NOELLE BRANDT: I’m four and a half.
DET. BRIGHT: Wow, four. That’s big. Where do you go to school?
NOELLE BRANDT: Little Academy.
DET. BRIGHT: Do you like your school?
NOELLE BRANDT: Yes. Ma’am.
DET. BRIGHT: What do you like about it?
NOELLE BRANDT: The playground.
DET. BRIGHT: The playground does look really cool.
NOELLE BRANDT: I like the slides because I can go down on my tummy and climb back up the wrong way by myself now.
DET. BRIGHT: Wow, that’s impressive. Noelle, do you know what happened to Miss Ollie?
NOELLE BRANDT: Yes. I do.
DET. BRIGHT: You do? That’s very helpful. Can you tell me?
NOELLE BRANDT: Miss Ollie’s an angel.
ELEVEN
Miss Ollie is dead, that much Mary Beth has ascertained. Mary Beth felt it—this breakthrough—so acutely it was sensory, almost physical, reaching through the fog of her insane headache, clawing at her to pay attention, snap to it, Mary Beth. She watches the ceiling fan in her bedroom go around and around, a sort of meditation.
If she thought she knew how she would react in a catastrophe, if she thought it would be logical, then, turns out, she was wrong. Because in response, she returned home, put the kids in front of a movie, and dragged Doug upstairs, where she attempted to screw her brains out—literally.
The strategy worked, somewhat.
Her head hurts less, her animal instincts for survival—survival of her family, but more importantly survival of herself—are satiated, but Miss Ollie is still dead. She tries to find room for that knowledge in her swollen brain, but it keeps resisting, pushing against facts like an overstuffed closet. The death of her daughter’s preschool teacher floats outside of her. She knows this because if she swallowed it, made room, let it in as something to be digested, she would feel wildly different by now. She would comprehend that her daughter was no doubt in grave danger, that nowhere was safe, not even a preschool. She would think about how just yesterday she’d seen Miss Ollie: healthy, young, alive, present. And now she doesn’t even have a heartbeat.
“How many days is that?” Doug rolls over, probably a tad shell-shocked, poor thing.
“I’ll have to check the calendar.” She sounds robotic. The air from the fan whips her sticky cheeks and the thick, slippery sweat pooled beneath her boobs.
Doug props himself up on his elbow. She hasn’t shaved her bikini line in ages and it’s nice that this no longer embarrasses her.
“How does Noelle seem, considering?” he murmurs. Did he think of their daughter’s dead teacher while he was fucking her? Was he waiting to ask this question the whole time?
Her heart thumps, most likely an aftereffect of the sex.
“Fine.” She pries herself from the bed, locates a clean towel, and rubs it between her thighs. “I think I better go call the other moms, speaking of. Can you get the girls to bed?”
Doug still goes through the motions of running his fingers through his hair even though he hasn’t had enough hair to run them through for years. “What if Noelle wants you? She’s going through a real mommy phase, I think.” He makes no motion to go do anything as she pulls on the droopy sleeves of her robe.
“She won’t,” answers Mary Beth.
“She keeps saying she’s—”
“I don’t know,” she snaps. Mary Beth never snaps. “Figure it out. How should I know any better than you?”
She’s a tiny bit satisfied when his lower lip drops.
At Mary Beth’s bridal shower, she received all kinds of advice related to her impending marriage. Never go to bed angry. Always kiss goodnight. Say sorry even when you don’t mean it. Children will make you happier. And for the most part, she believes these kernels of wisdom are clichés for a reason. They are good and true and occasionally, like now, totally irrelevant.
* * *
“Megan, hi, it’s Mary Beth.” Her practice of entering the contact information of every parent in her daughters’ classes does come in handy more than one would think. “I’m not great, how are you?”
Megan is one of the better-liked mothers in the class, not quite as overtly friendly as Mary Beth, but she doesn’t avoid eye contact at pickup the way, say, Rhea does.
“Shaken.” Megan sighs. “I can’t believe something like this could happen at our school. Zeke’s been going there since he was sixteen months old.”
Mary Beth paces at the foot of her bed. She’s locked the door, for privacy. “Someone must have seen something, right?”
She hates that she was gone by the time it all went down. She missed everything. She should have been there. She could have helped. It’s not her fault that she has migraines. She does wish she had communicated with Darby earlier about the meeting, it would have been preferable, but she wasn’t planning on missing it.
“That’s what I’m afraid of. Think of what our kids might have witnessed. It’s making me sick. This is just—unbelievable. I really can’t believe it.”
“It doesn’t make any sense,” Mary Beth agrees.
“Miss Roberta across the hall was keeping tabs, but apparently there was a potty emergency and she can’t be totally sure on the timeline.”
Mary Beth paces on the bedroom carpeting she’s said she’s going to replace for the last three years. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Everything was fine, though, when you picked up Noelle, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, completely.”
“And you spoke to Miss Ollie?”
“Just briefly.” Mary Beth should have a reason for calling other than stirring up chatter. “It’s unfathomable,” she says. “Miss Ollie’s family is in my prayers. I thought I might organize a meal train for her—well, for whoever her next of kin is. I think we should do something.”
It’s seamless getting other mothers to agree to help. Everyone wants to do something, and so once Mary Beth has taken up the mantle of the meal train, she experiences zero friction as she slips in and out of telephone calls.
“Lena? Hi, it’s Mary Beth Brandt. I’m calling around to organize a meal train for Erin Ollie’s family,” she says. “And I’m curious—have you heard anything more about what they think happened?”
“Mary Beth. God. Sorry. Gosh. My husband and I are freaking out. Have you talked to Asher’s dad, the lawyer?” Now Chelsea is on the phone. Mary Beth is trying to keep up. “Our kids might be called in as witnesses. They’re only four. Four-year-old criminal witnesses. Who’s ever heard of such a thing?”
“That seems way too young,” Mary Beth agrees. “Isn’t there some kind of age minimum for that sort of thing? I mean, what could they really know?”
“I don’t know. I’m trying to get it out of Lincoln, you know, what might have happened, but—”
“But what?”
“He’s four.”
“Right.” A small laugh. If nothing else it helps Mary Beth to evacuate the hot, stagnant air from her lungs. She hangs up. No one mentions the biting. Not one single person.
TWELVE
Lola is screaming her head off.
Not actually, Darby concedes, but give it ten more minutes, then check back and who knows.