Ree
To: Parents of Richard E. Moss Elementary School
From:[emailprotected]
Subject: Monte Carlo Night Fundraiser
Heads-up!I’m going out on a limb to say this will be our most successful fundraiser ever. There will be appetizers, pizza, and booze! Yes, we scored the approval of the board to have beer, wine, and cocktails on school grounds for the night. Not a single person under twenty-one will be allowed. All guests will be ticketed and carded at the door. Don’t forget to be social. This is a great opportunity to get to know other parents and staff as well. What better way to get to know your child’s teacher than while sharing a glass of rosé? Please monitor and limit your drinking. No sloppy drunks or puking. And remember above all else, spend lots of money and have a great time! All proceeds go to upgrading classroom materials and equipment. Please mind your designated drivers. Volunteers from the PTA are willing to take your keys and provide transportation if needed. Stay safe and sane. Let’s make this the best night ever!
They sayyou can hear your name even when whispered at impossibly low decibels. And I would swear on my life that I heard mine. Not the nickname I had come to adopt as my formal moniker, but my full name, the one I hadn’t used or heard since that painful time in my life. I buried that name in the past along with who I was. But I heard it, I would swear on my mother’s grave if she had one. And how I wish she did.
I follow that sound, that demonic whisper as I spastically take in the vicinity.
A spray of crimson dots the linoleum flooring, a sloppy dotted line that leads right to the darkened hall next to the janitorial supplies, and I give a hard grunt as if it will be me cleaning up the mess. It will—that’s what all the grunting is about. I’ve signed up for the cleanup committee because that’s what you do when you’re new to the PTA board, new in town, a mid-year move no less. It’s what you do when you desperately want to fit in and have all of the obnoxious mommies in their preppy little mommy cliques like you—at least a little bit. You sign up for the grunt work, no pun intended, and the gruntiest grunt work of the night falls to sweeping up the facility with your husband—because a good wife volunteers her presumed good husband. And now that some bastard has spray-painted the floors, Bram and I will have to scrub for hours getting this stain off the—
The high gloss sheen catches my eye, and I bend over and swipe my finger through the sprinkling of cardinal. My God, it’s not paint at all. I think… I think it’s blood.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“Oh my God, I’ve found a body! It’s a woman. It’s a very beautiful woman, and she’s dead. She’s dead, dead, dead!”
Six minutes earlier…
“Monte Carlo Night is ingenious, really,”I say to Bram, my handsome devil of a husband.Devilbeing a word I would never use openly to describe him. He’s an angel when you get down to it, but that dark wavy hair, those sage green eyes—he’s comely in an obvious way. He’s one of those men you see on the streets with a plain Jane and you ask yourself, what’s a good-looking guy like that doing with a girl like her? Only in this equation I’m the infamousher. Okay, so I’m not quite as plain as a pancake, but I’m not strutting the runway in Milan either. And Bram, well, he’s to die for—another dark analogy I would nevereverbreathe out loud.
Bram spins on his heel over the slick gymnasium floor of Richard E. Moss Elementary School—grades K through six. That was another major draw to this locale, the great school system. If Bram and I are about anything, we’re all about our children. Some might say unnaturally so, but if you dug past our hygienic exterior, if you peeled back the layers of who we were and what we’ve been through, you would say, yes, they are fine parents and with very good reason. Bram and I are helicopter parents squared. There will be nothing but the best of the best for our Lilly and Jack. We already know how much there is to lose.
“The cake is chocolate sin.” He nods as he lifts his plate to me.
“No thank you. I gave at the pasta bar.” It’s true. I inhaled enough carbs to fuel me with enough energy to lap the planet twice if need be. My punishment would be no dessert. My mother and her enormous girth bounces through my mind, and I happily bounce her right back out. My mother has haunted the recesses of my mind for the better part of the last ten years. It’s been that long since I’ve seen her, and as much as I wish she were dead, she’s still rolling around the planet according to my sister. Lena and I escaped her clutches, but sometimes when you run from someone, a monster so scary you wish never existed, you need to keep slight tabs on the demon just to be sure you’re running in the right direction.
But Bram and I are all through running. We moved to Percy Bay, a small seaside community in mid-coastal Maine. It’s just a short drive to Belfast where Bram’s brother, Mason, lives. His mother is in Connecticut. His father is out of the picture, so at least he has a sibling in close proximity, the same way I do. Bram and Mace are close, but Lena and I are practically the same person, and that’s why she’s moved into the house directly across the street from ours, a small rental that’s working out perfectly for her. We’re hopeful this will be our final move, if not our longest stay. Bram just underwent a legal name change as well as going through the drama and trauma of having his name altered on his dental degrees. I took his new name, as did the kids—our kids, Lilly and Jack. We are the Woods—not a far cry from Woodley, but the kids were accustomed to the sound of it, so Woods it is. The irony being our new moniker wasn’t chosen based on the logical leap from Peter’s—Bram’s—formal last name—but for the phrase we often whispered to one another in the night.We are not out of the woods.
Peter Woodley and Aubree Van Lullen have stepped out of the proverbial woods as Bram—yes, after his favorite horror author Bram Stoker—and Ree Woods. And here we are, hiding in plain sight, unafraid, unmoved by the flinching glance of a stranger. We have started from scratch and will do so again and again until life sings the right narrative.
Bram wraps his arm around my waist and brushes his lips to mine, a move that still makes my cheeks flush with heat. “They’re coming in hot, six o’clock.”
I turn my head in time to see the mighty three, Tessa Holmes, Astrid Montenegro, and Bridget Geraldi. Tessa is the head of the parent-teacher association, a volunteer position you would think she trained years for at Harvard. Tessa is congenial, someone everyone naturally gravitates toward, with an open heart-shaped face and overeager smile. Her skin is perpetually bright pink as if she’s trying too hard on a cellular level, and her eyes bulge with bullfroggish glee when she looks at you. They’re the exact entrancing shade as Bram’s, and I suppose that makes me like her just a little bit more. Her husband is a plumber and “very much in demand in this leaky copper-lined town”—her words, not mine.
Astrid is an impossibly tall blonde with one of those stylish mermaid bobs, squinty smoky eyes that perpetually drift toward my husband, and she’s in the habit of wearing low-cut tops that bear the chest she purchased for Christmas last year. She has a buyer for her clothes, all of which she models to no end on Instagram, which amuses and entertains just about everyone because she’s “oh-so hip”. She seems to be well-liked by the masses, although, honestly, I can’t figure out why. She hasn’t been the most welcoming to me. Her husband is an investment banker, and they’re rumored to have massive amounts of real estate holdings in the area.
Bridget is a two-dimensional perpetual scowler who let me know in no uncertain terms the day we met that she couldn’t really “hang out with me” at school events because she had her own friends. I couldn’t help but be a bit amused by the adolescent remark. Apparently, she was in a violent car accident a few years back with her brother. He suffered head trauma and hasn’t been the same since. You would think something like that would pull someone out of a junior high mentality, but she stands firm in protecting her clique from me.
“Bram”—Astrid strokes my husband’s sleeve with her blood red nails—“I believe you owe me a thank you.” She gives a sly wink accompanied with a dolphin-like giggle. “I’m personally responsible for the candy bar—aka cavity central.” More braying and the rest of us join in as we pick up on the joke.
Bram just signed on as the third full-time dentist at Smile Wide General Dentistry in downtown Percy.
“Well, thank you.” He gives a gracious bow. “While I certainly appreciate the business, I feel obligated to bring a tub full of toothbrushes to the next school function that might have more than ten grams of sugar per capita.”
Another round of warm laughter ensues.
Tessa steps in toward Bram with her mousy blond hair. A white lace shawl thrown over a pink tank top and jeans is an ultra-dressy look for her. “Miles and Chuck are at the blackjack table. This is a great night to meet the other dads. Just tell ’em Tess and Ass sent ya!” She snickers into her jewel-toned cocktail as she brings it to her lips.
I take a moment to glance to Astrid who’s rolling her eyes. She’s no fan of her posterior-based nickname, but from Tessa it’s practically a term of endearment.
Astrid also happens to be my neighbor two houses down on Strawberry Lane. It was the name of the street that enchanted Bram and me more than the actual house we purchased, an old split-level mid-century Spanish without an honest upgrade, sans the kitchen—thank God for small granite-based mercies—the rest of the house is still cursed with the single-paned windows. And don’t get me started on the wobbly slider doors—all installed backwards by the inept builder—someone could easily slip a stick into the well of the flashing and lock us inside our own home. Both showers leak, the kitchen sink has zero water pressure, there’s a nonsensical pit in the backyard that you could break a leg in—the list goes on and on. But we bought in the very best neighborhood, a sought-after neighborhood accustomed to bidding wars. We came in all cash with the money that Bram received as a payout from the death of his wife and children. It was blood money he called it. But in the end, he decided we needed it and practicality won out.
“Blackjack.” Bram bounces a quick kiss off my lips. “I promise I won’t bet the farm.” He gives a sly wink and makes the girls swoon ten times harder before ditching us for the dazzling display of dealers and scantily clad women from the catering staff strutting around in adorable ruby red bustiers and thin black chokers.
