Extract: Such a Quiet Place by Megan Miranda

This entry was posted on 29 July 2021.

A riveting suspense novel about a shocking murder in an idyllic and close-knit neighbourhood, from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last House Guest.

 

SATURDAY, JUNE 29TH

 

HOLLOW’S EDGE COMMUNITY PAGE

Subject: SHE’S BACK

Posted: 11:47AM

Tate Cora: There’s a cab outside the house. Did anyone know she was coming back here?

Preston Seaver: What?? Are you sure it’s her?

Tate Cora: I’m watching out my window. It’s her. It’s definitely her.

Charlotte Brock: DELETE THIS NOW.

 

CHAPTER 1

 

“THERE WAS NO PARTY the day Ruby Fletcher came home.

We had no warning, no time to prepare ourselves.

I didn’t hear the slam of the car door, or the key in the lock, or the front door swinging open.  It was the footsteps—the familiar pop of the floorboard just outside the kitchen—that registered first. That made me pause at the counter, tighten my grip on the knife.

Thinking: not the cat.

I held my breath, held myself very still, listening closer. A shuffling in the hallway, like

something was sliding along the wall. I spun from the kitchen counter, knife still in my hand, blade haphazardly pointed outward—

And there she was, in the entrance of my kitchen: Ruby Fletcher.

She was the one who said Surprise! Who laughed as the knife fell from my grip, a glinting thing between us on the tiled floor, delighting at my stunned expression. As if we didn’t all have cause to be on edge. As if we didn’t each fear someone sneaking into our homes.

As if she didn’t know better.

It took three seconds for me to find the appropriate expression. My hand shaking as I brought it to my chest. “Oh my God,” I said, which bought me some time.

Then I bent to pick up the knife, which bought me some more. “Ruby,” I said as I stood.

Her smile stretched wider. “Harper,” she answered, all drawn out.

The first thing I noticed were the low-heeled shoes dangling from her hand, like she really had been trying to sneak up on me.

The second thing I noticed was that she seemed to be wearing the same clothes she’d had on yesterday during the news conference—black pants, white sleeveless blouse, but without a jacket now, and with the top button undone. Her dark blond hair was styled as it had been on TV, but appeared flatter today. And it was shorter since I’d last seen her in person—just to her shoulders. Makeup smudges under her eyes, a glow to her cheeks, ears slightly pink, from the heat.

It occurred to me she’d been out for twenty-four hours, and hadn’t yet changed clothes.

There was luggage behind her in the hall—what I must’ve heard scraping against the beige walls—a brown leather duffel and a messenger style briefcase that matched. With the suit, it was easy to imagine she was on her way to work.

“Where’ve you been?” I asked as she set her shoes down. Of all the things I could’ve said. But trying to account for Ruby’s timeline was deeply ingrained, a habit that I’d found difficult to break. Still did, apparently.

She tipped her head back and laughed. “I missed you, too, Harper.” Deflecting, as always.

It was almost noon and she looked like she hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Maybe she’d been with the lawyer. Maybe she’d gone to see her dad. Maybe she’d tried somewhere else—anywhere else—before coming here. Maybe she’d wrung these last twenty-four hours of freedom for all they were worth.

Then she was crossing the room, coming in for a hug, inescapable. Everything happened on a brief delay, as if choreographed. Her walk had changed, her steps quiet, more deliberate. Her expression, too—careful, guarded. Something new she’d learned, or practiced.

She seemed, suddenly, unlike the Ruby I knew, each proportion just slightly off: thinner, more streamlined; her blue eyes larger and clearer, in contrast; she felt taller than the last time we were in a room together. Or maybe it was just my memory that had shifted, softening her edges, molding her into something smaller, frailer, incapable of the accusations levied against her.

Maybe it was a trick of the television screen, or the pictures in the paper, flattening her into two dimensions, making me forget the true Ruby Fletcher.

Her arms wrapped around me, and it felt, all at once, like her again.

She tucked her pointy chin into the space between my neck and shoulder. “I didn’t scare you, did I?” I felt her breath on my neck, the goosebumps rising.

I started laughing as I pulled away—a fit of delirium, high and tight, something between elation and fear. Ruby Fletcher. Here. As if nothing had changed. As if no time had passed.

 

“PRESUMED INNOCENT. Simple, yet effective, if maybe not entirely true.”

 

She cocked her head to the side as I wiped the tears from under my eyes. “Ruby, If you had called I would’ve…”

What? Planned a lunch? Gotten her room ready? Told her not to come?

“Next time,” she said, grinning. “But that—” she gestured to my face. “That was worth it.”

Like this was all a game, part of her plan, and my reaction would tell her all she needed to know.

She sat at the kitchen table, and I had no idea where to go from here, where to even begin. She had one foot curled up under the other leg, a single arm hanging over the back of the hair, twisting to face me—not bothering to hide her slow perusal: First, my bare feet with the chipping plum polish, then my fraying jean shorts, then the oversized tank-top covering the bathing suit underneath. I felt her gaze linger on my hair—a lighter brown, a longer style since the year before, woven in a haphazard braid over my shoulder.

“You look exactly the same,” she said, with a wide smile.

But I knew that wasn’t true. I’d stopped running in the mornings, lost the lean-muscle definition of my legs; had let my hair grow out from collar-bone to mid-back—an inverse of her transformation. I’d spent the last year reassessing everything I thought I knew—about others, about myself. Picking apart the trajectory that had brought me here, the conviction I’d always felt in my decisions—and I worried the uncertainty had somehow manifested itself in my demeanor.

I grew uncomfortable under her gaze, wondering what she might be looking for, what she might be thinking. At the realization that we were alone here.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. I gestured to the food on the counter—the cheese and crackers, the strawberries in a bowl, the watermelon I’d been in the process of cutting—willing my hand not to shake.

She stretched, extending her thin arms over her head, lacing her fingers together—that sickening crack of her knuckles with one final reach. “Not really. Did I interrupt your plans?” she asked, looking over the snacks.

I shifted on my feet. “I saw you yesterday,” I said, because I had learned from Ruby that responding to a direct question was always optional. “I watched the news conference.” We all had. We knew it was coming, that she was going to be released, could feel the shared indignation brewing, that after everything—the trial, the testimonies, the evidence—it was all about to be undone.

We’d been waiting for it. Hungry for information, sharing links and refreshing the neighborhood message board. Javier Cora had put the details up, without context, and I’d seen the comments coming through, in quick succession:

Channel 3. Now.

Watching…

Jesus Christ.

How is this LEGAL?

We knew better by now than to say too much on the message board, but we had all seen it. Ruby Fletcher, wearing the same thing she’d worn the day she was taken in, a banner across the bottom of the screen as she stood in the center of a crowd of microphones: PRESUMED INNOCENT. Simple, yet effective, if maybe not entirely true. The trial had been tainted, the investigation deemed unfair, the verdict thrown out. Whether Ruby was innocent was a different matter entirely.

“Yesterday,” she said breathlessly, euphorically, face turned up toward the ceiling, “was wild.”

She’d seemed so poised, so stoic, on the television. A suppressed version of the Ruby I knew. But I had leaned toward the television from my spot on the couch as she spoke. Even from afar, she could bend the gravity of a room her way.

On the broadcast yesterday, I’d heard a reporter call out to her: How are you feeling, Ruby? And her eyes crinkling in that charming way whenever she was holding back a smile, as she looked straight at the camera, straight at me, for a beat before responding: I’m just looking forward to getting on with my life. To putting this all behind me.

And yet, twenty-four hours later, she had come straight back here—to the scene of the crime for which she’d been incarcerated—to face it.

 

Extracted from Such a Quiet Place, out now.

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