Cora paced back and forth across the dining room terrace, reaching the end and quickly going in the other direction. It took twenty-eight large steps or forty-one small ones to go from one end to the other; she’d counted. She looked down as she walked, deep in thought. Her arms were folded across her chest. It was getting cold outside. Winter was coming.
When she was a child the winters were always the hardest. It was so cold in that old house she would wake up in the morning, her muscles tense and sore from holding them rigid all night to keep warm. Her mother would wrap a warm brick in paper for her to take to bed at night. She said they did it all the time before people had central heating in their homes. It did help but it cooled off during the night and was nothing more than a cold rock by the time the sun came through the window.
“If you want to talk, you have to slow down a little,” he said. He’d been standing by the door watching her for nearly twenty minutes.
She shook her head and kept pacing. “Too much is happening and I have to think. Help me think, Harry. What are we going to do about this?”
He took her arm. “The past five years have been the best of my life by far, Cora. Things have been so peaceful. Can we just forget all this?”
She stopped abruptly and stared. “You’re serious? Nick carried the third piece of a puzzle with him. And I shouldn’t wonder if he passed it on?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She began walking again, this time faster. “The longer he was away from here, the more dangerous things were. And…” she stopped and pointed at him, “the longer he knew her the more chance…”
Harrison grabbed her forcefully by the arms. “I’ve heard this already, too many times.”
She looked up at him. He was still handsome, distinguished. “This is all your fault, Harry. Damn it. What now? What now?” She broke free and began to move again. The more she paced the quicker her thoughts raced through her mind. The wind blew hard across the terrace pushing her slightly off balance. She wanted to do something. She stopped and picked up a small branch that had fallen and threw it out into the yard.
“You get out of control, you do the opposite of what I tell you to do, things spiral…and then you want me to fix it?” He was yelling at her.
“No, no. I’m going to fix it myself. I have an idea. I’m putting an end to this…” She stopped and looked around. She’d heard something. A different male voice. Her hands clasped tightly to her ears. “God, no. No.”
“Get a grip on yourself,” he said.
The voice was there again and the image in her head became clearer. The flashbacks were becoming more frequent, uncontrollable. Her father was walking in front of her. He was headed to the woods clasping a knife in his right hand. She could see his back so clearly, his dark pants and yellow-white shirt. His brown-gray hair was so vivid she could reach out and touch it. She was eleven.
“Daddy, no…” She stood on the terrace and screamed after him. “No Daddy.”
She ran after him but he didn’t stop. There was a small metal cage in his other hand. The tears were coming so hard and fast down her face. She couldn’t breathe. “Give it to me.” She tried to wrestle it from his hand but he pushed her roughly to the ground and kept walking.
Inside the cage was a baby rabbit she’d caught in the woods some months before. It had been so small and scared when she found it. Harry went and got that cage for her to hold it. She took care of it from that day on, feeding it some vegetables and cleaning the cage the best she could. It grew less afraid of her each day. It didn’t like to be held but it took her offerings. At first she kept it in the woods. Every morning she’d run out to see him when she got up. She’d take him with her to her meetings with Harry and Ginny in the afternoon when they’d finished school. Harry always brought something for him when they met. A carrot, some lettuce. Then she started bringing him into the house with her at night. She put him on the other side of her bed. He was her friend. She unburdened her soul to him, telling him everything at the end of every day, every horrible thing her father had done to her. The rabbit looked at her and listened. He listened with big eyes. Sometimes that little animal was the thin string that kept her from falling off a very dangerous cliff.
Her father discovered her secret one night when he walked into her room without warning. He heard her talking and prattling away. He surprised her by doing nothing. Left as he had come and said nothing to her about it. He wasn’t angry. He didn’t seem to take notice. She was so happy because she could keep her friend. Her father knew and it was okay. She’d finished her work the next day feeling happy for the first time in so long. Later in the afternoon she took the cage and sat on the terrace. The sun was shining. It was warm. She fed him small bits of grass and waited to see her friends in the woods.
Her father came home, and without a word he came out onto the terrace, knife in hand, and yanked the cage from her hands. She tried to grab it from him but he was stronger. Much stronger. He said nothing to her. Nothing at all in the way of explanation. He didn’t speak. His face and eyes were dead. He headed to the woods, knife in hand. She followed them, begging and crying, screaming, bargaining until she had no words left.
Underneath the canopy of trees, he pulled the rabbit from his cage. Her father held him hard with one hand by the back of his neck. The rabbit didn’t like to be held and struggled against the big hand, his feet moving frantically. She could see the brown fur against her father’s pale fingers. That rabbit pleaded with her with his eyes. Cora was helpless. Her father looked at her with the same blank expression and slowly cut the rabbits neck with the knife. She saw the blood drip onto the dirt. She was on her knees.
Harry found her there later. She hadn’t made it to their meeting, so he had come looking for her. She was lying on the ground, the rabbit in her arms, blood everywhere. He sat in the dirt with her that day and stroked her hair. “It’s going to be okay, Cora. I’ll take care of you.”
She looked up. He wasn’t a thirteen-year-old boy. He was a man now. And she was no longer a little girl. She was lying on her side on the terrace huddled into a ball. Harry stroked her hair. His words were the same.