Chapter 2: Mr. Bennett
Nobody talked on the drive home. Owen fell asleep against the window with pie crumbs on his chin. Emma wore her earbuds and stared at the dark fields. Greg drove with both hands on the wheel and hummed along with the radio, which is how I knew he was rattled. Greg doesn’t hum.
In the kitchen he kissed my temple. “Long day. Mom means well.”
Who’s T? I almost said. I didn’t. I watched him go upstairs, and I stood at the sink running water over dishes that were already clean.
Let me tell you about my husband, so you understand why.
Greg Bennett is the most liked man in Millbrook, Pennsylvania. He’s been assistant principal at Millbrook High for eleven years. He’s a deacon at St. Paul’s. He coached Owen’s T-ball team two seasons running. Every November he stands in the school gym in a turkey hat running the food drive, and every November someone posts a picture of him in that hat captioned Best Principal Ever. When my car died on Route 22 last winter, the tow truck driver recognized my last name. “Mr. Bennett’s wife? Man, he got my kid through junior year.”
You don’t accuse a man like that. Not without proof. Not when you’re the wife who’s been “a little tense lately,” as Carol likes to put it.
And the truth is, I had gotten tense. I’d gotten a lot of things.
When Emma was little, she was mine. She crawled onto my side of the bed during thunderstorms. In second grade she made me a card that said You are the best mom in the hole world, and it’s still in my jewelry box, spelling and all.
Then last March, Coach Tessa Vaughn took over girls’ varsity volleyball. Thirty-four, sleek black ponytail, silver whistle, the kind of coach girls follow around like ducklings. Greg was her supervisor. He started staying for the end of practice. He started driving Emma himself. By May, Emma, a sophomore who’d spent a year on the bench, was starting. By June she had the new phone. By August she had concert tickets, an eye-roll she’d clearly practiced, and a new name for me when she thought I couldn’t hear. The Warden.
Every rule I made, Greg softened. Every no I said, he turned into “let me talk to her.” I became the wall she pushed against. He became the door.
I’d stayed quiet for Owen. For the house. Because maybe I was wrong. And because if I was right, it would blow everything up, and I’d be the one left holding the match.
Saturday came.
At breakfast, Greg buttered his toast. “District training in Harrisburg today. All-day thing. Budget stuff, ugh.”
Emma, scrolling: “I’m going to Kayla’s.”
“Kayla’s in Erie again,” I said. “Tournament.”
The smallest pause. “Different Kayla,” Emma said. “From AP Bio.” She was out the door before I could ask for a last name.
Twenty minutes later Greg kissed my cheek and left, whistling.
I did laundry, because that’s what I do when I can’t breathe. I carried Emma’s basket up to her room, past the volleyball medals hanging on her bedpost, and opened her desk drawer to put away her socks.
Her old iPad was in there, plugged into the wall, screen dark. The one she’d used before Greg bought her the new phone.
I picked it up to unplug it. The screen woke. No passcode; she’d never bothered with one on the old thing.
A stack of message notifications slid down. Still syncing. Still logged in to her account.
My hands were shaking when I dialed Emma’s cell. It rang and rang and went to voicemail.
I dialed again.
The iPad buzzed in my hand. A new message, sent from Emma’s phone at that exact second. Not to Kayla.
To Dad.
Mom’s calling me. What lie do I tell her now?
