Chapter 10 - Where Bunny Cannot Breathe
I don't remember the hallway being that quiet. I remember Daddy's hand around mine, and his other hand holding Mommy's picture by the edge so he wouldn't smudge her face. I felt calmer because he'd found her, but my stomach still hurt. Bunny was still gone, and that meant the night wasn't over.
Daddy crouched down outside my room. The light in the hall was too bright after the candles downstairs. He held the picture where I could see it and he breathed slow, like he was trying to keep his voice the same.
"Okay, baby," he said. "Help me. When did Bunny go missing?"
I pressed my cheek into his shoulder. I could smell his shirt and the soap from the table. I didn't have the words for time then the way I do now, but I knew naps. I knew waking up.
"After nap," I said. "I waked up and he was gone."
"After your nap today?" he asked.
I nodded. "Veronica put me bed. Bunny was with me. Then he wasn't."
He glanced down the hall toward the laundry nook. I remember that look. His jaw moved once. He wasn't mad at me. He was putting it together.
Veronica came up the stairs behind us. I heard her heels first, then her voice, cool and even. "Sofia naps with half the house. That doesn't mean anything."
Daddy stood up slowly and didn't let go of my hand. He still had the picture. "You changed the sheets today?"
Her face didn't change. "I changed her bed. I started laundry. I'm not going to apologize for keeping house."
The laundry nook was just a small cutout at the end of the hall, with a stacked washer and dryer and a tall wicker basket Daddy always said was too heavy for one person. The lid was on crooked. The top was piled high with my white sheets and my pillowcase and a couple of Daddy's dark shirts. The washer was already running, humming low, the little round window full of suds.
I stared at it because it was loud in the quiet. Daddy stared at it too.
"When did you start that load?" he asked.
"Just now," Veronica said. "While you two were digging through drawers." She folded her arms. Her diamond necklace caught the hall light. "There's nothing to find in there."
Daddy let go of my hand for a second and put Mommy's picture up high on the shelf above the dryer, where I could see it and where nothing could touch it. Then he lifted the lid off the basket. The smell of warm detergent came up.
"Sofia, stay right here," he said, quiet.
I stayed against the doorframe. I held my dress with both hands. Veronica moved closer, not to me, to him. Her voice got thinner.
"You're really doing this? Digging through laundry over a stuffed animal?"
He didn't answer. He moved the top sheet aside. Then the pillowcase. Then one of his shirts. His hands were careful, not throwing things, just lifting and checking. I watched his silver watch slide down his wrist.
Veronica laughed once, short. "It's just a toy, Alex. You're scaring her over just a toy."
That was the first time I understood that grown-ups could say true words in a mean way. Bunny was a toy. But he wasn't just a toy. He was the one I slept with when I missed Mommy. Daddy's mouth tightened, but he kept going.
Under Daddy's black shirt there was a clump of my clothes from nap time, my little socks and the soft pants with the elastic. And stuck to them, pressed into the cotton, was a patch of pale gray fur.
I knew it right away. I made a sound before I could stop it.
Daddy stopped breathing for a second. He picked up the pants and held them to the light. Long pale hairs lifted off the fabric. Bunny's fur. I'd pulled it loose a hundred times when I was scared and twisted it between my fingers.
He held it out a little so Veronica could see. His voice was low.
"Then why is his fur in the hamper you just filled?"
Veronica looked at the pants, then at me, then away toward the washer. Her lips pressed together. For a second something flickered across her face, fast, annoyed, not sorry. She didn't reach for me. She didn't fix it.
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"Lint," she said. "Kids shed toys everywhere."
Daddy didn't move. The washer kept thumping behind him, and I remember thinking about how dark it was inside that round window, and how Bunny couldn't breathe in there.
