We hid everything else we had done that night.
“I promise, Charlotte,” I said, speaking more forcefully. “Whitney didn’t hurt the Truetts.”
Charlotte froze only for a beat before nodding once. “Then I did the right thing. Ruby was guilty.” Creating in herself, once more, a righteous person. Someone justified in her actions.
I shivered. Who was this person I’d lived beside for so many years? “Did the right thing? You poisoned her! Were you going to say anything when I picked up that mug?” Realizing, with horror, that the antifreeze had been in Ruby’s mug all along. That Ruby must’ve put it down, forgotten where it was, and taken mine after. But she’d already consumed it earlier at the party—had appeared drunk, increasingly unsteady on her feet. And we had watched her slowly succumb to it, unaware.
“I saw you rinse it out, Harper. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Don’t be so…” I closed my eyes, the rage within me growing. “No one did it, Charlotte!” I was yelling now. “No one killed the Truetts! It was an accident. A terrible fucking accident. A tragedy. But no one did it.” I showed her the box under my arm.
“What is that?” she asked, because it was so dark inside, and nothing could be clear in here. Not what we had done or what we were doing. Everything felt buried under a haze of heat and disorientation.
“Come on,” I said, walking toward the back door, and she didn’t object.
But she wrapped her hand around my upper arm as we descended the back steps. To an outsider, it might look like she was helping me.
“Stop,” she said as we stood in the center of the patio. I took a deep breath of air, turned the box to face her. The print was visible in the moonlight. The words on the label clear to see.
“A carbon monoxide detector,” I said. “Brandon had ordered this before his death. Their old one failed. No one took it and hid it anywhere. It was just a terrible accident. It was no one’s fault.”
Her gaze met mine, and the whites of her eyes reflected my own horror in the moonlight. “You don’t know that,” she said. “The police would’ve found that. Or seen it on his credit card.”
“He ordered it with a gift card,” I said. “It came to the school, and I never opened it. Ruby found it, though.”
Ruby had fourteen months to run through the series of events, unspooling every one of them, knowing that she wasn’t to blame. And if she wasn’t, then who was?
The suspicion fueling her search. The sickening truth that she’d uncovered. A defense so difficult to prove—there wasn’t somewhere else to cast the blame. There wasn’t someone else to reveal.
There was no one.
“Let me see,” Charlotte said, wresting it from me. But I had a tight grip on it and pulled it farther from her reach.
“Don’t you see what you’ve done?” I asked, expecting her to give something—some show of remorse or regret. To show something real. But she couldn’t do that. She was too far gone, too committed to the path. There was no way back and no way out.
I saw her then, saw everything she had done to get to this point, and what she must’ve been willing to do to maintain it. The righteous cause: to protect her family. Built on presumptions and lies.
She stared at me, and I saw her gaze roam around the patio, the open doorway to the house—and I knew she couldn’t stop now.
I raced out the back patio, the gate creaking sharply, the wood hitting the fence on the other side. I had to get home, lock the door, call someone—
“Stop it!” she called, and I felt her arm wrenching mine back, just outside my fence line.
“What are you doing?” The voice came from beside us. We turned to face it together.
Tate stood before us with a gun in her hand, haphazardly pointed toward the ground.
“Why do you have a gun, Tate?” I asked. Her hair was in a bun, and she was wearing a matching pajama set, and she looked so young—so disconnected from the gun in her hand.
“Why do you think?” she asked, gesturing with it. “For protection. For our protection. Why were you in the Truett house?” Her arm swung wildly in the direction of the open gate behind us, and I cringed as the gun arced my way.
“Tate,” Charlotte said, “my God, put down the gun. We’re just talking things through—”
“I heard you,” she said as her back gate creaked behind her, swaying in the wind. “I heard yelling.”
“Everything’s fine,” Charlotte said. “Tate, go back to bed. Put the gun away, and—”
“Charlotte killed Ruby,” I said. I blurted it fast. So someone else would know. So that the proof—the truth—could not disappear. Could not be buried by someone casting the suspicion elsewhere first. Get help, call the police, do something.
But Tate only stood there, gun at her side, looking between the two of us.
“Harper, stop,” Charlotte said through clenched teeth. “We’re all on the same side here. It’s over, it’s done. She’s gone.”
“Because you killed her,” I repeated.
“Stop saying that. I kept us safe. She was dangerous. Tate, you know that. You know the things she did. She was so dangerous.”
She was dangerous, but not in the way they meant.
“She didn’t kill the Truetts,” I said.
“That’s not possible, Harper,” Tate said. “I told you, there was no one else on the camera—”
“No one killed them, Tate,” I said.
“What?” she asked, her voice impossibly small.
“It was an accident. A horrible accident, but no one did it. And I think I can prove it.”
“Tate,” Charlotte said, making a calming motion with her hands. “Everyone played a part. We’re all liable here.” She gestured to the box tucked under my arm. “Take that, please.”
Tate looked between the two of us slowly, as if debating. Deciding. Working through each path to see which would work out the best in her favor.
Ruby was right, we had all done it. Had conspired against her even if we didn’t mean to. Individually, we couldn’t have done it. But together, we were powerful. We could set laws, enforce rules, make someone feel welcomed or ostracized.
All these things we knew about one another; all these things we had on one another. Everyone so afraid to speak up, to disturb that balance and give ourselves away.
“Tate,” I said as she took a step closer. “Please. You don’t understand. Ruby found this. Ruby knew—”
“Stop talking,” Tate said, the gun rising in my direction. “Both of you. Just. Stop.”
We both raised our arms on instinct.
I had no idea who I was dealing with anymore.
Everyone taking pictures of each other, recording each other, and so we had to exist on two levels. The one where we knew we were being watched, and the one where we believed we weren’t.
A secret, simmering existence behind the facades.
“Tate, you understand,” Charlotte said, her voice no longer calm but pleading. “The things you would do for your children. The things you would do to protect them.”
“I do,” Tate said, widening her stance.
I’d thought she wanted safety. I’d thought the gun was for her protection. But there were different types of safety. Different things we wanted to protect.
I didn’t know any of them at the heart. I didn’t know what any of us were capable of doing.
Tate flicked a latch on the side of the gun: I could hear it from where I stood; could hear my heart racing, too.
“Wait, wait, wait,” I begged.
But her arm kept lifting until it was pointed directly over her head. She squeezed her eyes shut and shot the gun into the air, the noise deafening.
I crouched on impulse, dropped the box, covered my ears, until the ringing subsided. When I opened my eyes, Tate’s eyes were wide open, staring at the gun. She had taken several steps back, been unprepared for the recoil—like she’d had no idea what would happen when she pulled the trigger.
Only that people would come.
The sound of steps approaching, the back gate screeching open, and Javier spilling out into the night in his boxers. “Tate?” he called, skidding to a halt.
“Javier,” she said, waving the gun in our direction as she spoke. “Pick up that box.”
He did as he was told, eyes barely skimming over me as he bent down in front of me, taking the box from where it had fallen. He looked at it carefully, eyebrows furrowing, then back at his wife, like he’d never seen her before.
Chase arrived next, sprinting from the other direction, in tune to the sound of a weapon firing. “Whoa,” he said. “Everyone calm down.” He looked behind him for anyone else. “Shit.”
Charlotte’s gate creaked open slowly, and I saw eyes peering out from the darkness. “Mom?” Whitney stepped out in an oversize T-shirt, messy hair, rubbing at her eyes. She looked so far from adulthood right then, with no understanding of all the steps that had led to this moment. No idea the role she herself had played.
Molly emerged behind her, eyes wide, meeting mine—as if she understood. Someone else who quietly watched.
All of us stood there, in the trees behind the fence line, with no cameras and no other witnesses.
“What the hell is going on?” Preston asked, standing beside Chase as if they were the people in authority here and not the three of us—with the knowledge and with the gun.
“Call the police,” I said. I begged it, really. The fear of inaction, the danger of it.
“Harper, stop,” Charlotte said. “Listen, we’re all a family here. Every family has secrets. Things we need to keep together. A bond that makes you stronger.”
Another back gate opened, and everyone turned to look.
“Girls,” Charlotte said, taking control, hands still raised, afraid to make any sudden move. “Go back inside. Don’t say a word.”
But they both remained, staring at the scene unfolding before them.
Preston looked to Mac, slow to arrive, slow to react. Chase looked between all of us, trying to unravel it all.
“Harper says that no one killed the Truetts,” Tate said. And they looked to each other, considered each other, eyes wide, voices silent.
“Ruby was innocent,” I said. “The Truetts’ death was an accident, and Charlotte doesn’t want anyone to know.”
Molly whipped her head from her mother to her sister.
“She poisoned Ruby,” I said, though I had no proof. Just the conversation inside the house that no one else had heard.
We weren’t a family.
Us, with our taste for true crime and gossip. With our view into each other’s homes, our voyeuristic desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves.
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.
Blair walked deeper inside, down the hall, toward the kitchen. “I suppose you know why I want to talk to you,” she said, turning around.
Because Ruby was staying here. Because I was the one to call the police that night to tell them Charlotte was guilty. To share what Ruby had uncovered.
I said nothing, though. Waiting for
what she would reveal.
She smirked. “It’s not that difficult to trace an email, Harper.”
I flinched, though I supposed I’d suspected it—the reason she had shown up at my door. I thought I’d been so careful.
“An anonymous email, sent from the college campus, with a post from that message board… It was a short list, Harper.”
I crossed my arms. “There are plenty of us who work at the college and live in this neighborhood,” I said. It didn’t have to be me.
She shook her head, hands up, conceding the point. “If it came down to it, it wouldn’t be difficult to prove. Do you have any idea of the information stored in digital images?” She closed her eyes briefly. “Look, I’m not here to give you a hard time. But there’s so much interest in this case—in Ruby’s release, in her death—that someone else is bound to come looking.”
And yet she was the only one here.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” I said.
“I guess I’m just here to satisfy my own curiosity,” she said. “Closure, you could call it.” She shifted on her feet, looking at me closely. “Did you always know she was innocent, Harper?”
“No,” I said. The truth. “I just wasn’t sure she was guilty.”
I’d sent the email to the lawyer in January. After Christmas with my brother, when I’d told him about the trial and my part in Ruby’s conviction.
He’d asked if I knew she was guilty, and I couldn’t answer. That look in his eyes—that question—it stuck with me.
It must’ve stuck with him, too, for him to call me about it again on New Year’s Eve. His apology, though, had not absolved me.
Was I sure?
Were we ever?
I believed back then that the system would shake it all out—but that was naive. We were the system. Decided what went in and what stayed out.
And so, spending the end of winter break alone in this empty house, I’d revisited everything, trying to convince myself.
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