Chapter 13 - Veronica Says the Quiet Part
I remember the candles had burned low enough that the flames shook every time anyone breathed. I was on Daddy's lap at the end of the dark wood table, my legs tucked under my lace dress. My pasta bowl had been pushed aside and Bunny sat in the middle of the gold charger, damp and flat where Daddy had laid him down. The little framed picture of Mommy was next to him, glass wiped clean but the back still showing where it had been pried open.
Daddy's arm was around my waist. I could feel his silver watch cold against my side through my dress. He didn't look at me when he talked. He kept his eyes on Veronica.
"Just say it plain," he said. His voice was low. He paused. "Where did you put them."
Veronica stood across from us by her chair. She hadn't sat back down since Daddy carried everything in. Her dark hair was still pinned up and her diamond earrings caught the chandelier light when she turned her head. Her burgundy dress pulled tight at the shoulders because her arms were crossed.
"I moved some things around," she said. "This house can't stay a shrine forever."
Daddy's jaw moved. He breathed in through his nose and let it out slow. He tightened his hand on me.
"That's not an answer," he said.
I pressed my cheek into his black shirt. It smelled like candle smoke and his cologne. I could hear his heart. I held Bunny's ear between my fingers without picking him up, like I was afraid Veronica would take him again if I moved.
Veronica glanced at the large windows. It was black outside. I saw our reflections in the glass, all of us around the table with the white flowers drooping behind us.
"She asks about her mother every night," Veronica said. "Every bath. Every bedtime. Do you know what that's like to listen to when you're trying to build something new."
Daddy didn't blink. "So you hid the picture."
"It was on her nightstand," Veronica said. Her voice stayed flat. "I put it in the back of my closet shelf. I thought if she didn't see it, she'd stop asking. She needs to stop asking and look at what's in front of her."
My throat got tight. I remembered opening my drawer and the picture not being there. I had thought maybe I knocked it behind the bed. I had thought maybe Mommy left because I was loud.
Daddy felt me go still. He lifted me a little higher on his knee and wrapped his other arm around me, so I was tucked right under his chin. His stubble scratched the top of my head. His tattoos moved when his hands curled in.
"She's three," he said. "She gets to ask."
Veronica looked at me then, really looked. Her mouth was a thin line. She uncrossed her arms and put one hand on the back of her chair.
"And the rabbit," Daddy said. "Tell her about Bunny."
For a second nobody talked. The cut-crystal glass by my bowl ticked as the ice melted. A candle popped.
Veronica exhaled. "She wouldn't let me near her. She cried for that dirty thing instead of me. I took it from her bed while she was in the tub and I put it in the laundry hamper. I thought if she was upset enough, she'd come to me instead. She was supposed to need me."
My eyes burned. I didn't cry. I just breathed fast against Daddy's shirt. He held me closer until my white bow brushed his cheek. He rocked once, just a little shift of his knee.
"Did you hear that, baby," he whispered to me, not to her. "You didn't lose him. You didn't do anything wrong."
I nodded into his chest. My fingers curled tighter around Bunny's damp ear. It wasn't my fault. I hadn't left him outside. I hadn't been bad in the tub. She had taken him because she wanted me to pick her.
I looked up at Veronica. She didn't reach for me. She didn't say she was sorry. She stood there with her necklace rising and falling as she breathed, her face cold but her eyes moving away from mine like she knew what she'd done would sound bad out loud.
Daddy kept both arms around me. "You hid her mom's picture so she'd quit asking," he said, repeating it back slow. "You took Bunny so she'd cling to you."
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Veronica lifted her chin. "I did what I thought a mother in this house should do. Someone has to be."
The candles guttered lower. I stayed pressed into Daddy, listening to him breathe, waiting for what he would do with the truth now that it was sitting on the table with us.
