Where They Found Her (20 page)

His jaw set. He was losing patience with her. But that was it. That was as mad as he’d get. Soon he’d disappear, retreat. Off to work, into his precious shell. Sometimes Barbara would have done anything for him to start screaming at her.

“I’m not trying to protect her,” he said, the picture of reason. “But focusing on her instead of Cole isn’t going to help anything.”

He picked up his keys. Because he was going to go anyway, of course, whether or not Barbara needed him to stay.

“Promise me you’ll leave it,” he said. “That you’ll drop it with Stella.”

“Sure,” she said. And if he believed that—the way she’d said it—he was even more distracted than she’d thought.

“Did they help Cole?” Hannah asked the second she got home from school, looking around downstairs like she was trying to find him.

“Cole’s fine, honey,” Barbara said, specifically not answering Hannah’s question. “He’s tired and a little stressed, that’s all. How was the AP calculus practice test?”

Hannah shrugged. “Okay, I guess. It was kind of hard to concentrate.”

“‘Okay, I guess.’” Barbara mimicked Hannah’s shrug and her tone of voice. There were better ways to handle Hannah’s worry about Cole’s worry than mocking her. But Barbara wasn’t perfect. She’d never pretended to be. “Cornell may have accepted you early, but they won’t be very impressed if you don’t pass those APs you’ve promised them.”

“Sorry, I didn’t . . .” Hannah looked wounded. “I think I probably did okay enough. Thanks for asking.”

“Wait, it’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Do you have tutoring today?” Barbara hoped not. She’d been counting the minutes until Hannah got home so she could leave.

“She couldn’t make it,” Hannah said, blinking up at Barbara guiltily. She probably felt responsible for that girl’s bad choices, too.

Barbara shook her head and exhaled. “It’ll hardly be your fault when that girl doesn’t get her GED.”

“Mom, that’s mean.” She recoiled when Barbara’s eyes shot over to her. “I just— Sandy tries really hard.”

“Trust me, Hannah.” Barbara laughed, trying not to let her annoyance get the best of her. But
mean
? Really, how dare she? “Girls like that never know what’s good for them.”

“But you’ve never even met her,” Hannah said. And there she went, defending some girl she barely knew. Just like her father. God help her. The heartbreak that lay ahead for that bleeding heart of hers.

“Oh, honey, someday you’ll understand. I don’t need to have met her to know what kind of girl she is.” Barbara smiled angrily as she grabbed her keys off the counter. “Cole is napping, and I need to run out for a little. Don’t wake him—he was just so exhausted—but if he does get up, have him watch TV. I need him to stay calm.”

It wasn’t until Barbara had pulled the car out of the garage that she realized she’d forgotten her purse on the kitchen counter. She left the car running as she dashed back inside, afraid something might stop her from leaving again. Sure enough, as she crossed the kitchen from the side door, she heard a strange, soft murmuring coming from the living room. Hannah talking on the phone, maybe? But the conversation was oddly one-sided, and Hannah’s voice was strangely high. Barbara inched around the corner to see what she was doing out there.

Hannah was sitting on the couch with Cole’s legs stretched across her lap, the rest of him tucked warmly into the crook of her arm. Hannah must have woken him the second Barbara left the house—exactly as she’d told her not to do. She was reading to him, too, from
The Missing Piece
, her favorite book when she was little. For years, Hannah had slept with it under her pillow every night.

Barbara swallowed the urge to snap at Hannah for defying her. Instead, she clenched her jaw and forced herself back out to the car. So she could find the person she really needed to be snapping at.

Fifteen minutes later, Barbara was pulling up Stella’s long curved driveway toward the huge mansion at the top of the hill—a new-made-to-look-old structure set deep in the woods. With a stone facade and rambling wraparound porch, the house was big enough for a family of seven, maybe more. And yet there poor, husbandless Stella lived with all her money and her Botox and her two measly messed-up children.

Barbara forced herself to take a deep breath, pasting a smile on her face as she headed up the polished stone walkway, which went on forever before turning toward the front steps and two absurdly huge red doors. Stella wasn’t going to admit that something had happened to Cole in her home. Barbara would need to ease her into it, charm her a little. She took another breath and smiled harder before she rang the bell.

A teenage boy opened the door, Aidan, presumably. He had shaggy surfer hair, a freckled nose, and large golden-brown eyes. Barbara had once asked Hannah what he looked like. She’d said,
Cute, I guess
, unimpressed in that way Hannah always was by boys. But even Barbara had to admit Aidan was a good-looking kid. She could only imagine the piles of broken hearts he’d left in his wake. What a stroke of luck that he’d answered the door. She was much more likely to get something out of a cocky kid like Aidan—too arrogant to be careful—than Stella.

“You must be Will’s brother, Aidan?” Barbara smiled so hard it made her cheeks ache. “My son, Cole, is in class with Will.”

“Yeah?” He looked past Barbara, staring vacantly as if trying to process Cole not being there behind her. Was he high, or slow, or something? Was that what Stella was hiding? Barbara had also asked Hannah what Aidan was like, but she didn’t know. He was new to school and a year younger and didn’t really hang out with anybody, she’d said. Certainly not, Barbara suspected, the group of popular kids that Hannah counted as her closest friends. Hannah did say there were rumors that Aidan had gotten into trouble at his last school, and he’d already gotten into more than one fight at Ridgedale High.

“Well, Cole’s not here right now, Aidan,” Barbara went on, tilting her head a little to the side to make eye contact. “But Cole has been spending a lot of time here lately. Do you maybe know if the boys saw something here that they weren’t supposed to? Like a TV show or a video game or something?”
Or, you know,
you
doing something horrible
. Barbara stepped closer and tried to soften her expression. But her face felt like it was made of rubber. “We don’t think for a second
you
did anything wrong, Aidan. I’m sure whatever happened was an accident.”

“An accident?” He looked angry all of a sudden. Really, really angry. Like someone who had something horrible to hide. “Seriously, lady, what the hell are you talking about?”

There was a voice then, coming from inside the house. Stella, surely. Shoot. Just when Barbara was getting somewhere. With his hand on the doorknob, Aidan turned to shout back. “Cole’s mom!” And then, annoyed: “How would I know? Why don’t
you
ask her?”

A second later, Stella appeared in the doorway, shooing Aidan off until he disappeared into the house behind her. “Excuse me, Barbara.” She crossed her long, muscular arms. Her cheeks were flushed, eyes aglow. “But can
I
help you?”

So much for charm. At least Barbara could cut to the chase now.

“I need to know what happened to Cole, Stella.”

“Have you lost your mind, Barbara?” Stella looked her up and down. “Are you seriously
accusing
us of something?”

“Cole said that something happened here that scared him.” That might as well have been the truth. “He’s too afraid to tell me exactly what, but he’s positively traumatized.”

“So you thought it was appropriate to try to traumatize
my
son by interrogating him outside of my presence?” Stella worked her neck like a teenager. “What are you, Barbara? The Mommy Gestapo?”

“I’m just trying to help Cole,” Barbara said, her voice cracking unexpectedly. She couldn’t get emotional, not now. Not in front of Stella. She’d go right in for the kill. “If it was Will who was traumatized, I’m sure you’d be asking the same questions.”

“Listen, Barbara,” Stella said, her voice trembling. She checked over her shoulder to be sure that Aidan had gone. “I think I’ve been pretty patient with you and your husband, but I’ve had just about all the bullshit accusations I can take for one week.”

“I’m here as a mother who’s worried about her son, Stella. I’d think you could have some compassion. I just want to restore calm to my household.” Barbara should leave it there, she knew. But there was that
look
on Stella’s face—so smug. “Maybe it’s hard for you to understand, but not everybody lives for drama.”

“Drama?” Stella snorted. “I’m sorry, is that some kind of dig? You don’t even know me, Barbara.”

But Stella’s best friend, Molly, did and it was she who’d said that Stella was a drama queen. Barbara wanted so badly to rub that in Stella’s face, but Steve would have killed her.

“Let’s just call it an educated guess.”

Stella batted her eyelashes, then smiled unpleasantly. “I’m sorry your son is struggling, Barbara.” Her voice was so cool and composed suddenly. It was unsettling. “I can imagine that would be extremely difficult for someone like yourself, who really values what’s ‘normal.’” Stella’s fingers hooked the air. “But nothing happened to Cole here. Not under my roof. And now I’d like for you to get your bony, judgmental ass the fuck off my porch.”

And with that, Stella stepped back and slammed the door.

By the time Barbara made it down to Ridgedale Elementary School and was walking down the hall to Cole’s classroom, it was past four o’clock. Luckily, she saw through the small glass window, Rhea was still there, seated at one of the tables writing out some kind of card.

After their run-in, Barbara was absolutely convinced Stella knew more than she was telling. Otherwise, why would she be so defensive? But Barbara needed one last piece of proof before presenting her case to Steve: that nothing could have happened to Cole at school.

Barbara knocked on the door and kept her face near the glass. Rhea frowned as soon as she looked up. She was probably about to leave for the night and didn’t want to get hung up. Slowly, Rhea closed the card, then slid it into her bag. After forever, it seemed, she waved Barbara inside.

“What can I do for you, Barbara?” Rhea asked flatly, gathering her things. She hadn’t even looked at Barbara. There was something wrong. Rhea wasn’t at all her usual bubbly self.

“I wanted to talk some more about Cole,” Barbara began carefully. “If you have a minute.”

“Yes, I heard about some of your
concerns
.” Rhea’s voice was coated in ice and pointy things. “At length.”

At length? Barbara blinked at her. And then it occurred to her with a creeping unease. Barbara had stopped by the PTA office to talk to some of the mothers there, and she
may
have said a thing or two about Rhea in anger. And she
may
not have been careful about who was around listening. Had it been one of Rhea’s fellow teachers? Or, God forbid, Rhea herself?

“I’m only trying to do what’s best for my son,” Barbara said. She wasn’t about to
admit
to saying anything specific, not if Rhea was going to be vague. “I’m sure you understand.”

“My shirts are too tight?” Rhea said, crossing her arms over her—precisely the point—very clingy top. “Oh, and I wear too much makeup. That’s right, it’s all coming back to me. Enlighten me, how is either of those related to my teaching ability?”

“Well, that’s taking what I said quite out of—”

Rhea held up a hand. “On second thought, I don’t even want to know.” She walked over to a short stack of papers on a nearby table, brought them back, and slid them into her bag. “Now, what is it? I’m on my way home.”

“We had Cole evaluated by that doctor you suggested,” Barbara offered. It was something of an olive branch.

“Really?” Rhea looked genuinely taken aback. Because Rhea was judging Barbara, too: stubborn, inflexible know-it-all. She’d heard it all before. “What did he say?”

“That Cole’s behavior is the result of a trauma.” A small lie with a noble purpose.

Rhea’s eyes were wide. “My goodness, what trauma?”

“We’re trying to figure that out. We were hoping you could help.”

Rhea’s face tightened. “Nothing happened to Cole here, Barbara. If that’s what you’re suggesting
again
. I thought we already discussed this.”

But Barbara needed to push. She needed to be absolutely sure before she went to Steve. Otherwise, he’d never listen. “Well, I’m sure that you didn’t mean for it to. But there are
nineteen
children, Rhea. Surely you can’t have your eye on every single one of them all the time.”

Rhea hung her head and let her shoulders drop. She took a deep breath before she looked up. “Listen, Barbara, I understand how difficult this must be for you and your family,” she began, as though she had mustered the very last of her patience. “It’s so painful for a parent to watch a child suffer. I know what you’re feeling and—”

“Wait, I’m sorry, what did you just say?” Rage flashed in Barbara’s gut. “
You
know what
I’m
feeling? Excuse me, Rhea, but you don’t even
have
children. How
dare
you say you know what I’m feeling?”

Rhea looked like she’d been slapped. But that wasn’t a judgment, it was a fact. Rhea didn’t have children. It wasn’t Barbara’s fault if Rhea was the kind of person who could be unaware of the gaping hole that created in the center of her life.

“To each his own, of course,” Barbara went on, just to clarify. Because she wasn’t suggesting that everyone
needed
to have children. Only those people who wanted to claim they knew what it was like to be a parent. “Not everyone was meant to have a family.”

Rhea nodded, frowning with exaggerated thoughtfulness. But now there was hate in her eyes. “You know, Barbara, all these years, I’ve been wondering: Why me? Why did
I
have to have a hysterectomy when I was only twenty-six?” Her voice quaked. “And here you had the answer all along: I just wasn’t meant to have a family.”

Barbara’s eyes went down to Rhea’s perfectly flat midsection. Well, how was she supposed to know? “I didn’t mean to suggest . . .”