Cutting Teeth(83)

Princep has already asked her to hold out her hands. She feels the cold metal bracelets click onto her wrists. The phrase standard procedure is thrown around some more and she feels how bizarrely unsurprising it is that she will make it to jail before she ever makes it back to the gym.

“That can’t be necessary,” Griff says. “These are scare tactics.”

“It’s for everyone’s safety. We’ll make sure she’s comfortable.”

Lola’s arms are around her legs, making it difficult to walk naturally in step with Princep. “Mommy!” Darby can’t look at her face. She won’t accept that her daughter will remember the sight of her mother getting arrested. No. She simply won’t. But so quietly, so only Darby can hear, Lola whispers, “Mommy? Should I bite him?”

Just as quietly, Darby breathes, “Maybe later.”





THIRTY-FOUR




“Can they do that?” asks Mary Beth from her kitchen. She opens the refrigerator, looking around for a suitable option to stress-eat.

Darby got one phone call, and since both her new lawyer and her husband knew where she was, she called Mary Beth to relay the terrible news.

Darby’s voice sounds tinny through the line. “They’ve got forty-eight hours before they have to formally charge me with anything. This is kind of a freebie, I guess. But they can question me.”

“What are you going to say?” Realizing that nothing in the refrigerator is going to cut it, Mary Beth goes for one of the three pints of Blue Bell ice cream stashed in the freezer door.

“Nothing. I don’t know anything. I wish I did. What do you know about the pastors at the church?” she asks. “Are they stodgy? Are they Satanic Panic types? Is Communion a thing? It’s not real blood or anything, is it?”

“What? No. It’s not even wine. It’s Welch’s grape juice. Why?” Mary Beth’s stomach feels like a sponge being wrung dry.

“I guess one of them has been talking about the kids, implying that there’s really something wrong-wrong with them.” So this is about the children, then. Rhea surprised them all with the mention of Griff and, Mary Beth is sad to say, she felt a flutter of hope. It would be awful for Darby. She would not abandon Darby under any circumstances. But Griff Morton is exactly the kind of guy who you might hear is a murderer and say, Oh, he was always so quiet, he kept to himself, but now that you mention it, there was something funny about him around the eyes. Griff Morton would make sense. Mary Beth wishes she could hug her friend right now.

“That’s not good.” Her knuckles whiten around the spoon.

Ben. It has to be Ben. But why? Why would he do a 180 like that? Because she didn’t welcome his advances? She’s almost forty years old, what did he expect? But then also, what had she expected? What had any of them expected? She asked him to look out for the children. And now this. She won’t stand for it.

“I’ll look into it,” she promises Darby. “I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

“This is my fault.” Darby sounds miserable, like her nose might be drippy. “I could have picked Lola up early. I could have spent time with my child. Extra time. I mean, why not?” Mary Beth can’t answer that. “I will never forgive myself, Mary Beth. Never.”

“Darby—” she begins.

“People listen to you, Mary Beth. Just please don’t let everyone go poisoning the well before anything’s, like, official. That’s all I’m asking.” Darby sounds panicked and small, like a mouse with her tail caught in a trap.

Mary Beth spoons cookies-and-cream ice cream into her mouth straight from the carton. She feels a connective tissue with other mothers, something biological joining herself to them, and so of course she’s having an emotional reaction to the news that Darby’s family is going through this. Of course.

Her hand trembles and a drop of ice cream quickly melts on the countertop.

“She’s a child,” Darby says just before her time’s up.

After, she paces in front of the door to the backyard, looking out at her two girls bouncing together on the trampoline. Her spoon scrapes the cardboard bottom of the carton. “Darby’s in jail,” she tells Doug, who sits on the couch reading his phone. “Like actual jail.”

“Lord, why?” He looks at her over the top of the phone. He doesn’t remark on the fact that she’s eating ice cream standing up. She supposes it’s not actually that unusual for her.

“Lola.”

He frowns. “I always liked Lola. She always said, ‘I had so much fun, thank you for inviting me’ without her mother asking her to.”

“Lola Morton? The girl with the bangs?”

“Yes, Lola Morton. Noelle’s best friend.”

“They’re not really best anymore. I mean, don’t you think Lola’s kind of wild?” She watches Noelle rolled up in a ball on the trampoline while Angeline jumps around and tries to get her to break form.

“You’re around her more.”

She turns her attention back to her husband to see the thinning patch of hair at the top of his head as he bows to read his phone again. “She could have done this, don’t you think? Lola?”

Doug always wears socks in the house. His feet get cold easily, a point that tends to remind Mary Beth at moments like this that he’s fragile in ways she isn’t. “If that’s what the police are saying, then they probably have good reason.”