“Bodhi’s fine,” another mother—her name’s Roxy—calls through the window. “The kids are all fine.” She gives a thumbs-up and Rhea nods dumbly.
“Yeah. Yeah. Okay,” she mumbles through the glass, realizing too late she’s forgotten to thank Roxy. Rhea would never have thought to do that, and knowing this about herself makes her feel lonely, like maybe she needs to examine some stuff.
“Bitch, please!” Zazzy Tims exhorts through the car speakers. She can’t remember turning the ignition back on, hasn’t caught a single word of the chapter in this ridiculous audiobook since she made her final decision, stepped out of the car, and walked across the promenade to change things.
Things did change. Plans changed. She changed. She looks at her big green eyes in the mirror and tries to figure out whether she recognizes the woman she sees there.
Meanwhile, Roxy moves on to knocking on the windows of other parents as they pull into the parking lot: Your child is fine. All the kids are fine. She disarms each bomb, one by one.
And, of course, everybody’s got to be figuring it out by now: The emergency trucks aren’t going anywhere.
Bodhi’s fine, he’s fine. Thumbs-up. Okay. She goes to unclick her seatbelt, only she’s not wearing one.
* * *
An amorphous blob of parents gathers near the Charity Fountain or whatever the fuck it’s called.
Darby finds Rhea in the crowd. “Roxy says the kids are fine.”
Rhea can already feel her opinion of Little Academy souring. “Yeah, she told me.” At her sides, Rhea’s fingers move to the gauzy fabric of her skirt.
Nearly four years she and Darby have been friends now. She remembers when they met at their very first teacher’s meet and greet. The teacher’s name was Mrs. Louise. On a card table outside the babies’ new classroom Mrs. Louise had prepared the parents’ name tags, handwritten in the kind of permanent marker Rhea liked the smell of. She peeled the backing off the sticker that read Bodhi’s Mom and pressed it over her heart. Six months after their babies were born, most of the mothers were still swollen, heavy breasted, and round bellied. They all wore lotion and perfume and tried to sweep their hair into ponytails and buns beneath headbands to mask greasy roots, but who were they fooling? They were all So-and-So’s Mom now. They asked questions about classroom ratios and choking hazards and sleep schedules and soothing philosophies as if they weren’t all prepared to leave their infants with the first warm body to walk through that door.
Darby raised her hand and said, Mrs. Louise, do you have a spare marker or pen I could borrow? She used it to write Darby Morton over Lola’s Mom. Then she asked if anyone else needed to use the Sharpie. Rhea liked Darby after that. She wasn’t afraid to do her own thing. Kind of like Rhea.
So they could be friends as long as Darby swore off referring to them as “mommy friends.” The thing about mommy friends, though, because there actually isn’t a better term for it, is that more than once, they will change your child’s diaper without asking, even the really dirty ones. They will offer to hold your baby so you can eat. Your child will come to know them by name and they will know if your child loves monsters or princesses or horses. They will notice when your kid grows taller and recognize when he gets a new backpack and offer to pick up school supplies when you’re busy.
But what you don’t know is whether the “mommy” part of “mommy friends” is load-bearing, whether the friendship is structurally sound apart from the children.
“I hope everything’s okay,” Darby says. All the parents are staring at the school building like they’ve got X-ray vision.
“I just want to get Bodhi and get the hell out of here.” Rhea shifts her weight, searching for her center.
“You don’t think anything happened to—” The tendons on Darby’s throat turn to hard wires racing up her neck.
“She said the kids were fine,” Rhea says evenly. There’s no sense in getting worked up before someone gives them a reason to. She is a steady oak in a grassy knoll. She is a falcon, strong and still, floating on the breeze. She is the lake at dawn, she reminds herself.
“Right. Yeah.” Darby nods. “Though, what else would they say?”
“Where’s Mary Beth?” Rhea asks.
“She texted me that she had to pick up Noelle early today from school.”
Just then Lena Feinstein, with her small bones and big hair, flits over to their two-person clump. “We’re hearing that she’s dead.” Lena can’t seem to control her face and it keeps wavering between hot gossip she clearly can’t wait to share and genuine grief. But then, that’s how it is sometimes. “It happened so close to the end of the day, they didn’t have time to notify the parents.”
“Who?” Darby asks.
“You don’t know? Oh my god, I’m so sorry. We’ve got ears in the office building. One of Megan’s babysitters is a niece or a daughter or a cousin of someone. Anyway, the ambulance and everything are here for Miss Ollie.”
“Oh damn.” Rhea can’t help herself.
“No,” Darby says. “She’s not dead. Dead? She’s, like, twenty-six.”
Of the mothers, Megan, Charlotte, and Robin have all started crying. Rhea thinks: I should do that, I should show more emotion, I should feel bad. She needs to act right.
“Where are the kids? I want to see Lola. I want to see her right now.”
“They’re treating it as a crime scene.” Asher’s dad leans over, his hand over the mouthpiece of his cell phone. “I’m on with one of my friends at the DA’s office,” he explains, sounding like a lawyer. Lawyers, Rhea finds, always want to sound like lawyers. “He reached out to his connection on the force and— What’s that? Sorry.”
Rhea swallows, mouth drying. A crime scene, an active crime scene investigation at Little Academy. Her body bristles.
In her pocket, she rolls a small piece of silver in her fingertips, pushing the pointy edges into the pads, feeling its shape. The familiar urge to squeeze the life out of something, not to hold back. The small, brutal satisfaction when a silver corner breaks skin; she flinches. Just over half an hour ago, before returning to her car, it had made a scraping sound against the linoleum tile when it caught beneath her shoe. Where she found the small metal letter just outside Miss Ollie’s classroom.
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, NOELLE BRANDT
APPEARANCES:
Detective Wanda Bright
PROCEEDINGS
DET. BRIGHT: There’s no reason to be nervous. I’m going to ask you a few simple questions and I bet—I bet, you’ll be able to get them just right. Sound good?
NOELLE BRANDT: Okay.
DET. BRIGHT: And if at any point, you get worried or anxious, you can just look at your mommy and she’ll be right here the whole time. Got it?
NOELLE BRANDT: Yes.
MRS. MARY BETH BRANDT: Yes, ma’am.
NOELLE: Yes, ma’am.
DET. BRIGHT: We can keep it relaxed. That’s fine, just fine. First of all, can you tell me your name?
NOELLE BRANDT: Noelle. N-O-E-Double-L-E. Noelle.
DET. BRIGHT: Whew. Good. See? I had a feeling you’d do a great job. And how old are you, Noelle?