She extracts a straight pin and holds the end between her lips as she lights a match and holds the sharp point in the flame, counting in her head to ten. She waves the match into a wisp of smoke and sets it aside before steadying herself. Noelle has quieted, curled in an upright ball against the headboard, her blue eyes watchful over the pink mounds of her knees.
On the second stab, Mary Beth gets a quivering bead of bright red blood. She squeezes it between two fingers until the bubble collapses and a rivulet weaves down her wrist.
Noelle scoots closer until her hip is pressed against her mother’s. She waits, fingers in her mouth.
“Go ahead.” Mary Beth offers her bleeding hand and with her other, pets the blond mass of wavy hair that falls down her daughter’s back. Noelle’s lips are soft as an angel’s kiss and Mary Beth considers all of the gross, unsexy things motherhood has required of her and tries to figure out where this one falls on the list.
At the sound of a soft grunt, she looks up to see Doug with his eyes closed taking deep breaths in through his nose, out through his mouth—heave-ho, heave-ho.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Blood.” He swallows hard. “I’m not good with blood. It makes my stomach—”
“That’s not true,” she says. “You’re fine with blood.” She thinks she would know if her husband of twelve years had a problem with blood.
He barely shakes his head.
“We’ve got two children, Doug. You were in the delivery room with both. Blood. Lots of blood.”
He opens his eyes but trains them at the ceiling. “I knew I needed to be brave for you,” he says with such a dollop of pride.
He does look pale.
Noelle looks up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. A smear of pink washes down her chin. Mary Beth is about to blot her own hand on her jeans when Noelle touches her gently. “Mommy,” she says. “Can I have some more, please?”
Doug lets out a small gag.
* * *
Doug’s feet are already on the ottoman when she returns, the remote pointed at the television screen. The girls are in bed. The dishes are close enough to the sink and, as long as you don’t squint too hard at the Brandts’ floors, they can pass for clean.
“All good?” He looks nervous, but she nods. She’s taken care of it. “It seems like we should be doing a victory dance.”
She tumbles onto the couch beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. “What’s your victory dance like?”
“I twerk.”
“Hm. Yeah. I can see it.”
He flips through the channels. His breathing is so familiar to her. “Good thing they’re cute,” he says.
“We’re cute. Aren’t we?”
“Very.”
“I mean not just cute. We’ve still got it. We’re sexy.” She recoils. “Sorry. It’s impossible to say the word ‘sexy’ and still sound sexy, I guess.”
Doug grins. The screen’s blue reflections bounce in his eyes. “And to think you nearly got away with it.”
“So.” She shifts. “Speaking of. Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“Before we get too comfortable.” She pushes upright. Post-bedtime sex is a stunt with a high starting difficulty value; one wrong move and either she or Doug could lose their concentration and wreck the whole thing. Every precaution must be taken. “You know? Oh, don’t make me say the word again, that’ll ruin it all.”
His eyes pull away from the screen and he catches her expectant look. Turns out the light is still on downstairs, she’s pleased to find. Single vacancy.
Could they do it here? Now? On the sofa? Dare they?
“Oh. Honey.” He lowers the remote. “Do you think we could take the night off?”
“But…” She sputters. “It’s day fourteen. We have momentum.”
“But I mean, aren’t you kind of drained? I know I am. I almost threw up back there.”
She bristles. “Yes. Yes. But that’s the point. I’m tired of feeling drained, Doug.” He’s missing it. “We’re doing so well at the Sexy Back Challenge.” She laces her fingers through his.
“There’s that word again.” Barely a smile this time, definitely no teeth. “Mary Beth, it’s arbitrary. We don’t have to. There’s no prize. Nobody’s checking up on us.”
“I know.”
A long pause.
“I’m sorry.” He gives her hand a little shake. “We can. We totally can.”
“No.” She shakes him off. “I mean, no means no. I’m not going to force you.” Mary Beth is already leaving him behind on the couch. It’s not even that this time she feels silly. She feels irritated. She does not feel celebrated, which is one of the phrases Pastor Ben used. She feels like a mom, a mom who doesn’t have time to have sex.
“It’s not a matter of forcing.” Poor Doug is trying and it’s not his fault. Not really. “Tomorrow,” he says. “For sure, tomorrow.”
As if tomorrow is anytime soon.
“I’m going to go take my bath,” she tells him.
She is, after all, a self-sufficient woman of the twenty-first century who builds her own Ikea furniture and is in charge of the family’s taxes and kills cockroaches with her shoe. Upstairs, she turns on the faucet of the bathtub and undresses. There will be a day fourteen for Mary Beth all right, even if she has to take care of it herself.
TWENTY
“My name is Detective Wanda Bright from the police department. I need to ask you a few questions.”
Miss Gray Suit and a uniformed officer are scrunched shoulder to shoulder on the tiny porch of Rhea Anderson’s duplex.
“Can we come inside?” The man, the one whose name tag reads Princep, requests, like he’s asking for permission to use her bathroom.
Rhea recognizes the other one from the memorial service—Detective Bright—the one who’d locked eyes with her, scoping her up and down and inside out if she could.
“Can I see your badges, please?” Rhea asks. She imagines Darby or Mary Beth in her same situation, how they would invite the police officers in and offer them tea—sweetened or un-?—and apologize for not picking up the house before they stopped by.
“Of course.” Detective Bright keeps it neutral as she pulls out hers to show. Princep taps the insignia pinned over his chest. He’s got the piercing blue eyes of Zac Efron and she can tell he’s used to smoldering them to get his way.
“Hang on.” Rhea grabs a pen and the pad of paper, on which she usually writes her grocery list. She takes down the numbers on each of their badges. “All right. Come on in. What can I help you with?”
They take their places in the living room, like two pieces of bulky furniture that don’t match her taste. “We’re here to ask you a few questions related to the murder of Erin Ollie.”
“I figured.” Rhea worries that with her on-air interview she’s gone and made herself the spokeswoman and that the next thing she knows, she’ll be called as the chief witness for the state, like she doesn’t have shit to deal with already. And now add these two with their messy auras junking up her nice, cozy home.