Chapter 12 - Bunny Left On The Rug
The morning after the sheriff came, the kitchen was too clean.
I remember that first because the maid had wiped the island twice already and the tile still shone wet near the rug. She kept moving the fruit bowl a half inch left, then right. My sisters were at the table with cereal going soft. Dad stood by the tall windows with his phone face-down in his hand. Nobody had told us not to leave the county, but the way he kept checking the front door, I knew someone had.
I had carried the bunny downstairs tucked under my arm. Its ear was flat from where I'd slept on it. I didn't sit at the table. I stopped on the rug and looked at the spot where it had been that first morning, right near the edge where the camera would have seen it if this was that day again.
That was my plan. I'd thought it through the night before with my eyes open. If the grown-ups wouldn't say it straight, maybe they'd show it if I put us all back where we were.
I knelt and set the bunny down.
Not dropped. Placed. Light gray fur against the pattern of the rug, facing the island the way I remembered. My hands shook a little and I pressed them flat on my knees to stop it.
Dad saw me first. "Lucia. Eat."
I didn't move. "I want to try something."
The maid stopped wiping. "Honey, not now."
I looked at her apron, white against black, the cuffs. Then I lifted my hands and covered my mouth the way she had. My fingers smelled like soap and milk. I bent my knees deeper until they hurt on the tile and stayed there. Breathing through my nose made a small sound. I let it.
My older sister made a noise. "Stop it."
"I'm her," I said through my hands. It came out muffled. "This is where she was."
Dad came off the window in two steps. His jacket was off, just the black shirt open at the collar, and I could see the rose on his neck move when he swallowed. "Get up off the floor."
"Show me where Mom stood," I said. I kept my hands where they were because if I moved them I'd cry.
Silence. The refrigerator hummed. Outside, a car went past slow and then was gone.
He said, "No."
Just that. Flat. His right hand went to his side, not to the shape under his shirt but close, like he did when he didn't want his hands hanging empty.
The maid shifted her weight. "Mr. Dominic—"
"She doesn't need to play this," he said.
I didn't get up. My knees burned. I stared at him over my fingertips and waited. I'd learned that from him, that waiting was louder than asking again.
He looked at my sisters, then at the maid, then back at me on the rug. Something in his jaw loosened.
"You're cold on that floor," he said, quieter. "Get up and I'll tell you."
I shook my head once. "Show me."
He breathed out through his nose. For a second I thought he'd pick me up and carry me to the table and that would be the end of it. Instead he lifted his left hand — not his right — and pointed past the island toward the back of the kitchen.
"There," he said.
I turned my head without moving my hands. He was pointing at the pantry door. White door, brushed handle, the small gap at the bottom where the light never quite went out. I'd opened it a hundred times for crackers and cereal boxes. I'd never thought of Mom there.
"She stood there?" I asked.
He dropped his hand. "She was there that morning. By the pantry. Now get up."
My heart beat hard in my ears. I lowered my hands to my lap. The tile had left red marks on my knees. I reached forward and pulled the bunny back an inch, closer to me, because it felt too far away on that big rug.
The maid came around the island fast and crouched beside me. Her knees cracked. She didn't touch me at first, just put her hand on the rug between us.
"Okay," she whispered. "Okay. You did it."
I looked at the pantry door again. Closed. Plain. The handle caught the daylight from the windows in a thin line. I tried to picture Mom there in whatever she'd worn that day, but my mind kept putting the maid there instead, hands over her mouth, and Dad in the middle, and us grouped by the piano we couldn't see from here.
"Did she say something by the pantry?" I asked Dad.
He picked up his phone, put it down again. "Eat your breakfast, Lucia."
It wasn't an answer, but his eyes went back to that door and stayed there a beat too long. The maid saw it too. I felt her hand move a little closer to mine on the rug without quite touching.
Later, after he'd gone upstairs to take a call, I stayed on the floor a minute longer. My sisters had left their bowls. The maid started to lift the bunny to hand it to me, then stopped herself and let me pick it up myself.
May you like
I held it against my chest and looked at the pantry door from down low, the way I'd seen everything that first morning. The gap at the bottom was dark except for a thin strip of light. I thought about getting up and opening it, just to see the cans and boxes inside. I didn't. Not yet.
But I knew where to look now.
