want to be able to sleep at night,” I add, poking at the pie crust with my fork, saying too much.
“I think that sounds reasonable,” Gran says.
How could someone this nice have sent her granddaughter away?
Her smile fades and I wonder if maybe I said that out loud, or she really is a mind reader like Bunny and Lily say.
First Dumpling’s dad and now this. I have no idea how to respond, but it doesn’t matter anyway because just then Bunny and Lily come barging through the door, chanting at the top of their lungs, “Dumpling’s awake, Dumpling’s awake, Dumpling’s awake!”
And then we are all hugging and laughing. Gran wraps each of us in turn in her wobbly arms, wiping her eyes with the hem of her dress, and even Bunny seems surprised. I look at Ruth’s note still lying on the table, the words I forgive you smudged and blurry.
I slip the note into my pocket without anyone noticing, just in case Ruth might want to have it back someday.
—
I am skipping back over to Dumpling’s with Bunny and Lily at my heels, all of us floating with happiness, lighter than we’ve been in weeks, when suddenly screams and crashing sounds from inside my mother’s house stop us in our tracks. We are halfway between Lily’s door and my old house, trapped like ptarmigan between two hunters, when the door flies open and Mom’s friends Paula and Annette appear, looking terrified.
“Your dad,” Paula says, looking right at me. “You girls get away.”
“Where’s my mom?” I ask, surprised by how calm my voice sounds. My arms are extended, covering Bunny and Lily who are cowering behind me.
“She’s hurt,” Annette says. I have never seen Annette not laughing. She looks panicked.
“Are you leaving her in there with him?” I ask.
They are pushing each other down the porch, trying to get away. “Wait, you just left her?” I say again. If Paula and Annette are running away, then something very serious is going on inside that house.
I whisper to Bunny to walk slowly backward with Lily and go back to Gran’s. Glancing behind me, I see Gran in the doorway and she locks her eyes with mine in agreement—signaling the girls to come back. I can’t believe we were just laughing and hugging.
“Tell her to call the police,” I tell Bunny, who stares at me as if I am speaking Japanese. “GO, BUNNY. NOW!”
“Dora?” she says. Bunny knows better than to call the police.
“Tell Gran I said to call them; just do it,” I tell her. They make it back to the steps of Gran’s house just as my father staggers out onto the porch.
“Look at the little rabbits—pow, pow, pow,” my dad says, and my heart sinks as I notice he is holding a real hunting rifle, pretending to shoot at the girls. At least Gran has quickly pulled them inside, and he is probably too drunk to hit them from this distance anyway. Paula and Annette are crouched down on the far side of the merry-go-round, which is as far away as they could get.
But I am much, much closer.
“Where is Mom?” I hear myself say.
“Where is Mom?” he mimics in a high-pitched voice. “Oh, someone cares about Mom suddenly, does she?” He waves the rifle in the air as he talks.
I am strangely calm, now that Bunny and Lily are out of sight. Perhaps it was my conversation with Gran, or that I am all cried out, or that Dumpling is awake. Whatever the reason, I am not sliding back into that familiar place of dread and fear.
My father standing on the porch with a rifle does not scare me as much as all the nights I lay awake wondering what he might do to me. At least now I know what I’m dealing with—a drunk man with a gun—not something in the dark that I can’t defend myself against: the smell of alcohol on hot, putrid breath coming closer and closer as I hide my head under my pillow and wait for groping hands—so drunk they cannot even remember what they did the next morning.
A rifle is nothing compared to that.
“You’re going to give me that money, Dora,” he says, but his voice sounds less dangerous in the light of day and I can tell he thinks so, too.
“Fine,” I say. “But let me make sure Mom is okay first.”
“Fine,” he says, repeating every word again in that high-pitched mocking voice.
In the distance I hear a faint siren.