Cutting Teeth(87)

She knows she must be in it bad because she lets Marcus, her ex-nothing, sit on her mattress and rest his hand over the lump of her feet.

“Bodhi isn’t a bloodsucking little biter. That’s a good thing, whichever way you slice it.”

Speaking of which, that slice on her arm? It’s angry, red, and infected, so who knows when was the last time the school had bothered to sanitize. Not to mention the nasty bite on her right tricep that still feels tender and swollen to the touch.

She flips onto her back and stares up at the ceiling. “That’s not really the point.”

“I don’t know why you hold yourself to these crazy standards, Rhea. You’re doing just fine.”

She knew what it would mean sending her son to a school like Little Academy. She wouldn’t just have to keep up with the Joneses, she’d have to beat them. A philosophy like free-range parenting is all well and progressive when it’s adopted by parents with money, but for people like her, that same logic can look negligent. So she played their game and whose fault is that?

“Do you know,” Rhea says, ignoring Marcus, “that Jessica Alba turned her natural lifestyle brand into a billion-dollar company and she’s got three kids. How’d she do that?”

He sighs. It’s dark in here. The last time the two of them were together in a dark room, they made Bodhi. “I don’t know if I’d go modeling your professional business off the Honest Company right now.”

Rhea takes the pillow from the other side of the bed and whacks him over the head with it. He makes a big thing out of ducking for cover. He would.

“What’s really going on?” he asks, turning serious. “Is Terrene underwater, is that it?”

“Why do you have to go there?” She folds her arms over her chest, which probably does not have the intended effect from her horizontal position. She feels like a kid.

He strokes the stubble on his chin. “Those documents you showed me at coffee the other day, all the money flowing out, not enough in, they didn’t add up and I thought—I thought maybe that’s what you needed to talk to me about, but you chickened out.” He gives her a mischievous side-eye.

With great effort, she heaves herself up to a sitting position. “Why are you doing this?” She tilts her head. “Acting like we’re friends.”

“We are friends, Rhea. You’re my best friend.” He stares at her with those deep brown eyes, the ones her son inherited, if she’s being honest, and reaches in to pluck at her heartstrings. She can’t help it. She busts out laughing, shooting spit every which way, probably.

“What?” He throws up his big hands. “We made a little man together. I see you at least four times a week, more than I see anybody else, and I look forward to it. When I come get Bodhi, I always think, Oh good, I get to see Rhea, too.”

She quits her giggling and wipes her eyes where tiny tears have gathered at the corners. He shakes his head like he always knew she was nuts. She shakes hers right back at him and says, “God. You know what, I think you’re right.”

She and Marcus make a pretty good team and here she’s been acting like she’s been doing it all alone. She may be a single mom, but she’s got people.

“So?” he says. “Are you going to let me help you or what?”

“It’s not me.” She can tell he still doesn’t believe her, but then she probably deserves that. “They belonged to Miss Ollie. I think she was stealing money from the church.”

“No shit? Wow.” He nods, processing. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“It’s complicated. There are … factors,” she says carefully. She thinks she might have told Darby about the documents; she was going to try to, but then Darby went and eulogized the woman popularly known as Miss Erin Ollie and made Rhea out to be the bad guy and, call it intuition, but Rhea could see no good would come from exposing her vendetta any further. But things change, people change, for the worse, for the better, and everything in between.

“There’s a parent meeting at the school. I found out at pickup.” Marcus rubs his head.

“Then you should go,” she says. “You’re Bodhi’s father.” It sounds so simple saying it now. Half of Bodhi belongs to Marcus and there’s nothing she can do to change that; she wouldn’t want to if she could. She can admit that, now that everyone’s being honest.

She thinks back on the Rhea that existed several weeks ago, how desperate she was to keep him out after the failed meeting with Mrs. Parker, when she went to Bodhi’s class that day. It was stupid. She wanted to pull Bodhi out, to make a big thing of it because she could, because she is Bodhi’s mother. But Miss Ollie wasn’t there. Her computer was open and an idea jumped into her brain, pure and simple. Change Marcus’s email address in the system. That was it. That was all she had to do to keep control. She went into the class contacts, and she entered the wrong email address for Marcus. A fake account. So whatever Miss Ollie sent, Marcus wouldn’t receive. Easy as that. She wanted so badly to avoid being held accountable to him; she was willing to do anything. And now, come to find out, Miss Ollie was quitting anyway. Why? Why would she do that?

She would do that if she were stealing money from the church and trying to get away with it.

He reaches over to her nightstand and turns on the table lamp—the nerve. “If I go to the meeting,” he says, “I’ll be fielding questions that only you can answer and I’m not doing that. This could be a good opportunity to get over with whatever needs getting over.”