The Jennifer McMahon E-Book Bundle (38 page)

S
OMETIMES YOU MAKE
up a lie and it becomes this safe little house you live inside,” Warren said. “But it’s not really safe. The foundation is bad, ready to crumble and the people you invite inside with you, they’re all in danger, too.”

Rhonda bit her lip and took a step back, willing herself not to cry. She stood beside Crowley at one in the morning, listening to Warren’s confession against the backdrop of beeping monitors and doctors being paged over the intercom. Warren had pulled the oxygen mask off his face and it lay hissing at his chin, a whispered warning that seemed, to Rhonda, to be saying,
Don’t listen. None of it is true.

Warren had declined the offer to remain silent or to have a lawyer present, eager to hurry up and tell his story at last. The beginning of his story was much like Pat’s story: after building a rapport with Ernie with herself in the suit, Pat offered Warren
five hundred dollars to come up to Pike’s Crossing, put on the suit, and take the girl one last time. She knew Trudy bought lottery tickets and cigarettes every Monday afternoon, after picking Ernie up at school, and that Trudy always left Ernie in the car during this stop. Warren was supposed to take the girl and drop her off in the woods off of Route 6. Pat had picked a spot. The idea was that she’d wander around lost for a few hours, overnight at the worst, but Pat would find her and bring her home. The lost girl would be found. The story would have a happy ending, just like what happened down in Virginia.

“But it didn’t work out that way,” Warren said, looking away from Rhonda and Crowley. “Pat had showed me right where the drop-off should be, but once I was driving along dressed in a rabbit suit, in a stolen car, I got nervous, you know? So I decided to take the long way around the lake, took that dirt road that snakes through the state forest, it seemed…less conspicuous. The map said it would connect with Route 6 just outside of town.

“I was all pumped up, scared as hell, the road was going on forever, all twists and turns. And I couldn’t see well through those fucking eyes. I was sweating like a pig. I mean, I’ve never done anything like this before. And the little girl, she was telling me a story about her day…” Warren stopped, swallowed, wiped at his forehead, then continued. “About how in school, it had been Letter F day: they made an F poster, ate fruit, had a contest to see which team could come up with the most words that started with letter F.” He mopped at his brow with the back of his hand, and was quiet for a long moment.

“So, we got to this hairpin turn and I didn’t see it coming. I was going too fast, I guess. I slammed on the brakes and jerked the wheel to the left, and the little girl, she wasn’t belted in…” He chewed his lip. Tears welled in his eyes. “It happened so fast. She was knocked against the door and I guess it wasn’t closed all
the way or something, because all of a sudden, the door was open and she was gone. Just like that.”

“You’re saying she fell out?” Crowley asked. “The door just happened to open all by itself?”

“The latch—it was broken,” Rhonda whispered. Like she’d told Warren days ago:
Shit luck and random chaos.

“What?” Warren asked.

“Peter was supposed to fix it. It was written in the schedule at the garage. Laura Lee said the door wouldn’t stay closed unless it was locked.”

Crowley scribbled in his notebook.

Warren started to cry, and Rhonda’s first instinct was to go to him, offer comfort to him. But she couldn’t. Not knowing that it had been he who looked across the parking lot at her through painted mesh eyes. He who took Ernie on her last trip to Rabbit Island.

She didn’t want to believe that it was possible. It seemed like some sick cosmic joke. The only person she’d trusted through all of this, the man she’d started to fall in love with, had been the rabbit she’d been chasing all along.

Maybe you’ll catch up to him one of these days
, Warren had told her just this morning.

Now here he was. She closed her eyes tight, trying to make it all go away. But there was still the oxygen hiss, the beeping.

Warren had stopped the car and run back to where Ernie had fallen out. She had tumbled down a steep embankment, and lay awkwardly, horribly still, on a pile of rocks. He scrambled down to her and saw at once that she was dead. Crowley pressed for details—how could Warren be so sure she was dead, not just knocked out? Warren described her battered little head, the impossible angle of her neck, the staring eyes, the long, desperate minutes of checking for a pulse, for breath—no, she was dead,
and it was his fault. Stupid with panic, he carried Ernie back to the car.

“I knew I couldn’t bring her back. But I couldn’t just leave her there. So…I decided to bury her.”

Rhonda shook her head.
Why?
she wanted to scream. And she realized what it came down to: Warren had simply made a series of bad choices. Horrible choices. Choices born of the need for quick cash, the chance to make an edgy documentary, the search for a shortcut, and, finally, sheer mind-numbing panic. Everything seemed like a good idea, or maybe the only option, at the time. Rhonda really saw him for what he was: a scared nineteen-year-old kid.

“I went back closer to the lake and found an old path through the woods. I carried her in my arms. She was so light.” He paused again.

“And where was this exactly, Warren?” Crowley asked.

“Hm? Oh, on the north side of the lake somewhere, I think. I got sort of turned around. But there was a clearing in a grove of pines. I found a hole there. Like the remnant of an old well or something. I laid her down at the bottom and piled rocks and dirt on top.”

“And Miss Clark’s vehicle?”

“I put the rabbit suit in my gym bag and returned the car, just like we planned. I handed the suit over to Pat and told her that everything had gone according to the plan: that I dropped Ernie off at the edge of the state forest, close to Route 6, right where she’d told me.”

Crowley looked skeptical. “And you expected that she would not find out the truth?”

Warren considered.

“I don’t know what I expected. It just seemed impossible to tell the truth. I could barely believe the truth, you know—like, how did this happen? How
could
it happen? And I told her the
lie so many times over the next few days—she got worried fast, couldn’t figure out what went wrong with her grand plan—that I started to believe it. To convince myself. I actually started to think that the little girl was going to come walking out of the woods at any minute. I could see it so clearly. Her little face all lit up as she told everyone all about her adventures on Rabbit Island. It seemed so…possible.”

Rhonda nodded, looked away from him, focusing her eyes on the monitors that kept track of his pulse and blood pressure.

“Rhonda, I don’t…I’m sorry. Sorry for being dishonest. For leading you in the wrong direction. You know Peter’s keys? I got them from Pat myself and dropped them in the cemetery when we were there, so you’d find them. I did everything I could think of to get you off the trail.”

“So it was all an act then?” Rhonda asked, biting her lip again.
I will not cry. I will not let them see me break down. There are enough victims in this story already.
“What happened between us. Another trick to distract me?”

“No!” His eyes were moist and sincere. “God, no! Rhonda, what happened between us…it was…the only honest thing I’ve done since I’ve been in Pike’s Crossing.”

Rhonda nodded, unsure of what to believe. She knew she’d started to fall in love with Warren. And her being with him had helped her to let go of Peter—to move on in some intangible way.

“I think that all along, part of me wanted you to discover the truth. Part of me needed all this to be over. I tried to tell you myself. I tried last night, then again this morning. But I couldn’t.”

“So what did you do after you left my place, after your failed attempts to tell me the truth?”

“I drove around for a little, thinking it through. I stopped off at the house to change clothes. Then I went to the Mini Mart. I told Pat what really happened that afternoon, said I was going to
Crowley myself. She lost it. She went after me with a crowbar and then I guess she stuffed me in the suit and put me in the car…God, she must have been crazy with rage, to do all that. But I don’t blame her. She loved that little girl. She kept saying how all this was going to save little Ernie, that she’d be the nation’s darling. Have offers for movies and books. Have her face on the front cover of
People
. Her and Pat together. That’s the way it was supposed to be.”

A nurse came in, lifting the oxygen mask. “You’ve got to keep this on,” she scolded.

Warren pushed it away again.

“Please tell Trudy how sorry I am. Tell her—oh fuck it.” He was crying again. “What can anyone say? Tell her that on Ernie’s last day at school, during that F contest, the word she came up with was
fable
. Tell her that, would you?”

Rhonda nodded dumbly down at Warren as the nurse attached the mask again, adjusted the flow.

Was that what all this had been? Rhonda wondered. A fable in which the rabbit plays a terrible trick, but at the end they all learn a lesson? But what could possibly be the moral here?

P
ETER SHOWED UP
at Rhonda’s door, breathless.

“I need Clem,” he panted, shoving his way past Rhonda. Clem came out into the living room.

“What is it, Peter?”

“You’ve gotta come quick. It’s Mom. She’s in the bathtub. She used a razor. There’s blood all over!”

Clem ran out of the house with Peter. Rhonda started to join them, but her father stopped her. “Stay here!” he ordered.

Rhonda’s heart thudded in her ears. She went to find her mother to tell her what had happened.

“There’s nothing we can do to help right now,” Justine said.

“Let’s do our best to keep busy.”

So Rhonda sliced vegetables for stew, listening to sirens draw near.

Forty-five minutes later, Clem returned with Peter and Lizzy.
Lizzy had a suitcase. Peter carried a knapsack, a sleeping bag, and his old army pup tent, which he went to work setting up in the yard.

“You’ll freeze in there,” Justine warned, handing over a pile of thick blankets from the linen closet.

“Can’t you make him come inside?” Rhonda whined to her parents, who just shook their heads and told her to leave Peter alone for now.

Lizzy went straight to Rhonda’s room, set up her suitcase in the corner, and began doing homework at Rhonda’s desk.

“Want to talk?” Rhonda asked her. Lizzy didn’t even look up.

“Oh that’s right, you don’t talk anymore. I forgot.”

Rhonda stomped out of her room and down the hall, where she caught sight of her parents in the kitchen. Clem was just hanging up from his call to the hospital. Rhonda ducked into the shadowy bathroom to eavesdrop.

“She’s going to pull through,” Clem reported.

“Thank God,” Justine said. “Did they say how long she’ll be there?”

Rhonda heard Clem light a match, take a drag of his cigarette, then exhale. “No idea.”

“I’d think they’d keep her awhile after something like this. And when she does get out, I wonder what shape she’ll be in. Looking after the kids might be too much for her,” Justine said.

“Fucking Daniel,” Clem hissed. “I can’t believe he’s done this. Where the hell is he?”

“Like you said, he’s probably off on a bender. Hiding out from people he owes money to,” Justine said.

“These aren’t the kinds of guys you mess around with,” Rhonda heard her father say to her mother.

“I just wish we could get in touch with him,” Justine said.

“Maybe it’s time to call the police. File a missing person’s report or something. With Aggie in the hospital, someone’s gotta drag his ass out of hiding,” Clem said.

RHONDA HAD A
good view of Peter’s tent through her bedroom window and spent most of the afternoon and evening staring at the green canvas door, hoping Peter would emerge, like a caterpillar from a cocoon, beautiful and changed. When he refused to come in for dinner, Justine brought him a plate.

“Let me take it to him,” Rhonda begged.

“Not tonight, sweetie,” Justine said.

At nine o’clock that night, Rhonda was watching through her window when she saw Tock arrive, wearing her red hat and carrying her BB gun. Peter held back the front flap of his tent to invite her in. When Tock left the tent an hour later, the gun was not with her.

“She gave him her gun,” Rhonda said to Lizzy, who was lying in bed with her eyes closed, pretending to sleep. Rhonda could tell she was faking.

“Can you believe it? She gave him her gun!”

Lizzy just moaned and rolled over.

RHONDA WOKE UP
in the night to find the mattress and bottom sheet soaked. She shook Lizzy awake.

“Did you piss in the bed?” Rhonda asked, dumbfounded. But there was no other explanation for the warm, stinking urine that soaked them both.

Lizzy said nothing. She didn’t look ashamed or embarrassed. She wore a vacant look, like a sleepwalker.

“I can’t believe this,” Rhonda muttered, flipping on the light.

“Well, let’s get it cleaned up.”

Lizzy stood frozen in a corner and watched Rhonda strip the bed.

“Take off your nightgown,” she instructed. Lizzy didn’t move.

“What is wrong with you?” Rhonda yelled. “Take off the nightgown!” She threw a clean one of her own at Lizzy, who stood, frozen.

“Don’t just stand there!” Rhonda yelled. “Do something! Say something! Just open your mouth and talk!”

There was a knock on the bedroom door and Justine stuck her head in. “What’s going on?”

“Lizzy pissed the bed and won’t change!”

Justine surveyed the mattress and wet sheets on the floor, then went to Lizzy and put an arm around her.

“Come on, dear. Let’s get you into a hot bath.” She led Lizzy down the hall and into the bathroom. Rhonda heard the water running and the soft murmur of her mother’s voice.

Justine returned, carrying Lizzy’s wet nightgown, and grabbed the sheets and Rhonda’s pajamas from the floor.

“What’s the matter with Lizzy?” Rhonda asked.

“You need to be a little gentler with her, Ronnie.”

“It’s one thing to not talk, but to just stand there like a freaking statue…”

“Rhonda, Lizzy was the one who found Aggie today.”

“Oh.” The word felt small and round coming from Rhonda’s lips.

“She’s been through a lot,” Justine said. “A lot more than anyone knows, I think.”

Rhonda bit her lip. “Is she ever going to talk again?”

Justine nodded. “I’m sure she will. When she’s ready. Pestering her, making a fuss, that never helps anything. We just need to be patient.”