Cutting Teeth(30)

Mary Beth’s charm bracelet jangles on her wrist as she joins their little clump. “Hi, Marcus.” Her eyes are soupy and her mouth, when she smiles, is a pathetic squiggle, but she’s holding it together, just like everyone else.

“Sorry for your loss.” He bows his head, looking sharp in his navy blue suit and fresh haircut. “She was a good teacher. We were lucky to have her.”

Rhea feels the weight of both of her friends’ gazes moving over to her. “Marcus, why don’t you go find our son?” she says, even though she can see Bodhi and the other children on the side of the chapel, near the reflective pond, milling together with freshly cut, long-stemmed yellow roses.

Marcus squeezes her hand when he leaves and, yep, Darby and Mary Beth clock that, too.

“Guess you two didn’t discuss how much you loved Miss Ollie.” Darby tries to make the jab sound good-natured, but the circumstances turn it sour.

“Don’t say it like that.” Mary Beth swipes at her nose. Rhea would have expected Mary Beth to be buzzing about, organizing the children with their roses, delegating whatever it is they’re supposed to be doing with them other than wielding them like lightsabers.

“There was nothing to discuss,” says Rhea. “She wasn’t my favorite. I didn’t want her dead. End of story.”

“I’m just saying, you might do a better job of showing it.” Darby flips through the program for the service. That photo of Miss Ollie again. Staring at her accusingly.

“Darby,” Mary Beth scolds. Like she’s everybody’s mom, not just Noelle and Angeline’s.

“What? You could have come to the meetup at the park, that’s all I’m saying. I’m allowed to say that, aren’t I? You said so yourself.”

What’s that saying? Friends are the family you get to choose. Only, at a certain age, it’s: Friends are the family your kids choose. Rhea wonders if she’d make the same choice under different circumstances. Maybe not, but also maybe.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind,” says Rhea. How’s that for the understatement of the year.

A uniformed police officer stands next to a Black woman in a gray pantsuit. He leans over to talk in her ear. The woman listens carefully to what the officer tells her and turns to look at something. As she does, Rhea can just make out the metal lump of a gun holstered underneath her blazer. A steely cold nestles between Rhea’s shoulder blades. Then she realizes what the something is that the woman has turned to look at: Rhea.

Their eyes meet. And Rhea feels her edges crackling like a paper set on fire, the perimeter burning first, a red, uneven line, brittle ash crumbling around as it spreads.

“Yeah, I think we all do.” Darby is doing her exasperated voice, the one she usually reserves for discussing Lola. “Apparently they found footprints at the scene. Did you know that?”

The woman in the gray suit breaks eye contact first and, with that, the connection she shared with Rhea severs, too. Rhea could have been imagining it. But her heart’s beating faster, practically out of her chest.

Mary Beth—“Who told you that?”

“Asher’s dad. The lawyer. You know the one, he wants everyone to know he’s a lawyer. That guy. He does have very nice hair, though.”

Rhea’s eyes ping-pong between her friends. Heart still hammering.

“And they don’t know whose?” Mary Beth’s nose is running and she seems to be out of Kleenex. She keeps trying to dab in the most ladylike way possible with the back of her hand.

“They were … small.” Whoever told Darby—an administrator, another mother, a teacher—probably did so in confidence, but that was their mistake.

Rhea glances toward the woman once more to be sure she’s moved on. “But that would mean one of the children found her,” she says.

Mary Beth covers her mouth with her hand. “Which one?”

All three of them turn to watch the four-year-olds gathered by the reflective pond. Bodhi picks petals off his rose and drops them into the water. Some of the parents take pictures of their children dressed up in their fancy clothes, which feels wrong, but unsurprising. Wild-haired little Bex sits on the ground and starts to cry.

“Exactly.” Darby watches with a frown as Lola lowers herself to her stomach in front of the pond—her skirt lifting to show a sliver of white bloomers—and sticks her fingers into the water, then splashes. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of—what it will take to figure out who saw what.”

Mary Beth’s face buckles, as though the scaffolding in it was never quite structurally sound.

“You okay?” asks Rhea.

Mary Beth gives a teary nod. “I think I should go get Noelle. I feel like she probably needs me.”

Darby and Rhea stay put while Mary Beth toddles away, a tad bit unsteady on her feet. “And then there were two.” Darby shrugs. Despite Rhea’s best efforts and her most prickly loner instincts, she still manages to get glued together with certain people. With Marcus, with Mary Beth, with Darby, perhaps now, even, to some degree, with Miss Ollie.

When she’s around Darby, she feels like a better mother in comparison; she knows that’s mean to think, but it’s true. If Mary Beth were still standing here, she probably would keep her mouth shut. Because Mary Beth would say, How do you know Erin Ollie wasn’t her real name? Why were you looking into her background? What were you doing there? Darby’s a safer choice.