Liar. The word is sharp in her mind. Liar, liar, liar, you are such a big, fat liar.
When she enters her front door, she’s prepared to confront the issue—to confront Griff—head-on, come what may. She will demand answers. Right now.
“Griff!” She barrels through the door. “Gri-iff!”
Her eyes pass right over the couch and then—and then back again.
“Darby.” There, in lieu of her husband, is calm, serene, at peace Rhea. Except not her usual Rhea. This Rhea looks like garbage.
“The kids,” Darby whispers. Fear wraps around her body and she simultaneously feels frozen inside it and as though she could leap out of her skin to get away. “What’s happened to them?”
“Everyone’s okay,” Rhea says softly.
“Jesus, Rhea.” Darby sniffles. “You scared me.”
“The police have brought Lola in for questioning.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Rhea could have sworn she heard Darby hiss the word liar as she unlocked the door. Really. That’s what it sounded like. But then again, maybe Rhea’s ears are simply primed to hear it. Liar. Playing it back in her head, she can’t be sure anymore. Like one of those viral memes where different people hear different words: Yanny-Laurel or something equally ridiculous.
She feels like a home invader. It’s obvious Darby had no idea Rhea would be waiting inside and here she is, shoved into Darby’s space. Rhea would hate that if it were the other way around. She doesn’t believe in friends dropping in uninvited. It’s aggressive.
Why didn’t Darby check her phone, though? Darby is glued to her phone. Edward Phonehands, she’s been known to call herself. She has a very self-deprecating sense of humor that Rhea doesn’t share.
There was a certain stage in their shared lives when Rhea and Darby used to text regularly in the middle of the night during the time Bodhi and Lola were both boycotting sleep on principle. Back then, Darby’s phone obsession was something of a welcomed feature of their relationship. Rhea would get a small jolt of energy and joy when a text came through at 2:00 A.M. and she was already up. Nothing good ever happens after midnight, Darby would text. My mother was right. They played a game called “You wanna know what?” sending weird facts back and forth, each trying to outdo the other, each trying to keep the other awake. Looking at her friend, she realizes she doesn’t know when the last one of those texts was sent. Just that one of them was the last and that was it, they were gone forever, the game ended, without anything to mark the occasion, just as, one day, it will be the last time Bodhi sits on her lap or calls her Mommy or asks her to sleep next to him. It all will come crashing down eventually.
“Where’s Jack?” Darby asks after the immediacies have been pushed out of the way.
“He’s in his room playing Star Wars toys with Bodhi,” she says. “I heard your car pull up and figured I better catch you alone.”
Darby’s house is eerily quiet with the boys tucked away. There are spiderweb scratches on the hardwood from where somebody’s moved furniture around. A damp hooded towel has been dropped beside the rug. Obviously, the Mortons weren’t expecting company today.
“So you think Lola and, uh, Griff, you think they’re still at—at what? At the police station? Is that where they take children? Or is there some other place more suitable for kids maybe, with blocks and stuffed toys and crayons? That seems like a long time, doesn’t it?” She seems overheated. The splotches on her neck and cheeks look rash-like, as though she’s having an allergic reaction to the news.
“I don’t know,” Rhea tells her. “I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take.” Did Darby ask because she thought Rhea would have the inside track, because she’d be able to speak from experience? Probably not. She’s being paranoid. News travels fast, but not that fast.
Darby goes to the kitchen and pours herself a large glass of water. “Are they questioning all the kids or just Lola?” Her eyes close as she takes a long pull from the glass while still standing beside the refrigerator.
“I don’t know that either. Sorry. They took a DNA sample from the school today and I don’t know what to think.” Except she does. She for sure does because it’s what they’re all thinking. Bex’s mom was walking around with an open wound. Zeke attacked her son. Asher’s mom landed in the hospital. And before today, parents were whispering about how kids could get belligerent if they weren’t “fed” properly. It felt like the children at Little had latched on to the wrong end of the Little Red Riding Hood story. My, what big teeth you have … the parents thought. The better to eat you with, Mommy!
“I don’t get it.” Darby sinks down on the sofa beside Rhea instead of the chair across, which Rhea would have preferred. “Do they think she saw something? I’ve asked her. I’ve definitely asked her. She won’t tell me anything.” Darby looks miserable. “Unless it’s about marine life.”
Rhea stops herself before she can say I don’t know one more time. “It feels like maybe they’re not just treating the kids like witnesses anymore. It feels like they could be suspects.”
Darby looks at her sharply, then, dropping her eyes, she pinches the bridge of her nose. “Fuck, Rhea.” The force of her words surprises them both. “I know you’re speaking words, but it’s like I literally don’t understand what you’re telling me. Is this about those little footprints? Because the kids are all over that place. No one locks the door the way you’re supposed to. I mean, mistakes happen.”
Rhea doesn’t know what she means by that. Not if the footprints were in the blood. If that’s how it went down, then the footprints had to have been put there after.
“I don’t understand it either,” Rhea agrees. Two police officers came to her house to ask her questions about her past. And now those same officers are stomping around her child’s school. Are they grasping for straws or are they on to something? “The police are probably trying to throw us off-balance. Force someone to make a misstep.”
She imagines Miss Ollie’s eyes still and glazed as a taxidermied animal’s, trained at the ceiling. A creeping pool of dark red. A child hunched inside the supply room. A trail of imprints marking the path.
“Sorry,” Rhea says. “Poor choice of words.”
“But not Lola. They can’t think that Lola would have…”
Rhea doesn’t know what to do with her hands. She wonders how she looks to Darby in this moment. She hopes Darby isn’t paying attention too closely to her; better not to leave a lasting impression after she goes.
But no sooner has Rhea thought this than Darby turns her full, wide-eyed gaze back onto her. Like a cartoon character. “I know you had it out for her,” she says solemnly. “Miss Ollie. But, well, I’m telling you now: I didn’t agree with you. Not at the school. Not at the café. I was just being supportive. Like when a friend goes through a breakup and you say, ‘Oh yeah, that guy was a total asshole. You can do so much better. He’s going nowhere in life.’”