Chapter 2 - The Weight of the Rabbit
“Emma?” I whispered, taking a half-step toward her.
The movement made my head spin, a dull, thudding ache blooming across my left temple where the edge of Nathan’s coffin had bitten into my skin. A warm trickle of blood was running down past my eyebrow, stinging my eye, but I couldn't bring myself to wipe it away.
Margaret saw her too.
For the first time since we had entered the church doors forty-five minutes ago, the color shifted beneath the tight, powdered skin of my mother-in-law’s face. A thin, gray pallor crept up from her collarbone, turning her mouth into a pinched white line.
“Come here, sweetheart,” Margaret said, her voice instantly dropping into that syrupy, theatrical octave she reserved for church functions and photographs for the local paper. She held out one gloved hand, her fingers curling slightly like the legs of a spider. “Come to Grandma. Let’s get you away from all this unpleasantness.”
Emma didn't move an inch. Her small chest rose and fell in a shallow, rapid rhythm.
“Emma,” Margaret repeated, a sharper edge cutting through the sugar. “I said come here.”
Up at the altar, Pastor Holloway took a slow, heavy step down from the raised platform, his black robe swishing against his shins. He looked from Margaret to Trevor, then down at me, his forehead deeply furrowed with lines of professional exhaustion.
“Maybe we should give the family a moment,” the pastor said, his voice hesitant, as if he were trying to manage a grease fire with a wet towel. “Let’s all just take a breath. Trevor, why don't you take Lauren out to the vestry—”
“No,” Emma said.
The word wasn't loud, but it stopped the pastor dead in his tracks.
Emma turned away from her grandmother, her small red shoes pivoting on the industrial carpet with a muffled scuff, and ran directly toward the pastor. She didn't stop until her forehead bumped against the dark wool of his vestments.
The pastor crouched down automatically, his large, square hands hovering awkwardly in the air before resting gently on her shoulders.
“Yes, honey?” he asked, his tone softening into something paternal and kind. “What is it, Emma?”
Emma didn't look at him. She looked back over her shoulder, her dark eyes fixing on Margaret with a terrifying intensity. Then she looked at Trevor, who was still standing rigidly by the pew, his jaw set like a trap.
Finally, her gaze landed on me.
Her bottom lip began to tremble, not with a child’s usual whiny petulance, but with the heavy, trembling grief of someone who was carrying a weight too large for her ribs.
“Pastor?” she whispered.
“I’m here, sweetheart. What do you need to tell me?”
“Do I have to tell everybody what Grandma put in the babies’ bottles?”
The silence that followed was absolute. It wasn't the polite silence of a congregation waiting for a hymn to start; it was the dead, pressurized silence of an airlock opening in deep space.
Margaret’s face didn't just pale; it seemed to shrink. The powder around her nose looked like dry flour on parchment.
Trevor blinked twice, his head snapping toward his daughter as if he had been struck with a flat-head screwdriver.
“What did you say?” Trevor’s voice came out in a dry, rattled croak.
Emma hugged the gray rabbit tighter against her chest, burying her face briefly in its worn velvet ear before looking back up at the minister.
“That night at Grandma’s house,” she said, her voice carrying clearly across the pews. “I saw her.”
Margaret lunged forward, her black heels clicking against the hardwood floor with the speed of a striking adder. “She doesn't know what she’s talking about! The child is delirious—she hasn't slept in three days, she’s been exposed to all this trauma—!”
“Margaret, step back,” Pastor Holloway commanded, his voice suddenly dropping its pastoral warmth and taking on the hard, flat authority of a man who had spent thirty years mediating parish wars. He raised one large hand toward her chest, stopping her three feet away.
“No,” Margaret snapped, her teeth bared slightly in a grimace that looked less like a smile and more like a skull trying to force its jaw shut. “She’s four years old! She has an imagination like a sieve! She watches those cartoons on the tablet all day—she doesn't know the difference between reality and—!”
“She’s not talking about a cartoon,” I said.
My voice sounded strange to my own ears—low, gravelly, and hollow, like someone speaking from the bottom of an empty well.
I took two steps forward until I was standing beside the pastor and my daughter. The blood from my forehead had reached my chin, dripping in a slow, dark pattern onto the collar of my black dress, but I didn't care.
“Emma,” I said, kneeling down until my eyes were level with hers. I ignored the throbbing in my head, ignoring the way my knees protested against the hard floor. “Look at me, honey. Look at Mom.”
Emma’s dark eyes shifted to mine. They were dry. She hadn't cried since the morning started, not even when Margaret had shoved me into the coffin. She was holding herself together with the terrible, unnatural strength of a child who had realized the adults around her were no longer keeping the sky from falling.
“What special bottles, Em?” I asked, my voice as gentle as I could make it, though every fiber of my being was screaming.
Emma pointed a small, ink-stained finger toward her grandmother.
“The little glass ones,” she whispered. “The ones with the yellow nipples. Not the big ones Mommy uses for the twins. Grandma kept them in the top of her big leather bag.”
My stomach didn't just turn; it felt as though it had detached from my spine and dropped straight down into my shoes.
“What special bottles, Emma?” Trevor asked, his voice rising in pitch as he crossed the space between us, dropping to his knees beside me with a heavy thud. He grabbed Emma’s small shoulder, perhaps a little too hard, his fingers digging into her pink sweater. “Baby, think carefully. Was it formula? Was Grandma making them a bottle because Mommy was tired?”
Emma winced, pulling away from his grip. “No.”
“Was it sugar water? Sometimes Grandma gives people sugar water when they’re fussy—you remember when you had the croup, she gave you that sweet syrup—”
“No, Daddy,” Emma said, her voice dropping into a flat, matter-of-fact tone that brooked no argument. “It wasn't syrup.”
“Then what was it?” Trevor’s face was inches from hers now, desperate, his eyes wide and bloodshot, searching his daughter’s face for the answer he needed to save his entire universe from collapsing into ash. “What did you see her put in them?”
Emma hesitated, her lower lip curling inward. Her eyes darted toward the altar, toward the two small white boxes, and then back down at her rabbit.
“I don't know the name,” she whispered.
“Was it medicine?” Trevor pleaded, his voice breaking on the edge of a sob. “Was it the drops for their colic? The gas drops?”
“No,” Emma said, shaking her head slowly. “Grandma said it was medicine, but it didn't smell like the medicine Mommy gives us. It smelled funny.”
“Funny how?” I asked, my own voice trembling so badly I could barely form the vowels.
“Like the garage,” Emma said simply. “Like when Grandpa cleans the lawnmower parts in the blue can.”
The sanctuary seemed to tilt again. This time, I didn't catch myself. I fell forward onto my hands, my knees hitting the carpet, the smell of old wool and floor wax rushing up into my face.
Like when Grandpa cleans the lawnmower parts in the blue can.
Solvent.
Degreaser.
Turpentine.
Or something worse. Something kept in the dark, heavy cabinets of the garage where Margaret used to store her gardening chemicals and weed killers behind the old bags of peat moss.
Trevor slowly let go of Emma’s shoulder. His hand hovered in the air for a second before dropping limply to his side. He turned his head toward his mother with the agonizing slowness of a man turning to look at a car wreck he knows he caused.
Margaret was standing completely still now. All the color had returned to her face, but it wasn't the color of life; it was the bright, artificial red of a theatrical mask painted on by a madman. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, fixed on a point somewhere above our heads on the walnut-paneled back wall of the choir loft.
“Mom,” Trevor said. The word came out of his throat like a dry rattle. “Mom, what is she talking about?”
Margaret didn't look at him. She smoothed the skirt of her black dress again, her fingers moving with a mechanical, obsessive rhythm—swish, swish, swish against the wool.
“The child has a very active imagination,” Margaret said, her voice dropping into that smooth, glacial tone she used when she was correcting a bank teller or telling a waitress that her tea was lukewarm. “You know how she is, Trevor. Ever since she started watching those YouTube videos on your old phone, she’s been making up stories about monsters and witches. It’s pathetic, really. You never set boundaries on her screen time.”
“She didn't see it on a screen, Margaret,” Pastor Holloway said. His voice was no longer kind. It was cold, hard, and flat as an anvil. He stood up from his crouch, towering over her by a foot, his black robe hanging straight down from his broad shoulders. “She was at your house on Thursday night, wasn't she? The night before the boys passed.”
Margaret’s jaw tightened. “They were exhausted. Lauren looked like death warmed over. I offered to take the twins for four hours so their mother could get a few hours of unbroken sleep. That’s what grandmothers do. That’s what family does.”
“You took them for the night,” I said, lifting my head from the carpet. My voice was very quiet now. All the rage was gone, burned away by something much colder and heavier. “You insisted. You said we were failing them because we were sleeping in shifts. You said a mother who couldn't sleep through the night wasn't fit to raise livestock, let alone children.”
Margaret turned her gaze down toward me, her eyes flashing with a sudden, venomous spark of pure hatred. “And I was right! Look at what happened forty-eight hours later! SUID! They just stopped breathing because their little systems were already compromised by your miserable, disorganized, slovenly housekeeping!”
“Emma,” Trevor whispered, ignoring his mother’s tirade, his voice dropping into a desperate plea. “Emma, look at Daddy. Did you see her do it more than once?”
Emma nodded, her dark curls bobbing against her neck. “Twice.”
“When?”
“Thursday night,” Emma said, counting on her small fingers with solemn precision. “And two weeks before that, when we stayed over for Sunday pot roast.”
The church behind us erupted into a low, buzzing roar like a kicked hornet’s nest. Mrs. Gable stood up in her pew, her mouth open, her hand pressed against her chest as if she were trying to hold her heart inside her ribs. Two men from the deacon board—farmers with calloused hands and graying hair—stepped out into the center aisle, their expressions darkening as they looked from Margaret to the two white boxes at the front.
“She was talking on the phone too,” Emma added, as if remembering an afterthought.
Margaret’s head snapped down toward the child. A tiny, involuntary twitch jerked the corner of her left eye upward.
May you like
“Stop,” Margaret hissed, taking a step forward. “Emma, you stop this instant or you’re going to be very, very sorry—”
“No one is threatening that child in this house,” Pastor Holloway said, stepping directly between Margaret and my daughter with a physical presence that brooked no argument. He looked over his shoulder at the two deacons in the aisle. “Brother Miller. Brother Thomas. Lock the front doors. Nobody leaves this building until the Sheriff gets here.”
