Cutting Teeth(74)

When Darby arrived back at the class that afternoon for the meeting that no longer seemed likely to happen even without Mary Beth, she could have chosen to collect Lola then, signed her out on the sheet, and brought her home safely. Instead, she couldn’t bring herself to give up even one of those last few delicious minutes of alone time.

There it is. Her great, mortal sin. Why can’t she be a good mom for once? Does she really prefer her phone to her living, breathing children? And now she can’t even bring herself to consider what those extra minutes might have cost her daughter, what might have happened as a direct result.

“Not just me,” Darby clarifies quickly. “Mary Beth was supposed to come and she had to cancel.”

“Did you consider going anyway?” Detective Bright lifts her nice eyebrows.

Darby looks over to Griff, who looks pale beside her. “No,” she replies. “Listen, I know you’re doing your jobs and you have to be thorough. But do you know what I think?” She believes it’s time to steer the conversation. “I think the odds are really good that Miss Ollie had an angry lover. A boyfriend, I mean. It’s always the boyfriend. You’re the police officers, I know—”

“Detective,” says Bright.

“So surely you of all people know this. Though I realize you didn’t know Miss Ollie personally like we did.”

Lola squirms out of her dad’s grip and, in her periphery, Darby can already feel the Lola Morton plane flying into turbulence.

“Erin Ollie,” says Detective Bright, “was gay.”

“Gay?” Darby stares at them slack-jawed. “Gay?”

“She didn’t have a boyfriend,” adds the detective. “She had a girlfriend.”

“Yes, I know what gay means, thank you.”

Miss Ollie was a lesbian? It feels strange that Darby had no idea, but then, why would she?

“We understand from friends and family that they were in a very committed relationship,” Princep’s saying. “They’d been living together for about three years and were talking about buying their first home.”

Darby is nodding along, but hardly listening until she realizes that everyone seems to be waiting for her response. “That’s great!” she exclaims.

“Great?” Bright repeats.

Darby rolls her eyes. “Not great. Obviously it’s very tragic. I’m just trying to communicate that I’m supportive. I’m sorry that I automatically assumed she was—you know—straight, that is very, I guess, heterocentric of me, but then it sounds like everyone is trying to leap to certain conclusions here. Like, just because she doesn’t have an abusive prick of a boyfriend or something convenient like that doesn’t mean you should be interrogating our children. In their homes.”

Princep motions with his hand to slow down, making him resemble a run-of-the-mill traffic cop. “We’re simply following up on a few pieces of the narrative, that’s all.”

“Well, I—” Her mouth twists. She feels a small, unpleasant gush in her underwear that reminds her, for a split second, of being in middle school. “Oh.” Now. Of all times, really? As if there’s such a thing as a convenient period, but its arrival does explain a few things.

She swallows, hating the feeling of blood soaking through to the shorts she’s wearing.

“Darbs?” Griff uses his concerned voice. The one he employed when she was in labor.

On the floor, Lola has been pedaling her legs, scrunching up the rug by digging her heels into it, back and forth, highly annoying, but low-priority behavior on their particular daughter’s seismic scale. Lola stops and stiffens.

“I was saying—” She restarts, only she doesn’t actually remember what she was saying. No further questions, is that something that real people say or just lawyers on TV?

Lola crawls over the inches of carpet to her ankles, peering up at her with big, concerned eyes. “Everything’s fine,” Darby assures her. “Just fine.”

“Mommy!” Lola paws at her ankle. “But Mommy!”

“Okay.” Detective Bright’s eyes dart between Darby and Griff. “Lola’s name came up in a number of the other interviews and she may have information that could be useful.”

“Mommy—”

“Don’t interrupt when grown-ups are talking,” Griff says.

Darby pushes Lola’s prying fingers off her thighs. “Surely this isn’t what they’re teaching in the academy.” Let it be stated for the record that it is difficult to muster the right amount of wherewithal and intimidation without a tampon. “If your best witnesses are four-year-olds—I, uh, I’ll go to the media. You want to be on the news for this?”

“We’re just doing our job,” Detective Bright replies, no fucks given.

“I didn’t think so.” Darby shifts her weight self-consciously.

“Mommy!” Lola’s chin is pressing into Darby’s hip. “I have something to tell you. Mom. Mom.”

“Hold on, Lola.”

Jack has reached his limits of independent play and he, too, has begun to whine, lying on the ground and arching his back. Bright and Princep are watching the kids without trying to seem like they’re watching them, like they’re the King’s Guard and won’t be distracted from their station.