of…”
Tate drummed her fingers faintly on the counter beside her. “Margo’s even jumpier than usual. I thought it was just Ruby being back, but who knows.”
“She used to be much more mellow,” I said.
“She also used to sleep,” Tate said with a grimace. Her eyes darted to the side, and her hand went to her stomach, and I could see, for the first time, fear. Fear, maybe not just of this but of what was to come.
“Paul seems like he’s shit at helping, to be fair,” I said, because I worried Tate was seeing her own future, the person she might become against her will. And Javier was nothing like Paul.
“There’s that,” she agreed. She bit the side of her thumbnail, eyes narrowed at the window. “This isn’t about Margo, but.” She cleared her throat. “There were some rumors… from the girls on the team I was coaching in the spring.”
“About who?” I asked, my spine straightening.
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