Epilogue #2
“When I was born, she thought I was cute and bunnies were cute, so that’s what she called me, Bunny. I laughed when the police told me.”
She’d found him in the buried box. Her bunny—the toy one, I mean. Magic, still with the ribbon tied around his throat. A serving-knee that had sat on the cusp of her memory for thirteen long years. She was still holding it on her knees in the snow when the emergency services arrived.
“I’ve forgotten so much,” she tells me, scratching her thumbnail into the wood of the table. “How the house looked, Andrew’s face. My therapist lady told me it’s normal—it’s just how my brain protects itself. It made me sad at first. I wish I’d kept a part of it, just to hold on to.”
I can’t pretend I know what she means. I think if I ever see another cereal bar, I’ll have a panic attack. I can’t imagine wanting to keep hold of bad memories, but then I remember the small plastic jar of knotted hair with my name on the top of it and I nod.
“What’s your social worker like?”
She pulls a face. “He’s trying. He wants me to go to art therapy.”
“You should do it.”
Bunny shrugs. “It won’t help, though, will it? It won’t tell me why my brother did what he did.”
I don’t correct her. I sit and wait with my hands in my lap while Bunny chews her lower lip and says quietly, “Sorry. I know he’s not my brother, but I still think of him that way. It’s strange. There’s no feeling there, just a space. I don’t miss him. Not at all. Does that make me bad?”
“No, honey.”
I swallow, steeling myself. This is difficult for me to say.
“Listen, Bunny. I know if you read all the papers and listen to some of the folk in this town, it’s easy to think of Andrew as just plain evil, but sometimes people are shaped a certain way.
Sometimes it is their families that shape them, and sometimes it is their environment.
For Andrew, I think it was both. He had a miserable life, and he did some terrible things.
You were probably the only good aspect of it. It’s why he held on to you so hard.”
Bunny considers this. I glance up at the sweeping pines. The season of mists and mushrooms has passed. Soon the days will be getting longer, warmer. The light will shift from the glassy, wintry blue to the soft pinks and apricot of spring.
“People at school are calling him a serial killer.”
People are right, I think, but I don’t say it.
Some pain is avoidable. They’ve been excavating the grove these last few weeks, unearthing six skeletons including little Maria Garrison and Bunny’s mother, Astrid Miller.
Apart from Maria, all the women have holes drilled into their skulls, some more than once.
I was trying to save them, Hazel, he’d told me.
I shudder, lifting my fingers to the dented skin in my own forehead.
It’s healing, but there will always be a scar, just behind the hairline.
A little divot like a tuck in the flesh.
I lost a lot of blood, but there was no damage to the bone. I got lucky.
Voices drift across the garden and both Bunny and I turn in our seats to see that Suzie has arrived. She and Cathy are laughing as they stand on the patio. It is a cheerful, bright sound, like birdsong.
“Hazel? Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve been reading about it online. I’m not meant to, but I can’t help myself.
” She leans in, as if she doesn’t want to be overheard.
“There’s been people going up to the farm.
What’s left of it, I mean. Some of these people leave things up there.
Candles and flowers, little cuddly toys. They’re the nice people.”
“Go on.”
Bunny swallows nervously. “Other people aren’t so nice. The ones who’ve been making videos up there say it’s haunted. At night they hear voices, and shapes come out of the darkness.”
“People like to talk, Bunny. But that’s all it is. Just talk.”
But all the same, the pines are singing up on the hill.
It’s a lonely sound, and a haunted one too.
Behind us, Suzie and Cathy are crossing the lawn, drinks in hand.
Suzie is taking Cathy to task about something and Cathy is laughing in her carefree, dismissive way.
Bunny watches them with her small, shy smile, and I watch her, amazed and sad and grateful all at once.
I’m thinking of applying for her legal guardianship.
There is a lot of red tape, a distant family somewhere who may or may not want her back.
I might not even be considered a suitable candidate for adoption, not with my past, even with the support of my family.
But still, I’m hopeful for a good outcome.
There are many things I’ve done that I am not proud of. It’s time to change that.
“Look at this!” Cathy’s voice booms as her hand settles on the back of my chair. I can tell she is grinning without even turning round. “Jackie O has joined us!”
Suzie, in a svelte black two-piece with dainty leather gloves, lowers her oversized sunglasses and rolls her eyes. “Hilarious. I think she forgets that Jackie Onassis was extremely chic, so I take it as a huge compliment. Besides, this is a special occasion, isn’t it? I wanted to mark it.”
“Quite right.” I get carefully to my feet, gently brushing off Cathy’s offers of assistance. I’m steadier than I was, less liable to fatigue and bad dreams, but some days there is an ache running through me that is bone deep.
“Is she in the box, Suzie?” Bunny asks.
Suzie looks down at the plain white cardboard box she is carrying as if she has forgotten it is there. I realize I’ve never seen a person’s ashes in a box before. I’m amazed at how small it is.
“Yes. I’ve bought you some flowers to take with us too, if you want. They’re in the sink.”
“My mum would like that, Suzie. Thank you.”
There is a lull then. The wind slithers through the pines.
“You sure you want to do this, Bunny?” Cathy asks gently. “Danny opted out and so can you. No one would blame you.”
Bunny nods, her face set with determination.
“What about you, Hazel? You ready to go into the woods?”
I consider this. There is rain coming, and the air is rich with the familiar fragrance of fertile earth and resinous sap, bright green. That perfume will follow me everywhere forever, I realize, permeating my dreams like mushroom spores, the long twisting roots of trees.
You have to let the pain come.
“Ready,” I say.