Rhonda bit her lip. Not Daniel, she wanted to gasp, but that was against the rules. And besides, she knew it was the truth, didn’t she? She felt it deep in her bones, in the tingle of the scar on her forehead. It had been there all along like a sleeping tiger, the dark secret in the back of her brain.
“He called me his special girl,” Lizzy continued. “His star. He said we had a secret bond between us, something no one else could touch. He made me promise never to tell because if I did, it would be ruined and he would be very angry. He told me no one would believe me anyway. No one would believe that I was such a lucky girl. They’d think I was making it up.”
Rhonda gazed down into the water. The sand at the bottom of the stream sparkled where the sunlight hit it. She remembered once how she, Peter, and Lizzy had panned for gold with an old aluminum pie plate at one of the creeks that led into the lake. Lizzy thought the mica they found was real silver. She saved it all in a little box and said that when she got big, she was going to have it turned into a mirror.
“It got bad, Rhonda. Real bad. When he was drinking, when the coffin thing wasn’t taking off and he was home all the time, he was always after me. He’d take me into his shop and make me do things. Tell me stories about things his father had done to him, how fathers carried this special kind of love inside them. He gave me these coins, these silver dollars. They were my prize for staying silent. But you know what I kept thinking? About the ferryman. You know, the guy who takes people across the River Styx to the underworld in his boat? I’d read about it in some book of Peter’s. He was paid by the coins stuck in the eyes of the corpses. I felt like my father was paying the ferryman. But I was the one who kept making the trip.”
Rhonda thought of the bag of coins, how it grew all summer. Lizzy’s pirate treasure.
“I was so scared, Rhonda. And it was more than fear. I felt alone, and crazy, and just sick. I couldn’t protect myself. I tried turning into Captain Hook, thinking that would do it. I thought if I didn’t wash, if I was filthy and said horrible things, he would stop. But it didn’t matter.”
As Lizzy went on, Rhonda felt as if she were falling; falling down deep into the rabbit hole of her dreams. The place where memories dwell. Where the truth lay buried and guarded.
“It took me a long time to gather up the courage to say anything,” Lizzy explained, “but I knew I had to—I couldn’t go on carrying the weight alone. You were my best friend, my secret gypsy twin, and I longed to tell you. I tried. The only time I came close was the night of Peter’s birthday when you slept over—do you remember?”
Rhonda nodded. I have a secret.
What if Rhonda hadn’t turned away then? What if she’d done what a better friend might have, and actually listened?
“Finally, I decided to go to Peter,” Lizzy told her. “If I expected help from any of you, it would have to start with my brother. He was older—I thought he’d get it, know what I was talking about.
“But he was furious. He said it was a lie, and that I was fucked up—it was the first time I heard him say fuck, I think—making up a crazy story just to get attention. That I was jealous of Tock, jealous of you, and just a sick little girl making up lies. I told him everything. And it was hard, Rhonda, hard to talk about what Daddy was doing to me. What I had done. I mean, I was eleven, for Christ’s sake. But I did it. Every fucking sordid detail and still he didn’t believe. ‘Not Dad,’ he said. ‘Dad would never do that.’
“I was crying, begging him to believe me. Peter said he needed proof. And then, he came up with a plan. He wanted me to bring Daddy out to the stage that night after the play. He wanted to see it with his own eyes.
“So the night of the play, just like Peter planned, I showed him. I made him believe.”
Lizzy paused for a moment. She pursed her lips, gazed out across the stream into the dense and tangled woods. Rhonda looked too. Through squinted eyes, she saw Daniel dressed as the white rabbit, leading the children deep into the woods between their houses, separating them. Lizzy was the last to come back. Rhonda had been so worried. Had she known then? Suspected?
“My father went with me gladly,” Lizzy continued, taking Rhonda back to the evening of the play, speaking in a dull monotone, no expression on her face. “He’d had a fight with Clem and was eager to leave the party. He was more than a little drunk. I led him down the path through the woods to the stage and he sat down on the edge, pulling me in front of him. He started touching me, unzipped his jeans and put his hands on my head, knocking the pirate hat off, guiding me down to him. I was used to it by then in a way. I could just make myself tune it out, you know. I could go places, think about other things. Sometimes I would go over all my lines from the play. It was dark in the woods by then, but the moon was out and Peter—he was hiding behind a tree—could see what was happening.
“Peter was crazy when he got to the stage. He came at Daddy, hitting his back as hard as he could with that stupid toy sword of his—broke it right in half. He was just screaming, no words, just a sound like some kind of battle cry. He jumped up onto Daddy’s back, wrapping his arms around his throat, still just howling. Dad lost his balance, fell, and they started rolling around on the ground, grunting and thrashing, knocking over folding chairs. Dad got Peter pinned down under him and was like, ‘You like to spy? Huh, boy?’ just livid, spitting, red in the face.
“I thought, that’s it, he’s going to kill Peter, then there’s this pop-pop-pop sound and Daddy’s slapping at his back, cursing and screeching and I see Tock at the foot of the stage aiming her BB gun like a fucking sniper.”
Lizzy’s tone changed as she described how Peter and Tock came to her rescue. Her voice was more animated, almost excited as she told this part of the story.
“When she ran out of ammo, she charged and threw herself on him, and just the sheer momentum knocked him off of Peter. Peter snatched up one of the chairs and started hitting Daddy with it.
“My father was pissed off then, but I don’t think he was scared. He finally grabbed the chair away from Peter and struggled to his feet. He knocked Peter flat on his back and held him there, his arm across Peter’s throat.
“Tock was standing at the edge of things now, just screaming this incredible string of profanity, ‘You motherfucker cocksucking sonofawhore dipshitfucker get the fuck off him or I’ll fucking kill you!’ kind of thing. I thought everyone in your yard would hear her and come running. But they didn’t. I guess the music was up too loud. And Mom had gotten bombed and set the table on fire.”
Lizzy stopped to take a breath, and when she continued, her voice was the flat, familiar monotone once again.
“Daddy had Peter pinned by the throat and Peter was gasping, choking, struggling to get a breath. I knew it was up to me to end it. If I could just hit my father hard enough, he’d black out. I think I had an idea from cartoons that he’d get amnesia, too—and it would be like it never happened, you know? So I went back behind the stage to where we kept the toolbox and grabbed a hammer, then crept up behind my father and Peter. Tock was still screaming. Peter and Daddy were sweating, shaking, glaring at each other. I raised my arm high, swung, and hit the back of my father’s head as hard as I could. He went down, just like that. But I hit him again, anyway. Then again. Then it was like I couldn’t stop. Everything he’d ever done to hurt me came back in a flash and I put all those months of lies and pain into each swing of the hammer. It was like that day I killed the bogeyman. I just kept going.
“Peter finally took the hammer away. Tock led me away, up onto the stage, wrapped her arms around me, holding me as tight as she could, rocking me.”
Lizzy looked over at Rhonda for the first time since she began her story. Lizzy’s forehead was glistening with beads of sweat. Her eyes, which had seemed to lose their focus as she spoke, now gazed at Rhonda with pinpoint clarity.
“Peter and Tock dragged Dad’s body up on the stage and rolled him into the hole, closing the trap door on top of him. Then Tock came back to ho
ld me again.”
“And that’s what I walked in on,” Rhonda said. She’d been silent long enough. It was as much her story as theirs from that point on.
“None of us ever knew how much of it you’d seen,” Lizzy told her. “I always wondered how long you’d been watching, maybe too scared to make a move, if you knew what I’d done, hated me. Peter said you hadn’t seen anything, that you would have done something. Try to stop it, run back for help, something. But I was never sure. And after a while, I guess Peter and Tock wondered too.”
Rhonda shook her head.
“No, Peter was right. I had no idea. I thought you all had had a fight. I thought maybe something was going on with you and Tock and Peter was pissed. I couldn’t tell.”
Lizzy nodded. Blinked hard and continued.
“Well, you were there for the rest of it. Peter decided to tear down the stage; turn it into a pile of rubble and busted lumber that no one would ever think to look under. So we dug out the rest of the tools in the box and tore apart the stage in a crazed frenzy. We were all kicking and smashing the boards apart. You and Peter got hurt when the back wall came down and it was good because later it explained the blood on our clothes.”
The mosquitoes had found them now, there in their place in the ferns. Lizzy swatted at her bare arms.
“You wrapped your jacket around my head,” Rhonda remembered. She shivered to think that that jacket had already been splattered with Daniel’s blood.
“I got rid of my clothes that night—or actually, I guess your mom must have gotten rid of them. While I was in the bath Justine took them away. I never saw them again.”
“And you stopped speaking,” Rhonda said.
“Peter said we couldn’t tell. We could never speak of what had happened in the woods that night. Of course, Tock and I listened to him—he was the leader, right? Always. He went over it again and again—if we said nothing, it was like it had never happened. Nobody would ever know. I was afraid. Afraid that if I opened my mouth, everything would come pouring out. Words seemed dangerous. Does that make sense?”
Rhonda nodded.
“When Mom started to well and truly lose her shit, it was even harder. She was never too tightly wrapped, but thinking Dad had left her was the last straw. And I knew it was my fault, all my fault, no matter what Tock and Peter said. Eventually, not speaking wasn’t safe enough. I had to leave. Get as far as I could from what had been done to me; from what I’d done.”
“What made you come back?”
Lizzy shook her head. “It’s silly, really. Peter had been after me for months to come and I was too scared. But then, remember that whole thing with that little girl in Virginia?”
“Ella Starkee,” Rhonda said.
“Yes, Ella Starkee. I saw her on TV. When she talked about her kidnapper being dead and how she thought it was sad. She said, ‘Sometimes, what a person needs most is to be forgiven.’ That’s what brought me back, really—that one sentence. It was a light at the end of a long, dark tunnel. It felt like, after all these years, it was time to forgive my father; time to forgive myself.”
Nine one thousand, ten one thousand. Ready or not, here I come!”
Pat raises her head and scans the yard. The sun is blinding. Sweat prickles her forehead. Her chest and stomach itch. Heat rash. Maybe later, when Mamma gets home, they can go swimming.
Pat crosses the yard, pokes around in the vegetable garden, peers behind the row of giant sunflowers, the little patch of sweet corn. She checks the rain barrels (dry…), and the toolshed. No Birdie. Then, turning away from the house, she scans the cedar hedge that borders the yard. There, in the corner, a flash of red. Birdie’s dress. Pat pretends not to see. Goes closer, then walks right by, mumbling, “Where can she be?”
Then, turning quickly, she shouts, “Found you!” and reaches through the hedge to tag her baby sister. “You’re it!” Birdie laughs, pulls away, slips out the other side and right into the road.
“YOU’RE IT!” THE soft white paw of the rabbit lands on her shoulder, touching the red dress once more. Birdie looks up, laughs, and takes off through the headstones after Peter, who runs in slow motion, hip-hip-hopping until, at last, the little girl catches up, grabs hold of a leg, and pulls him down to the grass.
She’s perfected the trick and doesn’t need the suit now. She has become Peter Rabbit.
The rabbit sits in a jail cell, waiting. People come and go. The public defender. Jim. They ask the same questions over and over. They want to talk about motive. About Birdie. About the little shoe they found tucked in a box in the bottom of the closet in Pat’s office. A shoe wrapped in white tissue paper, like a present Pat made herself unwrap each day, a blood-soaked reminder of what she’d done. What she’d failed to do.
They say the psychiatrist will come soon. An evaluation.
Peter Rabbit says nothing. Just nods, eyes focused on something no one else seems to see.
And when the rabbit sleeps, the dreams are good.
Peter’s on Rabbit Island and both his Birdies are there. He hop-hop-hops, chasing them in games of tag and hide-and-seek that go on for hours. And they laugh. God, how those little girls laugh.
When he catches them, he takes them both in his strong furry arms, and holds tight like he’ll never let go.
They’re all safe. And they’re going to stay there forever. There on Rabbit Island.
JULY 5, 2006
DANIEL WAS BURIED next to his father in the St. Anne cemetery. Buried in the coffin he’d built himself: It’s better to burn out than to fade away…
They had all gathered at Clem’s after the funeral, and were eating casseroles, drinking cocktails, and telling stories about Daniel. Daniel and the peanut cart. Daniel and his crazy ideas. Daniel the Easter Bunny.
Lizzy went to lie down. Everyone agreed it was a terrible strain on her—back in town to bury her long lost father. Peter sat on the couch, while Tock stood behind him, massaging his shoulders. Justine picked at the remnants on her plate: bits of three-bean salad and cheeseburger casserole. Suzy and Kim were on the porch, playing Go Fish and drinking ginger ale with maraschino cherries.
“I’m gonna get another beer,” Clem announced, standing. “Anyone else need anything?” Everyone shook their heads.
Rhonda stood up, stretched, and followed her father into the kitchen.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
He got that far-off look in his eyes. “You know, for a couple of years, I didn’t speak to Daniel. Right after I found out about him and Aggie and realized Peter was his son. I met your mother, tried to forget about everything that had happened before. Then, the fall after you were born, I was sitting right out there on the front porch and up he comes like some kind of phantom.”
Clem looked longingly out the window, took a long sip from the bottle of beer he was holding.
Out on the porch, the girls giggled.
Clem continued. “Daniel came sauntering up the brick walk-way, holding a six-pack of beer out in front of him like an offering. We sat and drank the six-pack, talking about our baby girls, about Peter. We just fell into our old rhythm. Like there’d never been a breach in our friendship.”
Rhonda nodded, thought about how good it felt to be talking to Peter again. How familiar and comfortable. Like going home.
“After Daniel disappeared, I kept going out to the porch. I’d sit there for hours some nights over the years, smoking, staring off down the road, waiting for him to show up with another six-pack. Now I know he’s not going to. And I suppose there’s some comfort in finally knowing, but it still doesn’t seem fair.”
Rhonda nodded. Her father teared up. Looked out the kitchen window onto the porch, like there was still hope his best friend would show up and say the whole thing was a hoax.
The girls outside giggled. “Go fish!” Suzy squealed.
THE POLICE SEEMED to be going on the assumption that Daniel had been killed by one of two men he owed a great deal of money to: Shane G
okey or Gordon Pelletier, both of whom were now dead. Everyone seemed glad to accept this version of events—an answer, however horrible, was better than simply not knowing. Crowley made it clear that the case was by no means closed, which meant, to Rhonda, that there would always be the possibility of being caught. Rhonda was no idiot. She knew that with modern forensics, some small piece of evidence—a hair or a button—and they would be caught. Even Rhonda, who hadn’t known about the murder but had helped to hide the body, and later, when she learned the truth, said nothing. She also knew that the truth had a funny way of surfacing when you least expected it. Ten years down the road there might be a knock on her door, and there would be Crowley to say, “I know what you did.”
“THE WORST THING is,” Clem said, “we may never know what really happened. And of course there’s part of me that’ll always kick myself in the ass for not loaning Daniel the money he asked for that summer to pay back those guys. The money that might have saved his life.”
The little radio in the corner of the kitchen was playing softly, and Van Morrison came on. Clem walked over and turned it up. “God, Daniel loved this song,” he said. He held the radio in his hands, swaying a little as he gazed out the porch window, his eyes focused on an imaginary figure in the distance.
He has no idea, Rhonda thought. No idea what Daniel was doing to Lizzy, about what had really happened that last night. And if Daniel’s best friend didn’t know, maybe their secret was safe.
Justine came into the kitchen, wearing a sensible black dress—no sweat suit today. Her arms were loaded with dirty plates and bowls. She set them down in the sink with a small crash, stirring Clem from his dreams.
“Need some help?” he asked his wife.
She shook her head, started to fill the sink with water, squirted in the soap, her back to Clem, Rhonda, and the radio.
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