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We ate, and Grace did most of the talking. She frequently refilled my mojito, and at one point rushed inside to make another pitcher. She was curious about me and asked a lot of questions. In between shoveling meatballs into my mouth, I filled her in on my story.
“It’s a good thing you have each other.” She pointed out.
“She’s not my girlfriend, Grace,” King said, his lips compressed in a thin, straight line.
Grace shrugged and took another sip of her drink. “Edmund and I had an arranged marriage, you know. His mother and mine conspired together since we were still on the tit. The first few years we were together, I couldn’t stand the man, but after a while, I learned to love him. Then, I fell in love with him and felt that way up until the day he died. Things don’t always start out the way we want them to. It’s how they end that’s important. I may not have loved Ed in the beginning, but he grew to be the love of my life.”
Grace had the most optimistic, if not bordering on warped, perception of relationships. But what did I expect? The woman was a walking, talking contradiction. A tiny little thing that drank like a fish and swore like a sailor. Not to mention that her house looked like an episode of HOARDERS: RABBIT EDITION.
“It didn’t hurt that the sex was off the charts fantastic,” Grace said, staring up into the lights.
I spit out a mouthful of mojito. Half of it splattered against King’s shirt. I braced myself for his anger, slowly lifting my eyes to his, but there was none. His shoulders shook as he chuckled. Grace was downright howling.
I helped Grace clean up while King disappeared down the hall. I heard the bathtub running and thought maybe he was ringing the mojito out of his shirt.
“Grace, what’s with the rabbits?” I asked her, needing to know. She smiled and closed the dishwasher. She turned the dial, and it sounded like Preppy’s car exploding all over again.
“Ed used to bring me home a ceramic rabbit after every business trip.” She looked around at the table. “I know it’s odd, and I know they’ve taken over the house. But each one was a moment my husband wasn’t with me, but was still thinking about me.” Grace looked as if she was getting tired. My heart seized. I wasn’t expecting the reason to be so sentimental, and I hated that I ever thought that she might have been just a crazy rabbit lady.
“I’ll finish this up, Grace. Why don’t you go lie down?”
She nodded and wiped her hands on the dishcloth hanging off her shoulder. Setting it around the faucet, she brought me in for another hug. “Thank you. Take care of my boy, will you? He’s been having a hard time since he got out. I worry about him.”
I didn’t know how to respond, so I took the coward’s way out and went with what I knew she wanted to hear. “Of course.”
Grace made her way down the hall where I heard a door open and then shut. I finished the dishes and sat at the kitchen table for a good hour. It was getting late. Grace obviously needed to go to bed.
Where was King?
I padded down the hall and paused outside a door when I heard voices speaking in hushed tones. The door wasn’t latched, so I pushed it open a little, hoping it wouldn’t creak. Peering through the crack, I caught a glimpse of King and Grace in the mirror of a large ornate walnut dresser that took up most of the small room. Grace sat on the side of the bed in bright orange button-up pajamas with matching slippers. Her feet didn’t touch the floor. King crouched in front of her and held up what looked like some sort of glass pipe.
“Like this,” he said, lighting the pipe he took a hit and held it in his lungs before blowing out the smoke. Then, he passed the pipe over to Grace who did the same, looking to King for reassurance. When she exhaled, she started having a coughing fit. King held her arm while she laughed and coughed at the same time.
“Will I do that every time?” she asked when she was finally able to manage a sentence.
“No, just the first few times.” King assured her with a small smile.
“Good. I hate coughing,” Grace said.
“Are you sure there isn’t anything else you need?” He asked.
“I’m an old lady, and a dying one at that, and you still come over to fix my house and take care of me like I’m still going to be around in six months. You do too much already.”
“Don’t talk like that,” King scolded, pinching the bridge of his nose. Grace reached out, took King’s hands in her own, and held them on her lap.
“You are the closest thing to a son I ever had,” she confessed.
King looked to the floor. “You’ve always been more of a mother to me than…her.”
Grace’s face grew serious. “I’m only sorry I didn’t kill that bitch myself.”
It was on those words that I lost my footing and came tumbling forward into the room, landing on my hands and knees in front of the bed.
“Is she always this graceful?” Grace asked.
King kissed Grace on the top of her head and turned off the lights. I gave her a sad little wave as he ushered me from the room, closing the door behind us. He turned off all the lights in the house and locked the back sliding door. Just as we reached the front of the house, King stopped and reached into his pocket, then placed something on the edge of the table on the hall. I fell a few steps behind so I could inspect what it was he’d left for Grace. When I saw it, my breath caught in my throat.
It was a tiny white ceramic rabbit.
Chapter Eighteen
Doe
“We have another stop to make,” King declared, punching out a text on his phone with his thumb as we got back into the truck.
I looked at him, really looked at him as if I were seeing him for the first time. What I saw was a man who when you stripped away the intimidation and constant mood swings was someone who was taking care of a woman he loved in her final days. The man who I’d started out believing was a monster was capable of love.
“Why were you showing Grace how to smoke pot?” I asked.
“She puts up a good front, but Grace is in a lot of pain.” King winced. “All the medications they give her are a bunch of bullshit. It’s all supposed to make her comfortable, but she gets really sick from most of it.”
“What does she have?”
“Some fucking bullshit aggressive cancer.” King’s hands tightened around the wheel until his knuckles turned white.
“Does she really only have six months?”
King looked uncomfortable, but, I felt like after meeting Grace and bonding with her I needed to know more about her condition.
He propped his elbow up on the ledge of the open drivers side window, thoughtfully resting his jaw on the back of his hand. “They say six months, but I’ve been told to take that and divide it in half because they usually exaggerate when they tell you how much time you have left.”
“Who told you that?”
“Her doctor.”
“Oh.”
We spent nearly twenty minutes in silence as we rode to our next stop, which was another residential neighborhood, This time when King parked and I grabbed the door handle, he stopped me with his forearm across my chest.
“What?” I asked.
“We aren’t getting out.”
Killing the engine, he leaned back in his seat. I opened my mouth to ask why, but the dark look in his eyes said that he wasn’t up for conversation. I folded my arms over my chest, waiting for the reason why we were there to produce itself.
After a few minutes, there it was. A light. Not from the house we were parked in front of but the one behind it. From where we sat, we had a perfect view of the back of the house and the illuminated sunroom. A tall woman with short black hair was sorting through some toys on the ground, when a small blonde girl came bounding into the sunroom.
King sat up straight.
We may have been a hundred feet or so away from the house, but I instantly recognized the girl prancing around in her PJ’s.
“That’s the girl from your picture, right? Is she your sister? Do you want to go say hi? I’ll wait here if you want me to.”
King remained silent, staring intently at the little girl until the woman found what she was looking for and ushered her back into the house, switching off the light. King looked into the darkness long after they were out of sight.
“I can’t go see her. I have no rights. I’m her only family. She needs me, but to the courts, I’m just another felon. I don’t even have visitation. I did everything I could in prison, hired every lawyer I could, but there’s nothing they could do to help. I had to bribe a clerk to give me the address of her foster home. It’s the only way I know where she is.
“I’m sorry.” I said, and I meant it. King knew who and where his family was and they still couldn’t be together. “She really is beautiful.”
“She is,” he agreed. He turned the key and started up the truck. “Max.”
“What?” I asked.
“Max. Her name is Max.”
“Short for Maxine?”
King smiled and shook his head, turning back onto the main road. “Like Maximillian.”
“For a girl?” I wrinkled my nose.
“Yeah, and shut the fuck up. It’s the best fucking name ever,” King said, still smiling. There was a hint of pride in his tone that I didn’t want to step on. “A strong name for a strong girl.”
