“My house? Just my house?”
“They’re on their way there now.” Bill has become a bit of a team player since his Asher put Katia in the hospital.
The funny thing is that Darby continues buckling Jack into his high chair like this is a routine call that she can take one-handed. “For who?” she asks. “Like, which one of us are they coming for?”
She thinks of Rhea and the way she so carelessly—no, callously—tossed out Griff’s name and it has since occurred to Darby, more than once over the last few hours, that she is done with Rhea Anderson. For good.
“Uh, Morton,” Bill says. “All he said was Morton. I’m hearing that one of the pastors at the church had a change of heart about the kids or something. He’s talking. I don’t know what exactly he’s saying, but I think it’s fair to assume it’s not good.”
“A pastor? What, like he’s saying they’re the devil or something? What is this, Salem?”
“I don’t know the extent of it,” Bill is saying as her remaining time ticks by. “Just, you know, try to act surprised. I don’t want to get my buddy in trouble.” In trouble. In trouble. The police are coming to search her house. Pretty sure if anyone is in trouble it’s the Mortons.
“What should we do?” asks Griff once she’s hung up and filled him in.
Darby stares at the pantry, looking for something suitable to feed Jack, only she’s not really comprehending what she’s seeing or how she might turn it into a meal. She keeps thinking as she rummages for food: When am I ever going to make it back to the gym? Which is obviously all wrong and completely beside the point.
“I don’t know,” she says, picking up a bag of dried lentils and setting it back down. Her pantry is so disorganized, it’s a travesty. “Do you have anything to hide?”
“No,” he says. “No, of course I don’t have anything to hide.”
“I don’t know then. How should I know?” She shoulders through the pantry doorway past him. Lola’s turned on the television without asking. This entire afternoon, every time Darby lays eyes on her daughter she thinks, At least she wasn’t the first to attack Rhea. She has a palpable sense of relief about that. That honor went to Bex Feinstein.
“Nobody tells you what to do in this situation,” Darby says. “I have literally no idea what’s going on.”
“I’ll google,” Griff offers.
“Oh great, you’ll google.”
The pounding on the door, when it comes, still feels utterly shocking. They may as well be bullets fired through the hardwood. “I’ll get it,” says Griff grimly.
“Mr. and Mrs. Morton.” It’s Detective Bright on the other side. She appears friendly, sharply dressed, and with a note of: She really doesn’t want to make this any harder than has to be. “We’re going to need you all to step outside the house.”
Darby appears next to her husband. “My son, Jack, is eating dinner.” Or more accurately, crying over an empty tray. She doesn’t know why she tries telling Wanda Bright this. It’s not as if she expects her to say, Oh, sure, fine, we’ll wait, but it’s like Darby needs to push on the bruise, needs to confirm: Yes, they are kicking you out of your home. That’s how serious this is.
“The whole family,” she says. “I apologize for the inconvenience, but it’s standard protocol.”
Exactly that serious, then. Darby scribbles down a couple of phone numbers on a Post-it and, after that, she is allowed to take less than she would save in a fire.
This time it’s not just Bright and Princep who arrive. Two hulking black SUVs block her mailbox and pebble driveway. Darby tries to tell herself it’s okay, the neighbors will think the cars are here for some soccer team’s carpool or something. Who would notice such a thing? But then a whole uniformed squad descends on her house, spilling out of every Suburban door like industrious little ants, wearing what look like shower caps on their feet as they disappear through the gaping entrance.
She has the overwhelming urge to explain to the team of investigators: Oh, we’re still planning to pick out new light fixtures for the hallway, we do actually know that one is hideous, and see that bathroom? Imagine it with some really cool wallpaper from Anthropologie.
Instead, she keeps switching Jack from one hip to the next each time her arm gets tired. There’s no good place for him. She’s forgotten to call the lawn guy back for weeks and the grass is ankle-high and itchy. Her son usually runs straight for the curb anyway. Lola tries to do a cartwheel. Lola has no idea how to do a cartwheel.
“What are they looking for?” Darby asks. “What could they possibly be looking for?”
“Are they going to take my stuffed animals?” Lola asks from the ground where her very unladylike posture puts her cotton underwear on full display.
“No, Lola. Of course not.” Griff watches the front of the house as if he’s watching it burn. “I mean, I don’t think so.”
“I think they’re in our room, Griff. Look, the shadows in the windows.”
He doesn’t. He turns his back on the house and walks over to the mailbox, where he rests his elbow on the top because he’s that tall and jabs his fingers through the roots of his hair. “We should call a lawyer.”
Darby bounces Jack on her hip. There are two patrol cars and a van parked out front. The neighbors are bound to think someone’s been murdered. Someone has.
“Right,” she says bleakly. “We should.”
“We don’t know any lawyers.” Griff looks stricken. She’s never seen her husband like this before and she could do without seeing it now. One of the main reasons she got married in the first place was so that she had someone to pick up cockroaches with toilet paper and so that if there was a bump in the night, she could send him out with a baseball bat. Right now, Darby feels as though she’s being unfairly expected to wield the proverbial baseball bat.
“Griff.” She lowers her voice and makes sure none of the investigators are within earshot. “Remember what I said? I—I saw you … at the school that day. I’m not—” She closes her eyes and balances herself. “—I’m not going to say anything. But you have to tell me so that I can be on your side.”
He looks at her with such despondent misery, as though the only wish he has in the world is for her not to ask this again. What did you do? What aren’t you telling me? her brain screams.
“I told you,” he says. “I wasn’t there.”
To have someone she loves so much unable to trust her with the truth, a truth she saw with her own eyes, is to be untethered from all the things about her family, her life, she has known to be true. She can see them drifting apart after this, floating away from one another, but it won’t be her that untied the rope. That will be on Griff’s shoulders.
She hands Jack to Griff, which evokes a round of wailing. Then she goes to knock on the neighbor’s door. She asks to use their cell phone and dials Bill Brazle back, one of the numbers she thought to collect on her Post-it, and, surprise, surprise, she’s connected with one of his buddies. She has mixed feelings, but at least she’s in possession of a name and a number.