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Twelve
Her hand crumpled around the scrawled note her dad had left for her on the counter, the coffee suddenly tasting bitter in her mouth. She knew she’d upset him the night before, but she hadn’t thought he’d been mad enough to want to avoid her the following day. She’d guessed wrong. He’d ducked out before she’d woken to get some things from town, the note said, and he doubted he’d catch her before she had to head back to Atlanta.
The heaviness she felt in her heart persisted as she packed up her belongings. She made the bed before tucking the glass shards into a tissue-lined Tupperware container, ready for the ride home. There was just one more thing she needed to do on the way.
Mosswood’s Main Street was the focal point of town, and most of the local services and stores squatted along its length. She pulled Morticia into a spot across from the sheriff’s department and got out, locking her securely before sauntering into the almost clinical-looking Go-Go Mart. The automatic doors swooshed closed behind her, announcing her arrival.
Ben looked up from behind the counter, grimaced, and then kept going with the gum he was restocking.
Ah.
“See Dad’s been by,” she remarked wryly, leaning forward so that her elbows rested on the counter.
“You need to let it go, Bun,” Ben advised, shoving packets of gum into their dispensers by the till. “You know he’s got a head harder’n a hammer. He’s determined to let her lie quietly, and I can’t say I disagree with him.”
Bunny’s brow lifted in disbelief. “Seriously?” she breathed. “You’re telling me that you don’t think there’s anything at all strange about a perfectly healthy woman dropping dead halfway through baking a cake?”
“Happens all the time, sadly,” Ben replied with a shrug, avoiding eye contact with her. He added chocolate bars to his display for good measure.
“Yeah well,” she sighed, folding her fingers together tightly. “Doesn’t mean we have to just accept it as Gospel, does it?”
“Sometimes it does. You can’t save the world,” Ben said, pausing to look sideways at his sister. His hands came up to rest on his hips as he looked at her with pity. “No matter how hard you try.”
Bunny bit the inside of her lip, letting her brother’s words wash over her. She felt like she’d been trying to be so hard for so long, striving not to let anything phase her as she moved through life. But the look in Ben’s eyes reached past her prickly, lobster-like shell. Deep inside her, her heart was still tender. For some reason, she was reminded about the first time she’d failed to save someone.
It had been a forty-three-year-old lady who’d been brought into the hospital ER with breathing difficulties. On the many occasions Bunny had looked back, she could see how dying had been the inevitable outcome. But she’d given an oxygen mask, and then intubated, and then done CPR. All textbook. All things that should have given Donna Newmont the best chance of survival. And none of them had worked. She’d died, younger than Bunny was now.
And Ben was right. There had been nothing more she could do. No matter how hard she tried, she now knew that Death had been there, waiting to escort Donna to the gate. Watching her work, administer CPR, sweat, and then finally concede. Calling the time of death.
Bunny pressed her lips together, nibbling at the inside of them as she tried to think of the right thing to say. Ben was still looking at her expectantly, as though this was another defeat she should concede. But she wasn’t ready for that yet. Even though she loved him and their dad more than anything, she still wanted to fight.
“At the moment, I’m just trying to save myself,” she told him, a half-smile ghosting over her lips. It didn’t reach her eyes, though. Before Ben could push her further away from her determination to seek the truth, she pushed herself slowly up off the counter. “I better go.”
Ben nodded slowly, as though hardly surprised she was making good on her escape. “Duty calls, no doubt.”
“You know it.” Bunny slipped around the counter, pressed a sisterly kiss to Ben’s cheek, and retreated. “Come visit soon, okay?”
“I’ll try,” he promised.
* * *
Her fingers tapped freneticallyin time to the rhythm of the music, her heart working itself into an even faster beat. Though most people might assume that she listened to death metal as a joke or because it made her more ‘avant-garde at her age’—whatever that meant—Bunny couldn’t help but find solace in what other people might term as chaotic. The drums, the guitar, and the growling vocals all combined into the perfect cocktail of anarchy. She couldn’t get enough, and she listened to her favorite bands at every opportunity.
Especially when driving Morticia.
In this instance, a band called Cadaver was making the long drive back to Atlanta bearable. The bitter aftertaste left in her mouth after her conversations with both her dad and Ben refused to ease off, no matter how much diet soda she tried to wash it down with on the drive. She took another sip for good measure, held Morticia’s steering wheel with her knees as she replaced the cap, and then reached over absently to put the bottle on the passenger seat.
When her hand connected with a well-muscled leg, she squealed—then swerved.
The screeching of tires on a country back road filled the air as Bunny’s adrenaline shot through the roof. She gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands, trying to correct the skid and ease back onto the road. The loud pop that added to the symphony of an upcoming car-crash told her that she’d been unsuccessful and punctured a tire instead. The instant drag on the rear driver’s side told her where the problem was.
Morticia limped to a halt on the shoulder of the road, sitting sadly in a cloud of dust that had kicked up around her. As soon as the car was stationary, Bunny turned to Death in the front passenger seat and slapped his arm.
“Hey!” he complained.
“You could have fucking killed me!” she raged, slapping him again. “Or maybe that’s what you want, huh? After all, it’s your job, right?” She swiveled to exit the car.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffed, throwing his door open in response to her doing the same. “Why would I want to kill you? It’s not your time to go.”
