Chapter 24: Last Call

On the Thursday after my thirtieth birthday, there were forty-one parents on the story-time rug and one man in the back row who was not a parent.

I had been watching him for ten months.

He came every Thursday, in a clean shirt, with his hands on his knees.

He had come through summer, and the winter, and the week the pipes burst.

The toddlers had named him the Rabbit Man.

It was my fault.

I had once let him hold the felt rabbit, and he had held it with such terrible care that a two-year-old named it after him.

"And the little rabbit said," I read, and forty-one faces tilted up, "goodnight to the moon."

"Goodnight," said the Rabbit Man, a half second late, in his low voice.

The children screamed with joy.

I kept my face straight, which took everything I had.

The year had gone the way I'd said it would, a few Thursdays at a time.

My father wrote every week from prison, and I sent each letter back unopened with the date written on the front, because I had learned that from him.

Declan had been offered a desk in Quantico.

He had turned it down in a single sentence, and he drove to Millbrook that weekend to pull pints.

I found out afterward, from Susie's sister.

He had not said a word about it to me.

That was the new kind of thing he did.

He did it, and he let me find it.

When story time ended, the toddlers swarmed my desk.