Cutting Teeth(80)
“Ma’am, it’s a simple footprint. We’re getting them for all of the children,” says the forensic podiatrist, whose mannerisms and golf-ready haircut suggest that he’s the equivalent of an accountant in the world of cool CSI jobs.
“No. You’re not, actually.” She draws herself up to her full height and tries to pay no mind to the many eyes now looking on. Rhea’s heart is trying to escape from her chest. “Bodhi isn’t a biter, okay? So, this—” She gestures widely. “—isn’t applicable to him. He shouldn’t be in the pool of suspects.”
“What do you mean he’s not a biter?” Darby calls from outside the door.
Rhea’s upper lip is sweating. Bodhi’s small for his age, but at four and a half, he’s still getting heavy. “I mean, he’s not interested. He’s never bitten me or craved blood or wanted any part of it.”
“You went on national television.” Robin summarizes the obvious.
“Yeah, I did. Because y’all asked me to. And I never confirmed or denied that he had it. I never specifically did,” Rhea replies.
“I think you know what you led people to believe.” Robin is backed up by many, many grumblings of assent. “You told everyone to be empathetic and available and—”
“Okay. Then I led them to believe wrong.”
“Wow.” Asher’s dad says wow exactly the way she’d expect Asher’s dad to say wow. “And why should we believe you now?”
There’s probably a whole lot of psychological shit—okay, bad word choice—that she’s going to have to unpack in order to sort through why her son’s been defecating all over school, and chances are some of that baggage is going to belong to her. Maybe her son’s dead teacher did know something about something after all. But one thing Rhea doesn’t have wrong is that she loves Bodhi. And she’s not going to permanently screw him up. Not for the world.
She looks frantically around, feeling trapped.
“I’m sorry.” Robin doesn’t sound even a little bit sorry. “You want us to just take your word for this?” Rhea doesn’t need anyone to translate: The currency exchange rate between her word and theirs isn’t favorable.
She slides Bodhi off her hip, onto the ground. A shiny pair of grown-up scissors sits in a cup too high for the children to reach. Rhea crosses the room and flips the scissors open to as close to 180 degrees as she can manage. Nobody stops her and she might think about that for a minute later, might wonder if, were it one of the other mothers, like Darby or Mary Beth, would they have all rushed to scream No! Either way, once she’s begun the gesture, with no objections, she has little choice but to go through with it.
The blades are a cloudy gray color and not that sharp. It takes four times, sawing over the same spot on her arm, before she gets a solid trickle of blood—bright and red enough that she can make a presentation of it. She knows better than to baby the arm, although it does sting. She brings it over to Bodhi. “Here. I got this for you.” She crouches down beside him. His chin jerks in the opposite direction. “Bodhi,” she says, loudly enough so that the gawking parents can hear. “Take a drink. It’s okay. I’m saying it’s okay.”
Bodhi sticks out his tongue. “Disgusting!” He sounds like such a little kid. “Blech! Get it away, Mommy!”
“Are you thirsty?” She tries again patiently. There was some small risk that Bodhi would have changed his mind, but no, he’s still her Bodhi. She doesn’t recognize the shift in the room’s chemistry, spreading out like a gas leak between the children. There are no carbon monoxide alarms for this sort of thing, no warning bells, and Rhea has been so divorced from the reality of the situation for so long that maybe the most genuine evidence that Bodhi has never exhibited any sign of being a biter is the way her back stays turned from the side of the classroom where the forensic podiatrist continues to ask children to step on clear, sticky sheets, one by one by one.
“So what?” Robin presses. “You’re in the habit of acting like an expert about things you know nothing about? I think that really says something about you and your brand, Rhea.”
Rhea opens her mouth to respond and thinks for an insane second, Did I scream? before she realizes the actual scream has come from just behind her in the moment before she is toppled to the ground by the force of tiny, insistent hands where the aroma of sweet, hot breath fills her nostrils and a knee with a tattered Star Wars Band-Aid clocks her hard in the eye.
THIRTY-THREE
Darby’s phone buzzes.
“My buddy got a tip from one of his courthouse friends. The judge issued a search warrant for your house,” Asher’s father, Bill Brazle, informs her.
“My house? Just my house?”
“They’re on their way there now.” Bill has become a bit of a team player since his Asher put Katia in the hospital.
The funny thing is that Darby continues buckling Jack into his high chair like this is a routine call that she can take one-handed. “For who?” she asks. “Like, which one of us are they coming for?”
She thinks of Rhea and the way she so carelessly—no, callously—tossed out Griff’s name and it has since occurred to Darby, more than once over the last few hours, that she is done with Rhea Anderson. For good.