Carol paled just a little. “Well, no, of course not,” she said, shaking her head.
“So then you’re worried that I’m going to what?” I asked, my shoulders tense, my temples beginning to throb. “Kill somebody here?”
She started to say something, then closed her mouth and cast her eyes downward at the table. I swallowed hard. Because I realized then that most people didn’t think it was simply a coincidence that Olaf Stunderson’s body was found in my coal chute. It was beginning to look like they thought I’d put it there.
I pinched the bridge of my nose for a moment, shutting my eyes tightly. “Oh my God. You do think I’m going to kill someone.”
“No, no, no,” Carol insisted. She reached out a hand to touch mine but I pulled away. “We don’t think that at all.”
“Yet everyone’s afraid to put their kids in my class.”
“Daisy, it’s just strange,” she said, trying to give me some sort of sympathetic look. “That’s all. And you know that people talk. They get worked up over something that isn’t there.” She paused and chewed on a fingernail for a second. “But you have to admit, it’s hard to figure out how Olaf got inside your house. If you didn’t let him in.”
“I didn’t,” I said through my locked jaw. “I didn’t let him in and I didn’t do anything to him.”
“I’m sure you didn’t,” she said, her brow furrowed, her voice oozing sympathy and understanding. I just wasn’t sure if it was authentic or not.
I looked around. My kids were still scanning the tables, whispering to one another and their friends, trying to figure out where to place their names. Sophie had Grace by the arm, pulling her back to the Lego table. I knew she would try to talk her into signing up with her. Will was talking to Matt Walters, one of his buddies, pointing at the Chinese dynasty class. I could tell by the expression on his face that he was trying to convince Matt to take something else. Knowing him, probably the class I had signed up to teach.
Part of me wanted to march up to the kids and thrust their coats back into their hands and herd them out of the building. I didn’t want them surrounded by narrow-minded, righteous people who had no problem bestowing judgment based on such skimpy ‘facts.’
But there was another part of me that felt guilty, that didn’t want to take the co-op experience away from them. They genuinely enjoyed their time with their friends, learning in a relaxed classroom environment, a motley group of mixed ages coming together to learn and to share. And I loved that they got a chance to explore new topics, things that we may have never thought about learning at home.
I sighed. I didn’t know if architecture with Legos would balance out being in the middle of a group of people who thought I was capable of murder.
I turned back to Carol. “So, should I just cancel the class, then?’
“You don’t have to do that,” she said quickly.
“No one has signed up.”
She didn’t say anything, just went back to tapping her pen against the table.
“I’ll go pull the sheet,” I told her. “But I’m not paying for my kids. I offered the class, which should cover their enrollment. Not my fault you’re all afraid of me.”
“Oh, of course,” Carol said, relief flooding her face. I knew she was thrilled that I wasn’t going to push the issue any further. “And, don’t worry. We’ll get it figured out.”
As I walked to rip my sheet off the table, I wondered if she was agreeing to that because it was the right thing to do or if she was lying.
Because I was pretty sure it was more than just the other people in the room who thought I’d offed Olaf.
I was pretty sure Carol Vinford believed it, too.
SEVENTEEN
Emily was coming in the door from school at the same time we arrived home and she looked as unhappy as I felt.
“Where were you guys?” she snarled as she dropped her backpack on the dining table.
“Co-op,” I said.
“Mom can’t teach,” Will said, brushing past us on his way to the stairs.
“Yeah, they think she did it,” Sophie said. She’d grabbed a cheese stick from the fridge and was in the process of pulling down the wrapper.
“But she didn’t,” Gracie announced. She looked at me. “Right, Mommy? You didn’t?”
“No, I did not,” I said.
The two girls exchanged looks and Sophie shoved half the cheese stick in her mouth. Grace grabbed the other half out of her hand, popped it in her own mouth and they both scurried upstairs.
“What are they talking about?” Emily asked, slouching into one of the chairs at the table.
She’d done her hair in a French braid that morning and, with her hair pulled back from her face, she looked stunning. Of course, I’d never tell her that. A flattering remark from me was a surefire way to ensure she’d never repeat what had initiated the compliment.
“My class was cancelled,” I told her. “No one signed up.”
She squinted at me. “What? Your classes are the only ones people look forward to.”
“That was before dead bodies started turning up in our basement.”
Emily folded her arms across her chest, chewing on her lip. Her brow furrowed and I could tell she was angry. I just wasn’t sure if it was because of what had happened at co-op or if there was some other reason.
I sat down across from her. “How was your day?”
“Terrible,” she said. “Pretty amazingly terrible.”
A knot formed in my stomach. “Why?”
“Remember how I asked about going to the game on Friday?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, you don’t need to worry about it now,” she said. She wouldn’t look at me.
“Why not?”
She cleared her throat. “Just because.”
“Emily. Why not?”
Small tears emerged in the corners of her eyes. “Nathan…he said he’s not going to go now.” She paused and winced. “But I think he really is. He just doesn’t want me to go.”
I took a deep breath and exhaled. “What do you mean?”
She wiped at her eyes. “Well, he came up to me in history and he asked if I was still going and I said I thought so. And then he said well, I don’t think I’m going now. I asked why and he said something about his dad needing him to do something. It was totally weird and he was all mumbling and he never mumbles because I hate mumbles, but whatever. So I said okay, thanks for telling me or something lame like that.” She paused and she winced like she was being pinched. “But then after lunch, Bailey told me that she heard he was still going and that he told me that just because he didn’t want me go.”
My hand balled into a fist as my mother hen instincts kicked in and I wanted to punch the face of a teenage boy who was being a butthead to my daughter. I knew that dealing with boys was going to be an ongoing process for her and she needed to deal with butthead boys in order grow up, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to grab the little weasel by the nose and tell him to stop being such a butthead.
“Who did Bailey hear that from?” I asked, trying to poke holes in what was hopefully maybe just a rumor. “And why would he say that?”
She wiped at her eyes again and then folded her hands tightly in her lap. “She heard him talking to Josh in math. And he said it was because of the whole dead body thing and it freaked him out.”
The knot in my stomach retied itself.
“He told Josh that he thought it was creepy and he didn’t want to hang out with some serial killer girl,” she said, wincing again.
I forced myself to breathe and unclenched my fist, stretching out my fingers. “Okay. Two things here. One, you are not some serial killer girl.”
“Well, duh.”
“And, two, if he is basing his decision to hang out with you or like you or whatever on something he knows nothing about, then he is not a boy you want to be wasting your time on,” I said.
She looked at me for a moment. I was pleased with my response. It was reasonable, rational. It made sense. I was able to impart a little life wisdom on my daughter and maybe some day she would look back on this conversation and thank me for helping her wade through the cesspool that is teenage boys.