This myth of love was manufactured. People pretend to have things in common because they’re afraid of being alone. She wasn’t like that. She’d always been honest. Brave. It’s lonely that way, but at least she’d been true to herself.
Another car passed. Another too-wide berth with quick, polite honking. So passive-aggressive. It occurred to her that normal people don’t kick down bathroom doors. They don’t spit in rage. They don’t hit their children with brushes. They don’t frame their best friends’ husbands for rape.
… But maybe they did.
Her heart wouldn’t slow down. The weight of this was unbearable. An impossibly heavy murk, accumulated for so many years that everything behind her, every memory, was contaminated. It unfurled now, sucking her into its infinitely dense mouth, reaching into her future and dissolving her there, too. Forever unclean.
Rhea began to pant. Her heart convulsed in her chest. She’d done so many bad things. Knowing this was a physical pain. Car lights flashed all around her, disorienting. The blind spots in her vision got bigger.
Cars passed and she hated them for noticing. Hated the drivers for peering out, to see if something was wrong.
Puzzle pieces. She thought about her dad, weaving in the road. The candy apple–sweet smell of his breath and the way he always went down to his workroom at night. Went away. Just like Fritz. She thought she’d liked being alone, but maybe that was only because she didn’t know how to accept company.
She thought about Aileen, that piece of shit.
She thought about kicking down a bathroom door. The too-young face on the other side.
She thought about Shelly, goading her. Too sensitive and too needy.
She thought about cruel Gertie, who’d only pretended to care.
She thought about all the world, filled with stupid people.
She honked her horn at the next asshole who passed. Long and hard. All the blind spots came together. They smeared into a too-dense point, and became nothing. Oblivion. Erasure. The murk overtook her.
Rhea went blank. This was not new. This happened all the time.
There was nothing wrong with her. It was them. They’d forced her hand with their stupidity. Their ignorance and their incompetence. No thinking person quotes Bertrand Russell or grades on a point system. They don’t allow sinkholes to form in their neighborhoods, school lunches to be composed of grade B meat. The moronic masses were steering this country into ruin. She was the only person who could see through the lies, the social convention, the politeness. She was the only person who could will it all away, into a new and better direction.
She pulled back onto the road.
118 Maple Street
Saturday, July 31
Rhea sped into the driveway. Gertie watched her stride from her car to the back door in a frenzy.
“We’re gonna die!” Ella hissed in blind panic.
Gertie didn’t have time to replace the lockbox. Still holding it, barefoot, she rushed out of Rhea’s office just as Rhea yanked open the back door. It rammed the opposite wall, shivering.
“What are you doing in my office?” she shouted.
Heavy-bellied, Gertie stood as still as she knew how in the archway between the dining room and hall. Clearly visible, if Rhea looked.
“You know you’re not allowed in there!”
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Ella’s soft voice answered. “I thought I heard Hammy.”
“Who?”
“Hammy. He got out?”
“I don’t want a hamster in my office!”
Gertie was on tiptoe. In the hall. So slow. She made it to the front door in plain sight.
“I’m sorry,” Ella said.
“Sorry doesn’t cover it. Now come here!”
“？’Kay.”
Gertie opened the front door. Stayed in the threshold. Down the long hall, Rhea was in the kitchen, her back to Gertie. Ella was on the other side, facing them both.
Rhea raised her hand high.
She slapped herself: wholp!
Gertie gasped.
Rhea didn’t hear, because Ella yelped at the same time.
Gertie took a step back inside the hall. Her adrenaline rushed so fast that even Guppy had noticed and was swimming.
Rhea took Ella’s hands in hers. “Calm down,” she said. “You’re not the one who’s hurt.”
Ella nodded.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Rhea said. “I’m just sad about what the Wildes did to Shelly. I bet you’re sad, too. I bet you could just kill them.”
“Yes.”
Rhea pulled the girl in and squeezed until she stopped fighting. Until she went along with the hug. Until, finally, she returned it, and stroked Rhea’s back with her tense little fingers. “Don’t be sad, Momma.”