“Darby, about that, Miss Ollie wasn’t who you think she was—”
Darby squeezes her eyelids shut. “Enough. No, Rhea. No. I let you have your hissy fit or whatever.” Rhea feels branches of cold steel fan out in her lungs. “But Lola loved her. She pulled special books for Lola every week. And they sat and had special cuddle time and Lola has really needed that lately. Miss Ollie called it ‘filling her love cup.’ She was so good to Lola. Not everyone is. Not everyone”—she swallows—“appreciates Lola. She was a great teacher, Rhea, and I’m sorry. I know you have a chip on your shoulder about everything and everyone, but now…” Darby looks at the ceiling and Rhea spots tears teetering precariously on her lower lid.
A surge of anger strikes Rhea and she wants to slap those silly, perfectly perched tears out of Darby’s head. Of course Darby’s going to side with Miss Wholesome Polly Perfect. Just like she’s always suspected, Rhea’s never been one of them.
“Is that what your husband thought, too?” Rhea shoots back. “That she was such a great teacher?” She’s not about to take the entire blame for this. No way. Just because she died doesn’t turn Miss Ollie into some kind of discount saint. Darby thinks she’s been too hard on Miss Ollie? If she only knew how much Rhea held back, well, she might be singing a different tune.
After all, it was Rhea who was sitting in her car when she saw Miss Ollie talking to a man through the windshield. At the time, she could feel the tension building in the back of the man’s neck from clear over there. He was hulking over Miss Ollie. Her face obscured. Rhea watched the teacher retreat a couple of steps. He pointed a finger at her. Like, really pointed it. A purposeful shake. At the time, Rhea imagined what her friends might do in a situation like that. Would they intervene? Would they check to make sure the woman was okay?
Not Rhea. She didn’t do a damn thing to help that woman. Instead, she smugly sat back and thought to herself that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t care for Miss Ollie.
But the man looked familiar. Chestnut hair, physically fit—and then she realized: Wait a second, she knew him, like actually knew him. Darby, come get your man.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Darby’s chin snaps back as if she didn’t start this. “I talked to Griff. He didn’t know what you were talking about.” But Darby’s pupils tell a different story. She was listening that day at the café. Not just listening, she followed up. She took action.
And flash forward to today, in the aftermath of the Poop Bandit’s second strike, Griff looking like some prick, surfing on his phone like that.
You’re in charge of pickup today then, huh? Rhea asked him just to prove she’s not like him.
Just today, he practically grunted.
Okay, excuse me.
And she did until half an hour later when the dust settled on Mary Beth’s near arrest and a set of cops came over holding little Lola Morton’s hand. Griff tapped Rhea on the shoulder and asked if she could take Jack home. He might have said please, and that’s a big might. Darby wasn’t answering and he had to go down to the police station and Rhea said, Yeah. That’s fine.
Darby blinks at her expectantly.
“And I guess you believe him over me.” Rhea shrugs. It doesn’t settle anything. “Bodhi!” she hollers. “We’ve got to get going anyway.”
Bodhi comes obediently at the sound of his name, effectively ending the conversation for them. Doesn’t matter. Things work out fine for people like Darby, just wait and see.
Rhea peels open the door and the stress she has been holding back breaks open, too. “Call me if you need anything,” she says, when they both know Darby won’t.
“Wait, Rhea!” Darby shouts too loudly, Rhea hasn’t even managed to get out the door yet.
Rhea hesitates. “What?” she asks.
Were Darby and Mary Beth talking behind her back about how they had to humor Rhea so she didn’t explode? Like she’s some trashy redneck fixing to get loud and run her mouth with no filter because she never attended cotillion? Is that how it was? It’s not the first time Rhea’s been made out to be the bad guy, but she’s upset with herself for expecting more from Darby.
“Never mind.” Darby sounds exasperated.
Join the club.
But on the way home, Rhea continues to try to piece it all together. Just in case. Just if she needs it. The detective knew she tried to get Erin fired. She knew about Rhea’s criminal record. She did not know that Rhea hadn’t just been on campus, she’d been in Miss Ollie’s classroom, or else she’d have said so. She did not know about the little silver A because that’s rattling in Rhea’s cup holder. She did not know about the strange set of financial documents Rhea had found and … stolen. And that means Rhea knows something that Detective Bright doesn’t. Reveal it and she’ll wind up tipping her hand. Her only choice then is to figure out what it means before she has to.
She drives on autopilot, her mind so preoccupied with the puzzle she’s trying to work out, she won’t remember taking an early exit off the highway, she won’t recall seeing the sign or reading the menu, she will feel such a schism between mind and body that when she finds a greasy sack of hamburgers and french fries plus a Happy Meal for Bodhi in her lap, she will feel hardly any guilt at all. She will not recognize herself and so she’ll feel, in this instance as on other recent occasions, plausible deniability: She wasn’t the one who committed the crime; you must be thinking of somebody else.
TWENTY-SIX
“They struck again.”
Most days, Mary Beth calls her younger sister, Blythe, on the way home from school as something of a coping mechanism. Blythe and her husband, Jerry, don’t have kids. They have restaurant week and trips to Napa and even though they frequent über-pricey places like the French Laundry, it turns out you can eat a lot of über-pricey food for a whole lot less than the über-pricey cost of having kids.
“Who?” Blythe asks from her downtown office clear across the country. Mary Beth visited once and felt the slick, oily hand of envy slide its fingers around her heart at the floor-to-ceiling smudge-free glass, the plant kept alive as if by night fairies, the receptionist who offered coffee, tea, or sparkling.
“The Poop Bandit,” Mary Beth says, glancing back to ensure that Noelle’s headphones are on. She’s listening to a children’s audiobook and staring out the window.
“Is that a new superhero? Ugh. I hate children’s marketing departments. Like those gross emoji pillows. Does Noelle have those?” Blythe does marketing for a major movie studio. She claims the move to LA had nothing to do with the reason she stopped attending church, but Mary Beth thinks it’s quite the coincidence otherwise.
“It’s not a superhero.” Anyway, it’s not, like, an official name, just something one of the dads said offhand. “Remember, I told you a few days ago how a kid in Noelle’s class had … relieved … themselves on the playground without anyone knowing.” Once is an accident. Twice is targeted. Three is serial and four, well, four’s a spree.
“Oh yeah, that was you?” Blythe says. “Okay, right, I’m with you now.”