Darby went to do one little thing for herself—go to the gym—and look what happened. Just look! It’s like she’s being dragged back by her hair to be taught a lesson. She might feel like she’s giving so much, but somehow it’s still less than the other mothers. She wasn’t joyfully available or responding intuitively or whatever the fuck it’s called. Sometimes—or often—she responds to Lola’s myriad requests with a tense jaw and a barely concealed quiver of annoyance. She thinks guiltily of the sappy posts she puts on Facebook each Mother’s Day—Feel so lucky to be these two’s mom—and feels like an imposter even though it’s true. Absolutely, fundamentally, unequivocally true.
She’s thinking herself in circles. At some point, she’s moved on to reading Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. Jack fidgets in her lap, trying to push to the next page, when she hears the back door beep-beep and her heart leaps. They’re home!
She lets Jack push past the remaining pages and she hurries to get him settled in bed. She wants to see Lola, to give her a big hug and tell her, I love you and I know you had nothing to do with Miss Ollie, I know it, I know it, a mother always knows. Even mothers like Darby.
She scuttles down the stairs—skit skat skoodle doot, the picture book words stick in her mind like an earworm—and nearly runs headlong into Griff as he rounds the banister. Lola’s head rests on his shoulder, open-mouthed, her legs wrapped boa constrictor style around his waist.
“She fell asleep on the drive home,” he whispers.
Darby’s body throbs with longing. The little girl she created looks so peaceful. She has such a nice, sweet, perfect nose and long fingers and shiny hair like a Pixar character. Is it supposed to hurt this much? Darby wonders. Even when her kids aren’t trying to hurt her, sometimes it’s their beauty that does it.
Once again, she’s relegated to waiting, more waiting, while Griff carries Lola up to her room and deposits her gently in bed.
It’s not until he reappears without their darling daughter nestled in his arms that it hits her all over again, like the second point of impact in a one-two punch: Griff’s role in all this. It’s her least-favorite kind of argument to have with her husband, the kind where he doesn’t know they’re in one.
Of course she believes Rhea. Darby may not exactly be Miss Corporate America any longer, but she’s still a modern woman and so Of course I believe you has to be her go-to response even if every cell in her body vibrates in the opposite direction, telling her, No. No. No. Not Griff. But the evidence is not in his favor. Not now, when there is a Sarah Met-Online. And if there is a Sarah Met-Online, who is to say there aren’t more women, more possibilities, more terrible truths waiting to be discovered.
She only has one shot at this. Darby, you cannot fuck this up, she cautions herself. So she waits, waits to talk through the day, the interrogation—no, it wasn’t just Lola, other kids are being questioned, too; no, he doesn’t know what they’re after; yes, Lola was polite; no, he doesn’t think they should be worried, not really, not yet. She has to read his face or she’ll always wonder.
“We need to talk,” she says when he goes to the kitchen to get his vitamins, the element of surprise on her side.
“Isn’t that what we’ve been doing?” He looks like Griff again. Just the regular old Griff she’s known for eight years, not the glimpses of some alternate-universe version she’s been seeing parading around and out of their house at odd times of day.
“Who is Sarah?”
“Sarah?” he asks. “Sarah who?”
It didn’t occur to her to ask for a last name. “Sarah-Sarah. I don’t know. How many Sarahs do you know, and we’ll work backward.”
“Well…” He looks up, squinting. “One, I guess.” And then she clocks the moment he knows he’s been caught.
“I can’t believe you met a woman online. Don’t try to deny it. She told me. She didn’t even seem to know you were married.”
“Yes, she does,” he insists like that makes it better. “She definitely knows I’m married.”
Darby stares at him for a long beat. “Well, then she’s a bitch.” Darby was right the first time. This Sarah woman is a hussy and this time she’s not taking it back.
“Sarah isn’t a bitch,” he emphasizes. “She’s nice. She’s funny.”
“Why are you defending her to me?” Darby shouts because this warrants shouting even if she risks waking up both of their children, and that is saying something. “Is Sarah the only one? Is she even the first?”
But Darby suddenly feels like she knows the answer, like the pieces are falling into place.
“The only what? Friend I’ve met online?”
“Yeah. ‘Friend.’” Darby uses air quotes.
“No.” Griff shifts on his feet. He looks uncertain how to proceed, like he’s waiting for her to tell him, as always. He looks like that nervous man with no self-assurance who couldn’t order his own drink at the bar she met so many years ago. “This isn’t how this conversation is supposed to be going.” He gives his hair a little tug. “I had a way I was going to do this.”
“Oh! You had a way you were going to do this, did you? Well, too bad!” Her thoughts are spinning so fast they form a dust devil in her head. Around and around and around. She has to hold her temples like she’s just gotten off a teacup ride. She is totally disoriented. Where is she? Whose house is this? Who does he think he is? “Listen,” she growls. “I’m going to ask you again because now Lola’s involved. Did you or did you not have some sort of a private disagreement—an argument—with Miss Ollie a couple days before she died? At Little.”
“No,” he says, and he doesn’t even sound defensive. Is that good or bad? Should he sound defensive? Which way would be better? She doesn’t know. Maybe it would help if she were writing these observations down for later review. “We already went over this and it’s simply not true.”
“Which part?” she asks.
“All of it. Well, the part about Sarah. That’s true. But that— I think—”
There’s something about staying utterly still that makes Darby feel just the right amount formidable.
“You never mentioned going by the school, Griff. Not once,” she tells him. She wants to get all of her stuff in first. He should know the extent of the case against him. She isn’t going to be pushed around, especially by the least pushy person she knows. No, Griff. Not happening. “I can’t understand why you wouldn’t mention it.”
“Because I didn’t,” he implores her.
“Rhea saw you.”
All the signs were there.
“No, she didn’t.”
At times like these, Darby really does not recommend having a good-looking husband. Harder to stay mad at a face like that, but she’s managing. A Sarah will do that for you. “You know, Griff, it’s really not cool to gaslight women anymore.”
“I’m not.”
There it is, that smooth calm. That irritating calm? That creepy calm? God, how come Darby never considered that Griff’s steady demeanor might be a cover for all sorts of mistruths? Nothing to see here, Griff Morton would lead one to believe and, oh, how she was led.