At least she can look forward to tomorrow, when they’ll attend the school’s memorial service for Erin Ollie. Not that she’s looking forward to the service itself per se, but what it signifies: the ability to move on, to get past this together. That will be positive. Twenty-four hours. It might not be easy, but it will be over. She just has to power through.
FOURTEEN
Rhea feels like it would be a mistake to stop moving. She spoons her breakfast of overnight oats into her mouth while at the same time tidying the living room, moving throw pillows back into place, pushing down the corner on a rug, pulling an empty mug off the coffee table.
“Bodhi!” She sticks her head down the hall. “What’s taking so long in there?”
“Privacy,” he calls through the bathroom door.
She retreats back into the kitchen, where she tosses the dirtied mason jar and mug into the sink and runs the water over it, returning to find the door to the bathroom they share locked. “We’re going to be late.” She leans her shoulder against the frame, waiting. She doesn’t even like the black dress she pulled from the back of her closet. The hem bubbles and the seams itch around the armholes. She pulls her hair into a sleek bun at the nape of her neck and feels like a fraud, like a Stepford version of herself.
“Privacy!” he repeats.
“You know that door’s not supposed to be locked.”
A pause. “Daddy lets me.”
“Bodhi,” she warns. “I’m just trying to get out the door. Darby and Lola are going to be here any minute. Please don’t make it harder than it needs to be.” She taps her phone screen to check the time. Her blood pressure blips upward.
Miss Ollie’s family had opted for a private ceremony, but apparently everyone （except for Rhea） agreed that the kids deserved an opportunity to say goodbye. It would be rude to miss, Darby insisted when Rhea broached the subject, as if Rhea is particularly afraid of rudeness.
We’re coming together as a community. Mary Beth sounded like a broken record. To process as one. In the end, it was all decided and out of Rhea’s hands, more or less.
At home, she twists her big toe into the carpet. It’s way too quiet on the other side of the door. “Bodhi!” She bangs on it with her fist and, finally, it opens. Bodhi grins up at her, wearing the pint-sized black suit she bought him for the occasion. “Did you wash your hands?” He nods.
She goes to grab to grab his silver clip-on tie off the top of his dresser, then kneels down in front of him. He smells like toothpaste.
“I want to look handsome for Miss Ollie,” he says, puffing out his chest.
Her face crumples. She presses her eyes closed and feels for his hand, still damp. “Honey,” she says. “You know Miss Ollie won’t be there.”
And here it is. She knew she shouldn’t have stood still, not for a second, not today. No time for thinking, no time for questioning past choices. But she knows now. It’s all there, pooling in her insides. Biding time.
“Why not?” he asks. Her breath takes on weight in her chest. Not again. They went over this.
What she wants to say is: Because Miss Ollie doesn’t exist, Bodhi, because Miss Ollie never existed. But she can’t for obvious reasons, plus a few that are less so.
“Miss Ollie died, Bodhi. She’s not coming back. Unfortunately.” She forces herself to add that last bit. “Her soul is at peace. She’s resting, but permanently. I’m sorry.”
“Forever?” There is real sorrow in his deep brown eyes. She wants to take it from him, to say, Here, I’ll hold that, the way she does when he hands her an empty snack wrapper.
Miss Ollie wasn’t real, that’s true. As far as she’s aware, Rhea is the only parent who knows about the legal name change. Just over a year ago. No marriage. No divorce. No discernible reason. The origin story of the woman now known as Erin Ollie remains a mystery.
But whoever she was, she was real to Rhea’s son, and that’s why Rhea has agreed to go today. For Bodhi. Her fire keeper, her wild darling, her earth soul. Her forever reason. What won’t she do for him?
The doorbell rings, followed by a quick rap on the front door. “They’re here.” She gives Bodhi a quick kiss on his forehead. “Don’t worry. I’ll be with you the whole time. Why don’t you go answer that while Mommy grabs her purse?”
She disappears into her room, where she examines her reflection in an old vanity she found discarded in an alleyway and fixed up with chalk paint and a set of knobs she bought at the craft store. She stares hard, looking over the sheen of her washed-out complexion, the freckles on the bridge of her nose that fan up to her temples, and tries to look for any sign someone might pick up on that something’s not right with her.
Then, she steps out of her bedroom as though stepping onto a stage, ready to perform. “Hi, Darby, thanks for— Oh. Griff. I—” She clears a cough from her throat and tries to work her mouth into a pleasant expression, at least for Lola, who looks sort of tragic in a full-skirted black tutu and black T-shirt. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
Griff presses his lips together and shrugs. His eyes float around the room, judging.
“He wouldn’t miss it,” Darby says with a perfunctory coolness to her tone.
“Right. I figured he had to work,” Rhea says. While Bodhi shows Lola a Hot Wheels car, the three grown-ups just stand there uncomfortably, somehow finding themselves stuck in a Bermuda Triangle of conversation. For once, Rhea could use Darby’s usual font of chatter. Of all the times for it to run dry. “Are you sure there’s room for us?” Rhea asks hopefully. She doesn’t know what Darby sees in Griff Morton. He’s the sort of lousy husband that women have to make excuses for. Sure he likes you, he’s just reserved. He doesn’t mean to come off that way, he’s just socially awkward. Rhea’s known plenty of middle-aged dudes just like him, ones who get by on their good looks and their height and their college education. “We could drive ourselves, really, I don’t mind.”
“Don’t be silly.” It comes out more like a barked order, and in its wake, the sounds of the surrounding neighborhood feel embarrassingly loud—a car honks at the light, somewhere down the street a mower chainsaws up and down a grass lawn, squirrels chatter in the oak outside. Darby winces. “I just mean I left Jack with a babysitter and we can all squeeze in just fine.”
“Yeah, but we don’t have to squeeze at all. You guys look, you know, fancy,” Rhea says, searching. “I don’t want you showing up looking all rumpled on account of us. It’s no big deal.”
“Rhea.” Darby puts her hands on her hips as though Rhea’s being a child who refuses to cooperate.
“What?”
“Well, you know.” She sounds exasperated and taps her foot on the floor. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you going alone.”
“Marcus will be there,” Rhea answers. Griff still won’t look at her. She wonders if he’s secretly hoping she’ll insist on driving herself and whether that makes her more or less likely to. “And Bodhi.” It’s amazing how terrified other people are of her being alone.