The Other Mrs.(81)

“Don’t you know that, Sadie? Do you really believe Otto could do this?” he asks, and it’s my silence that gets the best of him. My unknowingness. My silent admission that, yes, I do think maybe Otto could have done this.

Will breathes out loudly, feathers ruffled. His words are clipped. “What Otto did, Sadie,” Will says, words razor-sharp, “is a far cry from murder. He’s fourteen, for God’s sake. He’s a kid. He acted in self-defense. He stood up for himself the only way he knew how. You’re being irrational, Sadie.”

“But what if I’m not?” I ask.

Will’s response is immediate. “But you are,” he says. “What Otto did was stand up for himself when no one else would.”

He stops there but I know he wants to say more. He wants to tell me that Otto took matters into his own hands because of me. Because even though Otto told me about the harassment, I didn’t intervene. Because I wasn’t listening. There was a hotline at the school. A bullying hotline. I could have called and left an anonymous complaint. I could have called a teacher or the school principal and made a not-so-anonymous complaint. But instead I did nothing; I ignored him, even if unintentionally.

Will has yet to call me out on this. And yet I see it there in the unspoken words. Silently, he’s castigating me. He thinks it’s my fault Otto took that knife to school because I didn’t offer a more reasonable alternative, a more appropriate alternative for our fourteen-year-old son.

Otto isn’t a murderer. He would never have hurt those kids, I don’t think.

He’s a troubled boy, a scared boy.

There’s a difference.

“I’m scared, Will,” I admit, and he says, voice softening, “I know you are, Sadie. We both are.”

“I have to turn the washcloth in to the police,” I tell him, voice cracking, on the verge of tears, and only then does Will relent. Because of the tone of my voice. He knows as well as I that I’ve become discomposed. “It isn’t right for us to keep it.”

“All right, then,” he says. “As soon as I get to campus I’ll cancel my classes. Give me an hour, Sadie, and then I’ll be home. Don’t do anything with the washcloth until then,” he pleads, before his voice takes on a different tone, a softer tone, and he says, “We’ll go see Officer Berg together. Just wait until I get home and we’ll speak to Officer Berg together.”

I end the call and move into the living room to wait. I drop down onto the marigold sofa. I stretch my legs before me, thinking that if I close my eyes, I will sleep. The weight of worry and fatigue come bearing down on me, and suddenly I’m tired. My eyes sink shut.

Before I can fall asleep, they bolt open again.

The sound of the front door startles me. It shifts in its casing, getting jostled around.

It’s only the wind blowing against it, agitating the door, I tell myself.

But then comes the sound of a key jiggling in the lock.

It’s only been a few minutes since Will and I hung up the phone. No more than ten or fifteen. He would have scarcely reached the mainland by now, much less waited for passengers to disembark and then board the boat. He wouldn’t have had time to make the twenty-minute commute back across the bay, or drive home from the ferry dock.

It’s not Will.

Someone else is here.

I inch myself away from the door, searching for a place to hide. But before I’ve gone a step or two, the door presses violently open. It ricochets off the rubber stopper on the other side.

There, standing in the foyer, is Otto. His backpack is slung across a shoulder. His hair is covered with snow. It’s white with it. His cheeks are rosy and red from the cold outside. The tip of his nose is also red. Everything else is pallid.

Otto slams the door shut.

“Otto,” I breathe out midstride, pressing my hand to my chest. “What are you doing here?” I ask, and he says, “I’m sick.” He does look peaked to me, yes. But I’m not certain he looks sick.

“The school didn’t call,” I tell him because this is the way it’s supposed to happen. The school nurse is supposed to call and tell me my son is sick and then I go to the school and pick him up. But this isn’t what happened.

“The nurse just sent you home?” I ask, feeling cross at her for allowing a child to walk off campus in the middle of the school day, but also scared. Because the look on Otto’s face is alarming. He shouldn’t be here. Why is he here?

His reply is offhand. He takes a step into the room. “I didn’t ask,” he says. “I just left.”

“I see,” I say, feeling my feet inch backward.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asks. “I told you I was sick. You don’t believe me?” It isn’t like Otto to be antagonistic with me.

Otto stares at me with his jaw clenched, chin forward. He runs his fingers through his hair, then jams them into the pockets of his jeans.

“What doesn’t feel good?” I ask, a lump forming in the pit of my stomach.

Otto moves another step closer and says, “My throat,” though his voice isn’t raspy. He doesn’t clutch a hand to his throat as one does when it hurts.

But it’s conceivable, of course. His throat could hurt. He could be telling the truth. Strep throat is going around, as is the flu.