In the car, Jennifer sits in back with me.
First thing she does is to grip my hand in this really intense way, like she wants to convert me or something, save my soul, and then with her other hand she takes up this tote bag with WHOLE FOODS on it and starts to take stuff out to show me.
Like:
Some kind of card with scribbles on it, that she says I made for Michael for Father’s Day.
A little baby hat.
Books. Books with “moon” in the title, seems to be the theme. Goodnight Moon; Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me.
I look at them blankly.
You loved the moon, she says. You always wanted those stories, you would point to them, over and over. There are photos too that I want to show you, so many photos, but we—I—didn’t want to overwhelm you.
I put my hand to my lips, palm toward me, then move it down and out, the sign for thank you. Then I mouth the words.
That means thank you? Jennifer says. Melany of course has gone back to wherever she waits between super fun jobs like this.
Look at me! I’m learning already, she says. Michael, I know how to sign ‘thank you’!
I don’t know what Michael says to this, if anything at all.
Then Jennifer reaches into her tote bag and takes something out that stops my heart in my chest for a moment, stops it dead. It’s gray and floppy in her hand and its ears hang over her fingers and its eyes are scratched and dull and—
Are you okay? says Jennifer. Honey? You’re very pale. Are you—
With great effort, I nod. Everything is kind of crackling and sparkling and my vision is gray as fur at the edges because this is the rabbit from my dream, from the cage in the Dreaming, the exact same one.
This is Flopsy Bunny, says Jennifer. You carried it everywhere. In the hospital … In the hospital, they found it on the floor. In the corridor. I kept it for you.
She holds it out to me and I recoil, violently. Something in Jennifer’s eyes flares, and they fill with tears.
Sorry, I say, with my clumsy mouth. But I stay leaning away, and Jennifer reads something in my body language, and puts the bunny away in the bag.
But I feel it there, glowing like radiation. Emitting. Pulsing.
A piece of the Dreaming here in the real world.
A piece of my dream.
Jennifer holds up her little cross and kisses it. Thank you Lord Jesus for returning my angel to me, she says. Then she turns to me and her eyes are bright like jewels with tears. I’m so sorry, she says. I’m so sorry about your legs … the burns …
Michael must say something in front, from the driver’s seat, because she says, No, Michael, I have to say this. If it wasn’t for me … If I hadn’t let you burn yourself, she never would have taken you.
I look at her blankly. She speaks slowly, so I can read her mouth. Even then, I have to kind of assume some of the words she says.
That woman, who kidnapped you … she pretended to be a nurse. She took you away. It was all so confusing; I was so scared for you, I didn’t know what was going on, and Tyler was running around, getting under my feet, Anna was crying about something, I can’t remember what … I didn’t think. And then she never came back.
Oh, I think.
The police didn’t believe me for the longest time, they thought we’d done something, but I mean, the CCTV, and everything, it was obvious I brought you in, and the doctors had seen you, you know. So it wasn’t like anyone could seriously believe we killed you.
It gets worse, I think. All the pity I have to feel; all the sadness. That they were suspected of killing me—it’s awful. It’s too much.
Anyway, it was … it was my fault, that’s what I want to tell you. You shouldn’t have been in the kitchen with that oil; it was just because, well, James was screaming from the living room and I thought Tyler must have pulled his hair, I don’t know, and I was gone for a SECOND, and … I’m just so, so sorry.
I think of my scars, the years that I’ve worn pants, even on burning hot days, the way that I’ve never swum, not ever, and there’s a part of me that wants to say you stupid bitch, but that wouldn’t help anything, would it?
I make a sequence of gestures.
What does that mean? she asks.
I say it with my mouth, even though I can see the way she winces when I do that; I can see in her eyes how wrong my voice sounds, and it’s like knives in my belly.
I forgive you, I say. It’s something easy I can say, and it might make what is going to happen easier. What I’m going to do to her.