A plastic bag slouched across the tile, beside the classroom sink. She picked it up. And slowly, stiffly, as if nursing a forgotten injury, began collecting the items jettisoned in the chaos of stabilizing Mary Beth. A turquoise necklace. Her phone—screen cracked. A sandal. Three bobby pins. A bracelet.
Rhea picked up the familiar charm bracelet and tested the weight in her hand. The entire chain was stuffed with little souvenirs, gifts from family members. A miniature Eiffel Tower to commemorate a trip to Paris. A moose for when they went to Jackson Hole. A cross. A longhorn. A Texas flag. A wiener dog. A birthstone. Rhea could write the short version of Mary Beth’s biography with the help of James Avery alone. The rhythmic clink of them was a Mary Beth signature; Rhea shuddered to imagine a world where they sat still forever, locked tight in a box for her daughters to split amongst themselves when they’re old enough. How Mary Beth loved those girls.
She came across a silver N dangling from the bracelet for Noelle.
Rhea’s fingers traveled the rest of the bracelet quickly. Around the entire loop she went, three times. Again. Again. Again.
Back to the N. She brought the charm to eye level, examined the link. There. The link beside it. A broken metal hook.
Rhea glanced over her shoulder and reached into her pocket.
* * *
“I brought your stuff.” Rhea moves slowly into the room. Doug still hasn’t returned. Before she left, Darby pushed back the curtains on the window at Mary Beth’s insistence.
Darby said, “Better?” But, of course, it wasn’t for Mary Beth. The question only made it worse. The view is nothing but a flat, graveled rooftop where pigeons hop around with pieces of french fries in their beaks.
Mary Beth stares quietly up at the ceiling, unmoved. A toiletry bag has tipped over on the couch where Doug must be sleeping. Rhea isn’t used to seeing Mary Beth without makeup. Her mouth turns down. The blue veins running from both corners of it are prominent because of either the lighting or the lack of tinted foundation.
Rhea won’t act like she knows a thing about what it feels like to lose your eyesight, but her mind goes to Bodhi, to his face, to his hair, to his little-boy body; does she have a clear enough picture in her head that it could last her the rest of her life if it had to?
“Are you okay?” Rhea asks.
Mary Beth turns her face to her. Her mouth works too hard, searching for words. “Jesus … said.” Mary Beth takes a deep, laborious breath. Her words are mushy. It’s Jee-shush and shed. “I came … so those … who do not see…” Rhea watches her give up on the rest and a pang of sorrow hits her where she lives.
“May see,” she finishes because, believe it or not, Rhea used to watch church on TV on Sunday mornings with her bowl of milky Cocoa Puffs in her lap just to feel like she had a grown-up taking care of her. “Mary Beth?” Rhea says, taking a seat at the chair beside her bed. “I’m afraid I need to talk to you and I’m coming to you because we’re—” Rhea feels like she has to search for the word, too, a word that’s, embarrassingly, not all that familiar in her world. “—friends.”
Mary Beth’s nose wrinkles. A smile? Something else?
“I found something.” Rhea pulls out the small silver A. Gently, she turns Mary Beth’s hand over where it rests at her side and presses the A into her palm.
She swallows. With her right fingertip, she prods the charm, feeling the angles, pinching it, bottom to top. “Ange … line,” she says as if learning the name for the first time.
“Yeah,” agrees Rhea. “Angeline.” Together with the N on Mary Beth’s charm bracelet, it creates a perfect matching pair. The Brandts’ two daughters: Noelle and Angeline.
“I found it outside of Miss Ollie’s class.” Rhea keeps her voice low. “Because I was there the day she was killed. Too.” She lets the final word land. Mary Beth’s eyes search aimlessly. “Look,” Rhea says. “I know you were there. I know you were involved somehow because there was blood on the charm.”
There’s a man who’s confessed to murder because his back is against the wall, but Rhea knows all too well about police jumping to the first, the easiest conclusion, happy to let the chips fall.
“So.” Rhea speaks low and slow. “I’m going to tell you how I see it. You were involved somehow and you haven’t told nothing to no one.” For once Rhea doesn’t care how she sounds, doesn’t bother to hide where she comes from. “Which means you let Darby, your best friend, spend the night in jail. You let Lola, a four-year-old, take the fall. What kind of horrible, spineless person would do that?”
A tear leaks out and rolls onto the pillow beside Mary Beth.
Rhea stares down at her own sandaled feet. “Only a person who has literal blood on their hands. Because if there wasn’t blood on your hands, there wouldn’t be any on your bracelet.”
Rhea’s played it over and over, trying to solve the logic puzzle. Was it weird when Mary Beth called every single mother in Erin’s class to organize a meal train? Not for Mary Beth. It was stranger when she didn’t help with the memorial service. And then her confrontation with the police officers still felt like standard Mary Beth fare, a woman who looked out for everyone, who fostered community, a woman who was, above all things, nice.
Here Rhea has been walking around like a social pariah because she’s fake? Well, if that final school meeting showed her anything it’s that everyone’s hiding something in one way or another.
There’s a long, long pause. Rhea makes no move to break it. She pictures a struggle, imagines the charm broken and flung off, skittering down the hall where Rhea would find it maybe only minutes later. “I’m … sorry…” it sounds like.
Rhea wants to shake her to force the words loose. “For what? Help me understand.” The emotion in her own voice catches her off guard. For Mary Beth’s bracelet to break like that and for it to be stained, this is no small thing, not something Rhea can discount.
Mary Beth says nothing, whether by choice or because she can’t physically muster the words, Rhea doesn’t know.
“Are you honestly saying you … are you trying to tell me you killed Miss Ollie?”
With painful, stilted effort, Mary Beth attempts to nod.
“That poor girl,” Rhea says. “That poor, poor girl.”
“What … are you … going to do?” Mary Beth slurs so badly it takes Rhea a beat to translate.
Rhea sinks her head into her hands and kneads the base of her skull with her thumbs. “I don’t know.” All this time Rhea’s spent hating Miss Ollie, wanting to see her ruined, she feels like she owes her something. She feels like she owes Miss Ollie at least the truth. “I should probably tell somebody,” Rhea says.
This isn’t the movies. Mary Beth’s a grown woman. And Rhea should have stood up for Miss Ollie when she saw Griff, who she now knows was actually Ben Sarpezze, yelling at her. The memory feels like a screw, just poking through the sole of her shoe. What kind of person has Mary Beth been? Rhea could ask herself the same thing. Whatever the answer to that is, she’s a different one now and she can do things differently.