She ran her fingers along the base of her collarbone, like she was too hot. “Preston.” She put her hands out in defense, like she’d already said too much. “They didn’t exactly say it, but I sort of put it together. I heard some of the girls talking about one of the guys in security, the guy who uses the weight room.” She lowered her voice. “How he takes pictures in there sometimes.” She cringed even as she said it. “I don’t know for sure if it’s him, but I reported it. So someone at least keeps an eye out.”
“Do you think it’s him?” I asked.
She raised one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug. “I’ve heard things before. Little things. How he breaks up parties and drives some of the students home. It’s the way they talk about it, you know? Just sounds a little too friendly.” She shifted her jaw, and I remembered his date at the July Fourth party—Tate had asked him if she was a student, then given him a cutting look.
“You think someone else who works at the college knows? That they’re leaving him notes about it?” I asked.
“Honestly, I don’t have a clue. I’m just telling you what I know.”
“I sometimes got the feeling Preston was taking pictures at the pool,” I said. “I thought I was paranoid.”
I heard Ruby’s words echoing back: Something about those Seaver boys, huh? And this unspooling suspicion that she knew something. If only I had pressed her on it. But I hadn’t asked, because I’d wanted to avoid the conversation, wanted to veer away from any reference to Mac.
Tate scrunched up her mouth, shook her head. “I feel so bad for that girlfriend of his. She has no idea.”
I blinked twice, feeling the hot pulse of shame roaring to the surface again. All the things Tate must’ve known and chosen to keep hidden.
“Did you know about Aidan? That he was going to leave?” I asked. The past suddenly right beside us. “You didn’t seem surprised.”
She looked off to the side and shook her head, her high ponytail swishing back and forth. “No, not me. Javi told me right before you showed up. He said Aidan finally decided to leave, to leave you, and then the doorbell rang. I didn’t know how long he’d known, but I swear I had just found out. Just a few minutes before you told me, that’s all.”
“I thought you knew about Aidan all along. I was mortified that you knew and hadn’t said anything.”
“You acted so standoffish after,” she said. “I thought you needed time. But then it seemed like maybe you only wanted to be friends as a pair. That I wasn’t worth it on my own.”
“That’s not what I thought,” I said. “You totally ignored me after.”
She whipped her head in my direction. “I did not ignore you. I was giving you time. I sent you flowers.”
“What?” And then, as it slowly dawned on me, “Did you send the lilies?”
Her eyes widened in a gesture I used to know so well, like Of course I sent the lilies. “Yeah, I left them on the porch. I wrote you a letter. I signed my name to it, Harper. It really wasn’t a mystery.”
But I was shaking my head, wanting to go back in time, to see the simple truth when it counted. “I never got it,” I said. “Ruby told me they were from her.”
Tate’s expression turned sharp, her jaw tensed, and I knew that if Ruby were alive, Tate would’ve made her pay. It was Ruby who had caused that divide between us. Who’d pushed that narrative. Telling me that my friendship with Tate was unhealthy. Letting me believe that she was the one who cared. The only one.
I wanted to ask Tate what the letter had said. What she’d wanted to tell me. I wanted to reach out to her, go back, make different decisions that would land me in a different place. But it felt impossible, too large a gap to bridge—how one small move led to another, until you were too far down a path to undo it all. Wondering how to even begin.
“Well,” she said. Well. Here we were, all the same.
We fell to silence—the hum of the refrigerator, the click of the air-conditioning unit turning on, white noise circulating, keeping our secrets.
“Tate, can I ask you something?” I said, voice low.
“Shoot,” she said in her straightforward way.
“Mr. Monahan said he saw Ruby that night,” I began, easing my way to the question.
“What night?” she said, turning away fast, her ponytail whipping behind her, like she’d just forgotten something. Like she knew what I was going to ask.
“The night the Truetts were killed,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, opening the fridge, taking out the lemonade, pulling two cups from the cabinet. “Do you want some?”
“No, thanks,” I said as she poured, one hand at the base of the pitcher to hold it steady. “He said Ruby was walking up the front of our street on her way home. But then she would’ve been on your camera, too. Right?”
She eased the pitcher down, sipped from her drink, then tipped the cup back further, gulping it down. “God, this doesn’t really do the trick anymore.” She laughed to herself, then stopped.
“Tate,” I said. Remembering what Ruby’s lawyer had said on the news program, that there was evidence that had been destroyed. And Chase telling them to keep it simple. The fight I’d heard between Tate and Javier, their voices carrying out the kitchen window. The tension brewing behind these walls. “Did you see her that night?”
She dropped the cup on the counter too hard, so the liquid splashed out over the rim. “She’s dead. It doesn’t really matter anymore.”
“It does, it matters,” I said. Because someone had killed her, and I had invited myself into the house of the people who might’ve destroyed evidence, and Javier would be coming back soon.
“No, I promise you. It doesn’t.”
“Was there someone else on your security camera? One of Charlotte’s daughters?”
Her expression jolted in surprise. “Charlotte’s daughters? No, why would you say that? It was her, it was only ever Ruby.”
The truth, then. Mr. Monahan was right. And Ruby had been on Tate and Javier’s camera.
“Then why did you hide it?”
“Because!” She threw her hands in the air. “Because there’s no way to just turn in a thirty-second clip of Ruby walking by. Because I’d have to turn over the entire evening. From midnight to two, that’s what the police wanted, right?”
I nodded, not understanding.
“I am a teacher,” she said. “A middle school teacher. We both are, me and Javier. You can’t have anything”—her voice broke, nearly a whisper now—“anything on your record. Nothing.”
“Tate, I’m not following you here.”
She finished the lemonade, then twisted the cup back and forth on the counter, looked me dead in the eye as if deciding on something. “We got back after midnight,” she said.
I nodded, encouraging her. I’d heard this much, after all. “You were at a friend’s party.”
“We were. And we drank too much.”
So they’d been caught on camera, stumbling in the front door, a little drunk? I hardly thought the police would care. I hardly thought they’d be able to charge the Coras with anything and make it stick.
“We hit a deer.” As soon as she said it, her eyes wide, the rest of the words started spilling out, like she’d been holding it back for too long. “It was bad, Harper. The car was a mess. Like we needed a new bumper. Like we’re lucky we got home in one piece.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “We’re lucky we got home at all. It was a horrible, horrible idea. But we kept driving after, figuring we just needed to get home, and that’s what you’d see on that camera out there.” She pointed to the front door. “Us, practically falling out of the car, barely able to stand. We moved the other car out of the garage to hide the damaged one inside. Because we couldn’t bring it to get fixed until we were sober. Because we had to pretend we’d hit a deer another time. We decided we’d say it happened the next day. And then we’d go into the shop and get the car fixed.”
Her hand went to her mouth, her fingers trembli
ng. “It was supposed to be simple,” she continued. “But then the police arrived early in the morning, and at first I thought it was about us. I’d had nightmares that night—that we’d hit something other than a deer. How close we had come… to ruining our lives.”
A shudder ran through her, transferring straight to me. All the little things we hid to protect ourselves. All the small mistakes that could lead to the incrimination and ruin of someone else.
“Javier had to get a rental from the dealer, and the neighbors wanted to know why, of course, because they didn’t know why there was a vehicle they didn’t recognize lingering on the street. Scared Charlotte’s girls, even. We were all so scared back then, remember? So we said we bought it. Traded the old one in. Kept this one instead. So yes, it was reckless and stupid, but it was unrelated, I promise. It wouldn’t have exonerated her. All it would’ve done was ruin our lives.”
“It did matter,” I said. Ruby’s time line was the only thing that mattered. And they had to make it stick. “No one knew she had been out front. It didn’t add up in the time line.”
“That was your fault,” she said, turning on me—a new place to shift the blame.
“What?”
“Your insistence that she’d come in at two in the morning. Maybe you heard wrong—the front door, the back door, you were upstairs, right? But the timing was off, from what you were saying. We were going to tell the police we saw her, just not say it was on the video. We were going to tell, because we thought it was the right thing to do. But Chase said it was best to keep it simple. It wouldn’t change anything. And cameras counted more than a witness.”
“Chase said that?” He had lied. When he’d told Javier to keep it simple, he was, indeed, trying to close up her time line. Trying to make it stick.
“What time?” I asked.
She looked to the clock over the oven, then back to me. “Four a.m.”
“You’re sure,” I said. “You’re sure it was her. That she was coming back home at four a.m.”
She shrugged. “That’s what we saw.”
It didn’t make any sense. It was possible Ruby could’ve left again, come back. But she would’ve stayed hidden. It was inconsistent, and Ruby was nothing if not consistent—in the way she tainted my friendship with Tate, in the way she sowed discord; she thought she was better than all of us here. She would not have made that mistake.
There was only one answer, and it nauseated me. Made me take a step back even as Tate called after me. “I have to go,” I said.
“This is why we didn’t say anything,” she said. “It only complicates a simple case.”
But she was wrong. The explanation was alarmingly simple. Horrifyingly clear.
Ruby had come home at four in the morning, not two.
Someone else had been out there, just like she said.
And whoever was out there had been the one to sneak in the back door of my house that night.
Whoever I’d heard—it was not Ruby.
CHAPTER 23
EVERY TIME THAT BACK door creaked open in my memory, I shuddered.
It was someone else. Someone else in this house. Someone else who had access. Who found a way in.
There was no way I was heading into work anymore. I quickly called Anna at reception, so they wouldn’t be expecting me. “I’m so sorry, I’m not feeling well—” I began.
But she was already talking. “Oh my God, everyone’s been talking about… what happened…” I couldn’t tell whether it was a statement or a question.
“It’s horrible,” I said, because all I could do was stick to the truth. “Anna, is there a car in the lot? A white one?” That car had been in the lot twice, and I thought it might be a reporter, following Ruby’s case. They’d be coming back for sure now.
“No,” she said. I could hear her straining for a better look. “No, it’s just us. Is it the media? Should we lock the door?”
Last time we had to, before they walked right in—for a statement, for a photo. Ruby’s death would be splashed across the news, circulating through the community, if not further.
I peered out my front window, on the lookout for Agent Locke passing by again. “Yes,” I said. “Lock the door.”
* * *
I NEEDED TO KNOW what had really happened that night the Truetts were killed.
Ruby might’ve been desperate to prove her innocence, but now so was I. Those were my fingerprints on that mug. That was my image on the photo left in my house. There were too many pieces that could be twisted against me, should someone want to do it.
It was possible that whatever Margo had received could provide answers. All these secrets we kept from one another—Tate, and me, and others.
I watched as Javier returned home, and then as the state agent drove off in his dark car. He’d probably noticed my car still here, just one more piece that could be used to craft a story.
No one appeared to be home at Charlotte Brock’s house, or at Mac and Preston Seaver’s. All of the cars that were usually parked out front were gone. Maybe everyone had gone back to work, in a show of normalcy and routine, except for me.
I couldn’t tell if anyone was home at Margo and Paul Wellman’s house—there were no cars in the driveway—but I rang the bell, hoping I didn’t wake up a sleeping baby. No one answered. I had just started walking down the front steps when I heard laughter coming from the direction of the pool.
Crossing the street, I could see the bright yellow of Nicholas’s pool float standing out among the greens and browns of the trees.
There was no longer a sign posted at the pool gate, keeping us out. Apparently, the scene of Ruby’s death had been released back to regular use.
Margo was the only person inside, standing in a growing puddle of water on the pool deck and wrapping Nicholas in a towel. She was standing maybe six feet from where Ruby had been found.
“Margo?” I called.
She straightened slowly, pulling up the front scoop of her bathing suit. “Hey,” she said. But she didn’t come closer.
“I don’t have my key. Can you let me in?”
She looked from me to the baby, then placed him in his stroller. “Just a minute,” she said, taking her time buckling him in place, adjusting the shade, pouring Cheerios into the front snack tray. I had started to think she’d forgotten about me until she finally headed my way, though she kept peering back at Nicholas as she walked. She took a step backward at the click of the gate, already turning for the stroller, cinching the towel around her waist.
“I just went by your place,” I began, following her inside.
“Oh?” she said, busying herself with packing up the rest of their gear.
I scanned the pool deck, a chill running through me; I was aware of where I was standing. Where all of us last stood. “I didn’t know the pool was open again.”
She nodded quickly, her hair starting to come loose from the bun on top of her head. “We have to get out,” she said. “I have to keep him busy and stick to routine, and then he’ll take a good afternoon nap. But otherwise?” She shook her head.
“Margo, I’ve been getting letters, too,” I said, and Margo finally stopped moving.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” she said quietly, still looking down at her pool gear.
“I’m glad you did. I thought it was just me.” But she didn’t respond. “Margo.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “Margo,” I repeated, stepping even closer.
“Is it horrible?” she asked, peering up at me, her blue eyes wide and glassy. “The picture? Is it something that could really hurt you?”
I nodded slowly. “It’s pretty bad.” I closed my eyes, saw the image again. “I hid something after the trial,” I said. I understood now—I had to give information to get it in return. And I had nothing left to lose. “It looks really bad.”
She stared at Nicholas again, then leaned closer, the words spilling out. “A few months ago, I needed a break, and I left the baby with Paul. He must�
��ve gone to run some errands. Two birds, very Paul.” She took a deep breath in. “I was sleeping when he came back, but I heard him. And I didn’t hear the baby.” She took a step closer to the stroller. “Nicholas was in the car, Harper. Paul forgot about him.” Her hand fluttered to her mouth, like she couldn’t believe it. “He was fine. He is fine. It was just a few minutes. We had a huge fight, and he thinks I don’t trust him with the baby anymore, and maybe that’s true—”
I could see her hands were trembling, and I grabbed one to still it. “It’s okay, Margo. You’re right, he’s fine. Nothing happened.”
“No, but someone must’ve…” She trailed off, eyes on the empty road behind me. “Someone must’ve seen him there. Someone took a picture, Harper. A picture of my baby in a car. You know how hot it’s been this year.” A noise escaped her throat. “Do you know what happens to people like that? They have charges brought against them, in the best case. In the worst?”
“Oh, God, Margo, I’m sorry.” Her recent behavior was understandable—a reaction to that fear. Always with the baby, never wanting him out of her sight. The fear, and stress, of knowing someone had witnessed it. That one of us had seen. “We would all vouch for you, you know. You’re a great mom. And you can’t tell from a photo whether it was a minute, or five, or ten. It wouldn’t prove anything.”
A visible shudder rolled through her. “You know what gets me the most?” she asked. “Whoever it was, they didn’t try to help. They didn’t knock on our door to tell us. They just took a picture, Harper. What kind of person does that?”
I felt a chill in the air, even in the heat. A cold sweat breaking out, because I wasn’t sure what kind of person would do that, either. “Maybe they would’ve come back,” I offered. “You said you noticed quickly.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know about anyone here anymore.”
She cleared her throat, took a quick step away from me. I followed her line of sight, out the pool gate. Chase Colby was walking down the sidewalk and changed direction to cross the street when he saw us.
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