Cutting Teeth(49)

“There’s that word again.” Barely a smile this time, definitely no teeth. “Mary Beth, it’s arbitrary. We don’t have to. There’s no prize. Nobody’s checking up on us.”

“I know.”

A long pause.

“I’m sorry.” He gives her hand a little shake. “We can. We totally can.”

“No.” She shakes him off. “I mean, no means no. I’m not going to force you.” Mary Beth is already leaving him behind on the couch. It’s not even that this time she feels silly. She feels irritated. She does not feel celebrated, which is one of the phrases Pastor Ben used. She feels like a mom, a mom who doesn’t have time to have sex.

“It’s not a matter of forcing.” Poor Doug is trying and it’s not his fault. Not really. “Tomorrow,” he says. “For sure, tomorrow.”

As if tomorrow is anytime soon.

“I’m going to go take my bath,” she tells him.

She is, after all, a self-sufficient woman of the twenty-first century who builds her own Ikea furniture and is in charge of the family’s taxes and kills cockroaches with her shoe. Upstairs, she turns on the faucet of the bathtub and undresses. There will be a day fourteen for Mary Beth all right, even if she has to take care of it herself.





TWENTY




“My name is Detective Wanda Bright from the police department. I need to ask you a few questions.”

Miss Gray Suit and a uniformed officer are scrunched shoulder to shoulder on the tiny porch of Rhea Anderson’s duplex.

“Can we come inside?” The man, the one whose name tag reads Princep, requests, like he’s asking for permission to use her bathroom.

Rhea recognizes the other one from the memorial service—Detective Bright—the one who’d locked eyes with her, scoping her up and down and inside out if she could.

“Can I see your badges, please?” Rhea asks. She imagines Darby or Mary Beth in her same situation, how they would invite the police officers in and offer them tea—sweetened or un-?—and apologize for not picking up the house before they stopped by.

“Of course.” Detective Bright keeps it neutral as she pulls out hers to show. Princep taps the insignia pinned over his chest. He’s got the piercing blue eyes of Zac Efron and she can tell he’s used to smoldering them to get his way.

“Hang on.” Rhea grabs a pen and the pad of paper, on which she usually writes her grocery list. She takes down the numbers on each of their badges. “All right. Come on in. What can I help you with?”

They take their places in the living room, like two pieces of bulky furniture that don’t match her taste. “We’re here to ask you a few questions related to the murder of Erin Ollie.”

“I figured.” Rhea worries that with her on-air interview she’s gone and made herself the spokeswoman and that the next thing she knows, she’ll be called as the chief witness for the state, like she doesn’t have shit to deal with already. And now add these two with their messy auras junking up her nice, cozy home.

From her perch on the sofa, Bright plants both her feet flat, shoulder-width apart, and leans her elbows on her knees as though she and Rhea are about to talk strategy for the big game. Rhea notices pale white patches of skin on the woman’s hands, the beginnings of vitiligo. “So far during our investigation, we’ve heard nothing but glowing praise about Miss Ollie as a teacher.”

“I’m not surprised,” answers Rhea.

“But I guess that’s not the whole picture,” continues Bright. “Because we understand that on the day she was murdered, you lodged an official complaint with the administration seeking her immediate termination.”

Rhea feels as though the oxygen is being sucked from the room. Of course they know, she tells herself. They were always going to know. There was not going to be a future in which the police didn’t find out. She prepared for this. At least that’s what she thought.

“I did, yes.”

“Why’s that?” Bright cocks her head.

Rhea unglues her tongue from the roof of her mouth. “She wasn’t the right fit for my son, Bodhi, and the school wouldn’t honor my request for a transfer.”

“So you tried to get her fired?” Bright feigns shock. Like that makes Rhea the bad guy.

“It was nothing personal. But there’s a line she didn’t seem to understand existed. She forgot she wasn’t the kids’ mother. Mothers should have the final say over how their children are raised, not teachers.”

Bright nods thoughtfully. “What about fathers?”

“What about them?” The question comes out sharp.

“Should they not get a say?”

“Parents. You know what I mean. Parents should get the final say. I’m a single mom, so that’s the way I think.” She eyes Princep.

Rhea’s mind cycles through her options, trying to decide just how much is prudent to say. The way Mary Beth had looked at her in the café the day that Bodhi was bitten, like she was being rash, too quick to jump to conclusions. But now she doesn’t have much of a choice. She’s got to make a move, now or never. “I found something out about Erin,” she says. “Just before she died.”

Bright gives Rhea the floor, as in great, tell us. In her own goddamn home.