Darby sits motionless in her chair, unable to muster the leg strength to move when he leaves. He’s wrong about Lola and her life. Wrong about her future. Right now, she’s so young, so tender and impressionable. She may not rot in jail, but there are bigger, deeper consequences than that. If she grows up with a scarlet letter for murder, how will Lola ever define herself apart from it, and who would let her? Darby thinks about her daughter, with her monster tantrums and sensitive spirit. She’s worried already a thousand times over that Lola will grow up to think Jack is the golden child and, as her mother, she can’t let that happen. She must be sure of it. But how?
The Nierlings have lost two children without justice. Thinking about it, her own maternal heart is a tiny bit wrecked. How would she feel if every closet she checked in the middle of the night, every reading tutor she wrote checks to, every moment she stopped herself from screaming in frustration, every green vegetable bribed down, every puddle of vomit, every snotty nose, every time-out and knotted ponytail and lost retainer, every slobbery kiss and sweet-smelling forehead, every quiet hug, disappeared? In their darkest moments, sitting alone at night watching television, how pointless it must sometimes feel to the Nierlings, all of it. And that’s why, no matter what, Darby can’t let anything happen to Lola.
After a long moment, she summons what last scraps of brass she had when she came in to leave the police station. The sun is already on its downward curve and her stomach growls. She’s missed a call and a text, both from Bodhi’s father, Marcus, of all people, and her empty stomach sinks. What’s happened? What could possibly have happened now? She reads the text: Can we meet in person? I’ll come to you.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Well after hours, Mary Beth enters her access code to the Little Academy building. The parking attendants and new security personnel have all gone for the night. Soon, the parents will be gathering for a state of the union meeting and she’ll be expected to attend, but for the moment, she remains undecided.
The hallway lights are motion activated and they trip on as she makes her way down the hall. With every step, she feels as though she’s losing altitude. Cold sweat crops up on the back of her neck.
Behind the closed door at the end of the corridor, Miss Ollie’s old room sits untouched, like a shrine, the children having moved to an unused class on the other side of the building in the weeks following her death. She waits outside the door as if something might happen without her setting it in motion first. She feels Schrödinger’s cat on the other side of the wall, both dead and alive. Awaiting confirmation.
On the first day of school this year, Noelle wore a smocked dress with apples embroidered on the collar, a bright blue bow pinned in her hair, and Mary Beth thought how grown-up she looked. It’s the first year Noelle has helped put on her own shoes, climbed into her own car seat, carried her own backpack.
The latch emits a faint click as Mary Beth opens it, the smell of finger paints lingering in the dim air. Parent-teacher evaluations weren’t set to take place until just after spring break, but Miss Ollie would have been keeping progress reports on file. Now to figure out where she stowed them.
The cubbies have been emptied and very little is left in the small teacher desk at the corner—some paper clips, dry-erase markers, and a spool of string. There’s a rolling cabinet on which a TV sits. Mary Beth kneels and tugs the aluminum doors open and—bingo. A neat pile of green two-pocket folders are stacked on the middle shelf there. On each, she finds a label: George, Tamar, Maggie, Zeke. She shuffles through until she finds Noelle’s name.
Mary Beth lets herself drop flat onto her bottom and sits cross-legged, the folder balanced on her inner thighs. She remembers one of the last things Miss Ollie ever said to her: I think it’s time that you, me, and Darby get together to discuss what’s going on between the girls. She thought she knew what that meant.
Inside the folder are the usual assessments. A few writing worksheets. Some pictures. A couple cute photos of Noelle and her classmates that Doug and Mary Beth would have found adorable in this parent-teacher meeting that will never take place. But on the back page, there’s the formal evaluation, written in the handwriting of a dead woman.
And sitting right there on the floor, Mary Beth forces herself to read every last line.
THIRTY-NINE
The last meeting of the Little Academy four-year-old parents begins at dusk. Without Rhea.
She imagines her absence is noticeable as much as it’s noted, the other parents remarking at how they aren’t surprised she’s not there to show her face. She imagines them feeling better for it, savoring it like the last sip from a fine bottle of wine, imagines, too, that while they’re bitching and moaning about how she’s too chicken to show up, they’re secretly glad she’s gone—Ha, proves them right—a free pass to whisper about her as much as they please, to pile on a pile that’s already been dumped over her good name.
Maybe she’s catastrophizing. Or maybe not. She is a small speck in the universe. A single molecule of water floating through the stream. She is dust on the winds of time.
Oh god. When did she become so full of shit?
When she started believing she was a good mother. Like she had this all figured out. Rhea came up with all kinds of rules and decrees, philosophies and lines in the sand, as though that could mean she had it on lock. As though that could mean she didn’t gag at the contents of a super-smelly diaper or long to blast explicit rap lyrics in the car with Bodhi riding in the back seat.
Rhea opens the double doors to the multipurpose room knowing that she’s about to face some different kind of music, but what the hell—she’s a tired mom just like everybody else, too tired to care any longer.
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, LOLA MORTON
APPEARANCES:
Detective Wanda Bright
PROCEEDINGS
DET. BRIGHT: Lola, what did you think of Miss Ollie?
LOLA MORTON: I loved her. She was my best friend.
DET. BRIGHT: What made her your best friend?
LOLA MORTON: She didn’t yell at me for tattling and she believed me.
DET. BRIGHT: Believed you about what?
LOLA MORTON: I don’t know.
DET. BRIGHT: What happened, Lola? I’m like Miss Ollie. I’ll believe you, too.
LOLA MORTON: Miss Ollie said she was disappointed in me. And I pouted and got really mad. She walked me back from Mrs. Parker’s and I think that’s how come she’s dead.
FORTY
Noelle is a smart student who catches on quickly to lesson plans,
Mary Beth reads.
but her social skills leave some areas for concern and will need to be addressed as she moves toward kindergarten. Noelle can be sneaky when she isn’t monitored closely. She has a quietly dominating personality that she uses to manipulate and at times strong-arm her peers. She has taken a special interest in subjugating her best friend, Lola, causing emotional distress for her and little remorse from Noelle. On several occasions, I have caught Noelle taking things that don’t belong to her from her classmates, and even killing a cicada that Lola had “befriended,” but it’s her singular focus on Lola, one of the quirkier personalities in the class, that worries me. I have tried to deal with this in the classroom to the best of my abilities before escalating the matter; however at this point, I would recommend a full assessment by a licensed child psychologist to monitor signs of behavioral disorder for early intervention.