Shelly’s phone. It had no signal. Wasn’t on network. Gertie charged it. Went through all the applications. Only one of them had files—the photo app. She flicked through the dozens of images she found there. Some showed shoulders. Others a side, or a stomach, or a bottom. But most showed a back. All were fresh, taken soon after whatever blow had been issued. Viewing the pictures felt pornographic, as if the simple act of seeing made her guilty, too.
Gertie remembered Rhea’s words from that night months ago: Shelly can’t keep her hair neat. It goads me. I’d like to talk about it with you, because I know you like Shelly. I know you like me. I know you won’t judge.
It came to her that the oval-clustered bruises in these photos were from a brush.
In the quiet of that den, where she’d pinned so many hopes for a better life, Gertie curled up on herself and cried.
She might have gone to the police. But to get this evidence, Gertie had broken the law. The bruises, all inside Shelly’s bathing suit line, did not have an obvious author. None were more than a year old. In other words, none preexisted the Wildes.
What if she handed this to Bianchi, and it only made Arlo look guiltier?
She returned the phone to the Pain Box. Locked it, so the kids didn’t stumble across those awful photos. Put it beside her makeshift bed in the den.
Lunch and then dinner came. She tried to pretend to the children that everything was normal. Explained that they had no reason to worry. They knew something was wrong, or else they were absorbed in their own emotions. They didn’t ask questions.
That night, Bianchi stopped by to tell Gertie that CPS was keeping Arlo for another night. She lingered in the doorway, thinking she should hand over the evidence. But for all she knew, Rhea had planted the brush that had made those bruises in the glove compartment of the Passat. Or Arlo’s nightstand. Anyplace at all.
“Is something wrong?” he asked.
She looked at him for a while.
“Point taken. Have a good night.”
She couldn’t climb the stairs, so the children put themselves to bed. They called good night from far away, their voices uncertain.
On the couch, in the dark, without the protection of her husband, Gertie’s mind roamed: Shelly can’t keep her hair neat. It goads me. I’d like to talk about it with you, because I know you like Shelly. I know you like me. I know you won’t judge.
But Rhea hadn’t just vented about Shelly that night. Boozy, she’d talked about how trapped she’d felt, and her unhappiness. These were all the things that Gertie also felt, but had always been too scared to say out loud. Sometimes having a family and people who depend on you is too much. But you can’t leave them. They need you. So you resent them just a little.
She’d been grateful to Rhea, for her honesty. Relieved by it, that someone as special and smart as Rhea’d had these same feelings. It’s lonely, being a grown-up. It feels like walking through life in a mask.
Looking back, she hadn’t shown that gratitude. Making close friends is scary. Gertie was better at fake smiles and keeping people at a distance. She didn’t like them to know that at home, her family had a foul mouth. That she was messy, had never learned anything domestic until Arlo. She didn’t read novels like the rest of the people on this block; just self-help. She was easy to sneak up on. The kids knew this and made lots of noise when they walked into a room to keep from startling her. She could have confessed all this to Rhea, but she’d confessed so much already. When you let people know things about you, sometimes they use it against you, to hurt you. That’s what Cheerie had always done. Rhea hadn’t been the only one to avoid their friendship after that; Gertie had avoided it, too. Not because she didn’t like her. Because it had all felt too momentous.
In hindsight, Rhea had been asking for help.
If Gertie had asked questions, been as open as Rhea had been, things might have turned out different. It didn’t change her opinion: Rhea was horrible. A hunter. Just this evening, she’d slapped herself in front of her own child.
But it did give clarity to something that before had been opaque.
* * *
Late that night, Larry couldn’t sleep. He cried out. Julia scampered to his room to soothe him. Gertie heard, too. She’d had enough of sitting around, of calling up. Gertie went to him. She climbed into the bed with both of them and held them. They snuggled. It was good and necessary. But after a time, they were all too hot, the bed too small.
Gertie was snoring and no one wanted to disturb her. So Julia and Larry left that room, playing musical beds. Everyone slept in someplace new.
* * *
The night turned to early morning. Rhea didn’t send her son to do this job. She used the spare key. The one Gertie had given her months ago. She wore bitumen over her clothing. Painted her face with it so that she appeared even to herself as something obliterated. Her gait was crooked, her knee undone.