Cutting Teeth(99)

“So.” Rhea speaks low and slow. “I’m going to tell you how I see it. You were involved somehow and you haven’t told nothing to no one.” For once Rhea doesn’t care how she sounds, doesn’t bother to hide where she comes from. “Which means you let Darby, your best friend, spend the night in jail. You let Lola, a four-year-old, take the fall. What kind of horrible, spineless person would do that?”

A tear leaks out and rolls onto the pillow beside Mary Beth.

Rhea stares down at her own sandaled feet. “Only a person who has literal blood on their hands. Because if there wasn’t blood on your hands, there wouldn’t be any on your bracelet.”

Rhea’s played it over and over, trying to solve the logic puzzle. Was it weird when Mary Beth called every single mother in Erin’s class to organize a meal train? Not for Mary Beth. It was stranger when she didn’t help with the memorial service. And then her confrontation with the police officers still felt like standard Mary Beth fare, a woman who looked out for everyone, who fostered community, a woman who was, above all things, nice.

Here Rhea has been walking around like a social pariah because she’s fake? Well, if that final school meeting showed her anything it’s that everyone’s hiding something in one way or another.

There’s a long, long pause. Rhea makes no move to break it. She pictures a struggle, imagines the charm broken and flung off, skittering down the hall where Rhea would find it maybe only minutes later. “I’m … sorry…” it sounds like.

Rhea wants to shake her to force the words loose. “For what? Help me understand.” The emotion in her own voice catches her off guard. For Mary Beth’s bracelet to break like that and for it to be stained, this is no small thing, not something Rhea can discount.

Mary Beth says nothing, whether by choice or because she can’t physically muster the words, Rhea doesn’t know.

“Are you honestly saying you … are you trying to tell me you killed Miss Ollie?”

With painful, stilted effort, Mary Beth attempts to nod.

“That poor girl,” Rhea says. “That poor, poor girl.”

“What … are you … going to do?” Mary Beth slurs so badly it takes Rhea a beat to translate.

Rhea sinks her head into her hands and kneads the base of her skull with her thumbs. “I don’t know.” All this time Rhea’s spent hating Miss Ollie, wanting to see her ruined, she feels like she owes her something. She feels like she owes Miss Ollie at least the truth. “I should probably tell somebody,” Rhea says.

This isn’t the movies. Mary Beth’s a grown woman. And Rhea should have stood up for Miss Ollie when she saw Griff, who she now knows was actually Ben Sarpezze, yelling at her. The memory feels like a screw, just poking through the sole of her shoe. What kind of person has Mary Beth been? Rhea could ask herself the same thing. Whatever the answer to that is, she’s a different one now and she can do things differently.

Now Rhea—and the world—knows why Miss Ollie put in her two weeks’ notice. No one had ever believed the Nierlings about what Ben and his family were capable of, and when Miss Ollie realized Ben Sarpezze was taking funds from his pet youth center project, Miss Ollie knew the odds of her winning against a family like that again were slim. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, as the saying goes. Rhea tries to imagine their final confrontation, what must have happened to spur Ben into resorting to murder. Cocooned in the supply room, it could have been that she was bleeding him dry. Maybe she told him she was leaving the school before she got caught, and he understood that without skin in the game, she would have everything she needed to destroy him. Or maybe it was the more personal revelation of her true identity, the sister of a friend he’d killed, and that if she hadn’t let it go after these years, she wasn’t likely to ever.

All along, Rhea’s been collecting her little pieces and, with Darby’s help, she thought they found them all. But Rhea thinks she was wrong. Mary Beth held pieces, too.

“Okay,” Mary Beth mumbles out.

“Okay?”

Mary Beth nods. This time it looks like she’s warmed up, like the motion’s easier to come by.

Rhea stares at her. Something about Mary Beth is changing. She looks better, less pale. Her eyes, unseeing, gaze determinedly back at Rhea. “Okay,” Mary Beth repeats.

Rhea crosses her arms. No. She doesn’t get it. How can it be okay? Rhea is accusing her of murder. And Mary Beth is fine with it?

Rhea pulls out the charm bracelet and coils it into Mary Beth’s hand, so that the A and the N are reunited. The last pieces should be clicking together.

“Why’d you do it?” That’s what Rhea has been wanting to know. Rhea couldn’t stand Erin Ollie. Darby might have thought Griff was having an affair. But Mary Beth?

Mary Beth’s shoulders rise by a hair. The suggestion of a shrug. A shrug. Rhea nearly wants to claw the woman’s eyes out, but the effort would seem redundant. And cruel. And then all at once it’s like the answer is written right there on Mary Beth’s face. Because the answer is a miniature of the mother lying before her.

“Noelle,” Rhea whispers.

Mary Beth’s throat tenses, the lines on her neck rising into cords. “No.”

“It was Noelle,” Rhea insists, feeling the truth of those words in her soul.