“I know.” Arlo didn’t reach out to her. And that was probably right. Maybe he knew her better than she knew herself. Because she wanted to be touched and consoled by him, her husband, but she wasn’t ready for it yet. The shock of what had happened with the brick was still too fresh. Her nervous system was still in panic mode. “It’s understandable, what with the stuff you’ve been through…”
“Yeah,” Gertie said. “If it hadn’t happened in our bedroom. At night…”
“I know… I talked to Bianchi. He assigned a beat cop to the crescent. But it’s only an eight-hour shift. We’re alone the other sixteen. I’m worried something’ll happen again.”
Gertie took deep breaths to keep from losing control again. “Why are they doing this to us?”
“I don’t know.”
Gertie pressed her hands to her wet eyes. “If they’re so scared of us, why don’t they go? They’re the ones with the money.”
“I think they feel like they’re taking a stand.”
Arlo reached out for her. She flinched. They stayed like that: a hand on a bed, a body inches away. The distance between them felt hot.
“I hate them. I wish they were dead. Every one of them,” she said.
“Yeah.”
The kids came back.
The TV returned from commercial with a new clip. This one was live and in front of the hole, where rescue workers were making a last-effort search. They’d widened the tunnel as much as they’d been able and were now flying in a special diver, just five feet tall, to wriggle through. I trust the truth to come out, Rhea said. My daughter was running from a predator when she fell. I happen to know the police questioned him.
All four of them watched. Thin and shadow-riddled, Rhea looked so haunted by grief that it could have been cancer. Her story was so compelling that even the Wildes almost believed that there was a stranger on Maple Street. A threat.
“It can’t be coincidence. This was her plan since Shelly fell. She’s been laying the track. To blame you,” Gertie whispered.
On-screen, the picture now showed Arlo, standing in front of 116 Maple Street beside Gertie and the kids. Rhea had taken that one, when they’d first moved in. A circle got drawn in red around his neck.
Arlo and the kids looked for the remote in Gertie’s drooling roommate’s bed, but they couldn’t find it. They couldn’t make it stop.
118 Maple Street
Tuesday, July 27
Rhea saw herself on the nighttime news. Static made the image ribbon. It didn’t look like her. Didn’t sound like her. Her face was wrong.
Just like that girl from the Hungarian Pastry Shop.
The hackles along the back of her neck stood on end. She turned, and there was FJ, in the doorway. She had the feeling Ella was there, too, hiding just behind.
They’d spent the afternoon at the police department. It had gone well. They’d stuck to the proper story. FJ’d been so nervous the whole time that he’d bounced his legs under the table until Bianchi asked him to stop.
“What?” she now asked.
He lurched into the room. Eyes red. Unsteady.
“Are you drunk?”
“Is Mrs. Wilde’s baby okay?” he asked.
“You worry too much,” she answered.
“Mom. It’s all over the news. Why isn’t she home yet? Why’s she still at a hospital?”
“EF-JAY,” she singsonged.
His breath was foul. His brown hair napped. “It was supposed to be a warning. Nobody was supposed to get hurt!”
“Ella! Upstairs! Now!”
Silence.
“Ella. I know you’re listening.”
A small shadow in bare feet squeaked like a mouse from behind the door, then ran. FJ started to talk again. Rhea held up her hand until she heard footsteps above and out of earshot.
“She’ll tell everyone,” she said.
“Sorry. I’m sorry. Is it murder?” FJ asked. “Am I a murderer?”
“Of course not.”
“The baby’s okay? Mrs. Wilde’s okay?”
Rhea frowned. Her face was still rippling under static lines on the news, and like a public beheading, it felt all wrong. She wasn’t that strange, angry woman with wrinkles. That woman looked scary! She was the mother of four, a professional, married to a professional. She wore Eileen Fisher. She’d spent seven years as head of the Garden City PTA. She was not a crank, an accuser, an hysteric. She certainly didn’t have the spare time to spearhead a witch hunt like some miserable stay-at-home loser. This was real. She was sounding a very serious alarm.