I Don't Forgive You

that is a link to a local news story.
I click and am taken to their website. Immediately, a picture of Rob Avery pops up.
The headline reads: BETHESDA DAD FOUND POISONED IN HOME.

 11
By the time I’ve battled the Beltway traffic and arrived at the playground near my house, I am fried. The late-afternoon sun is low, and it’s chilly. I’ve had the whole ride to chew over what the word poisoned means. Horrific images of swollen tongues and frothing mouths, wide frozen eyes and stiff limbs, have been floating through my mind. I feel guilty for even briefly hating Rob Avery. Could my anger Saturday night have morphed into some kind of cosmic rage that brought about his violent death? Ridiculous nonsense.
It’s just a coincidence, I tell myself. I need to get out of my own head.
At the park, Cole has changed out of his church clothes, and he and Mark are both wearing red Nationals shirts, no jackets. Tonight is game two of the Nationals’ playoff series. I don’t think Cole could tell the difference between a baseball and a Frisbee, but he likes to yell at the TV alongside his dad.
I say hi to Mark, who is standing with David, Leah’s husband. I try to catch his eye, to see if he has heard about Rob Avery, but he is deep in conversation with David. David is one of those nervous, wiry guys with zero body fat, always wearing a T-shirt from the last marathon he ran. He tells me Leah is at Starbucks and will be back soon.
I take a seat on the blue “buddy bench,” knees jangling, impatient for Leah to arrive. I need to talk to someone about Rob Avery.
Before me, Cole and Leah’s daughter, Ava, scramble to the top of a green contraption shaped like an eight-foot metal spider. The school made a big deal of these new benches at the beginning of the year. They’re part of the county’s new anti-bullying campaign. Children with no one to play with are supposed to sit on a “buddy bench” and wait for someone to offer them the hand of friendship. I asked Cole if he ever used it, and he recoiled in horror, telling me he’d rather walk the playground’s periphery by himself during recess than be caught on the buddy bench.
I totally relate to that sentiment. No one wants to be that publicly vulnerable. And yet, here I am, a grown woman, sitting on the bench and waiting for a buddy.
Poisoned.
The word pops into my head. It implies such hate.
I shake my head to clear it, and in an effort to distract myself, I take out my camera and aim it at David and Mark. The two men are a contrast in all ways. David can’t stop moving; he’s rocking on his heels, hands flying as he talks. Mark stands stock-still; he could be carved out of stone.
I adjust the camera’s sights onto Cole and Ava, who are on top of the spiderlike contraption. Ava wears her long, dark brown hair parted in the middle just like her mom, but she has her dad’s relentless energy. Cole is more cautious, like me, I think, contemplating his every move.
Beyond them, a lone figure skulks on the edge of the softball field where it meets the woods. Adjusting the lens of my camera, I can make out Dustin, his face in the shadows of his large black hoodie. He’s holding a leash attached to a trembling dog the size of an undernourished cat.
“Can you believe this? I can’t stop thinking about it.” Leah plops down next to me, cradling an enormous Starbucks cup. Leah had been a partner-track lawyer for one of D.C.’s most prestigious law firms, but never returned to work after taking maternity leave for Ava five years ago. In lieu of climbing up the corporate ladder, she seems to have channeled that fierce intelligence and drive into being the most organized mother-slash-volunteer-slash-neighbor I’ve encountered. “I mean, murdered? I figured it was like a heart attack, or something, but murder?”
“I know, right?”
Leah begins to speculate on who could have done this, settling on a theory she has about outsiders who come into the neighborhood to sell magazine subscriptions but are really criminals casing houses.
As she talks, a longing to tell her what happened last night builds in me. Yet I am scared to share so much personal information. So far, we have not come to the point in our friendship where we push past the superficial niceties and reveal our darker side. Every female friendship has this scary moment, the crucible of personal sharing. You reveal something you are ashamed of, or embarrassed by, or something traumatic that happened. And it’s like staring over the edge of a cliff before you jump into the water below, exhilarated and frightened at the same time. You either come out the other side with your bathing suit so far up the crack of your ass you swear you’ll never jump again, or the rush is incredible—you’ve made a real friend. When she finally stops speaking, I think I am ready to spill, but after a pause, I chicken out and ask, “Did you guys get a dog?”
Leah rolls her eyes. “Therapy dog. Not my idea, believe me. Apparently, it’s supposed to help Dustin develop some empathy.”
“Is empathy a problem for him?”
A quick twitch of her mouth tells me I’ve hit a nerve. “He’s on the spectrum. Super bright, like off the charts. He just doesn’t always pick up on social cues.” She grins. “But he loves you guys. He was telling me the other day how great it is that you let Cole wear whatever he wants and stuff. He’s sensitive to that kind of stuff. I wonder if he might try babysitting. What do you think?”
“We have Susan,” I say, a bit too quickly.
“Oh, of course. I just meant, theoretically.” Her tone is cheery, but it masks defensiveness.
I feel a stab of guilt. Yes, a teen boy