The Rabbit's Blue Thread
Chapter 05 - The Rabbit's Blue Thread
Hattie Price lived in a tidy two-family house in Oak Park. Ceramic ducks lined her windowsill, crossword books filled a basket, and a sign on her front door read NO SALESPEOPLE. NO EXCEPTIONS.
She opened the door for Rebecca and Clara, but when she saw Lorenzo behind them, she said, “Absolutely not.”
“You said I could bring someone,” Rebecca reminded her.
“I said a lawyer.”
“He brought one,” Rebecca said, stepping aside.
Marion Alvarez came up the porch with a briefcase and a cane. At sixty-one she had spent three decades fighting housing cases, many against developers who talked about progress while displacing families. Evelyn had found her through legal aid.
“Hattie,” Marion said, “I haven't seen you since the library closure.”
“The city said they were going to renovate,” Hattie replied. “They always say that just before they knock something down.”
Lorenzo stayed on the porch while the women went inside. It was Rebecca who came back for him ten minutes later. She did not smile. “Hattie says you can come in if you leave your phone in your car.”
He did. He wasn't sure whether Hattie knew his phone could track him or simply disliked people staring at screens in her kitchen. Either reason seemed fair.
Clara sat on the floor drawing a purple-roofed house. Hattie straightened the rabbit's ribbon, and Clara leaned toward her with the ease children reserve for people who can mend beloved things.
“I knew your grandfather,” Hattie told Lorenzo. “He was a mean little man before he grew into a mean big one.”
“I thought he was charming.”
“That's how it works.”
Marion laid down the termination agreement. Lorenzo described a funeral-home corridor, Vincent with a clipboard, and his father asking him to sign so the city would leave the family alone. He'd been drinking that morning and was ashamed to say so.
“You didn't read it,” Hattie said.
“No.”
“Your mother used to tell me you were a good boy with expensive habits. I see she was right about the habits.”
Rebecca said, “He was twenty-one, Hattie.”
“And Miriam was terrified. We can feel sorry for people without pretending they did no harm.”
Hattie inspected the consent and tapped the date. “This says Miriam signed after she moved to Milwaukee. She was still on my couch that month. And the notary had lost his license the year before.”
Marion made a note. “Do you have anything proving where she was?”
“I have a photograph of her at my birthday dinner. We kept the film envelope with the date. Might be something. Might not.”
“It's enough to investigate.”
Then Hattie turned to Rebecca. “Where's the rabbit?”
Clara lifted it. “His name is Professor Waffles.”
“I named him,” Hattie told Clara. She turned to Rebecca. “Daniel asked me to keep a brass key. After his funeral men came to my door, and I panicked. I sewed it into the rabbit. I was wrong not to tell you.”
Rebecca's face changed. “You put something dangerous in my daughter's toy?”
“A little brass key. I didn't know who was looking for it. I couldn't think of anywhere safer than a stuffed animal that never left a little girl's sight. It was foolish.”
“It was more than foolish.” Rebecca pulled Clara close. “You should have told me.”
“I should have. I'm sorry.” Hattie didn't try to defend herself again. She took a seam ripper from her sewing box and held it out, handle first. “You do it. I won't touch her things without your permission.”
Rebecca sat at the table with Professor Waffles in her lap. Clara watched as she opened three blue stitches beneath the rabbit's arm. A tiny key slipped out, wrapped in a strip of cotton. On the cotton Daniel had written one word: PENN.
Rebecca stared at the handwriting. The P tilted backward, just as it did on his grocery lists. Seeing it on the ragged cotton hurt more than she'd expected. For a few seconds she was twenty-nine again, waiting for him to come home with milk and the cheap flowers he bought at gas stations when he wanted to apologize.
“Penn what?” Lorenzo asked.
Hattie looked toward Marion. “Penn Storage. Old rail warehouse over by the river. Daniel rented a document box there under my name. He said the contents weren't safe with a lawyer he could afford, and they weren't safe at home.”
“Why wouldn't he tell Rebecca?”
“Because he was thinking badly. Fear does that.” Hattie began sewing up the rabbit while Clara supervised. “He was trying to be brave and ended up making decisions for everybody.”
Outside, a car passed slowly twice. Lorenzo noticed it through the curtain. He took a step toward the window, then stopped. Hattie had already seen it. She closed the blind herself.
Marion suggested they go to the storage office with a court officer or police escort. She knew a detective from an unrelated housing fraud case, a woman called Erin Cho who had no known connection to Duca Holdings. Lorenzo agreed. Rebecca insisted that Clara stay with Evelyn until the key had been checked.
Clara wanted to know why grown-ups whispered about her rabbit. Rebecca knelt. “Your dad left us something important, honey. We don't know what it is yet.”
“Is it a birthday present?”
“No, sweetheart.” Rebecca swallowed. “I don't think it is.”
Hattie reached into a drawer and took out a photograph. Adelaide Duca stood on the steps of Bell House among women in winter coats, some holding children, some holding paper cups. A ten-year-old Rebecca was sitting cross-legged in front, missing a front tooth. Behind her stood Miriam Hale, one arm protectively across her daughter's shoulders.
Rebecca hadn't seen her mother in fourteen years.
“That's her,” Clara said, pointing. “The lady in Mommy's dream.”
Rebecca looked down sharply. “What do you mean?”
“When you sleep on the couch, sometimes you say, 'Mom, please open the door.'”
The room went quiet. Hattie looked away to give Rebecca what privacy she could. Lorenzo had no useful words. He realized there were griefs a million dollars couldn't even begin to touch.
Later, while Clara was finding her shoes, Hattie whispered to Rebecca, “Miriam didn't change her story because she was paid. She changed it because they threatened to take you away.”
Rebecca turned so quickly her chair scraped the floor.
May you like
Hattie handed her a folded, yellowing envelope. On the front, in her mother's handwriting, were four words: FOR REBECCA, WHEN SHE'S READY.
And inside was a photograph of a man Rebecca had been told was nowhere near Bell House when it burned—standing outside the building the following morning.
