who: bunny / self-para
when: november 06, 1990
where: the walker estate ; 7:10 am
Bunny is at the kitchen table when it happens.
Morning sunshine slants in through the wide window above the sink, illuminating the glassware in the china cabinet and settling on the polished floors in buttery stripes. At one end of their long wooden table, Mr. Walker sits with the newspaper splayed open, hiding his weathered face. At the opposite end, Bunny cradles a steaming cup of coffee in a chipped yellow mug. Aside from the gurgling of the coffee machine and the rustling of turning pages, the kitchen is quiet; it is just the two of them.
Bunny takes a sip of coffee that burns her tongue. Good, she thinks. Her father always hated when she interrupted his morning ritual of coffee and the Cardinal Chronicle. Usually, her mother was in the kitchen, with them, spooning minute portions of yoghurt and granola into a ceramic bowl; but this morning, she'd left early to deliver a bouquet of sympathy flowers to the Avalons — leaving just Bunny and her father in the quiet of the kitchen.
Bunny studies her father's large, creased hands as they grip either edge of the newspaper: the black hair below his knuckles, the thick golden band of his wedding ring on the fourth finger of his left hand. Hands that had stroked her hair as a child and pressed against the back of her forehead to assess a fever. Hands that had trembled against the cold metal edge of a hospital bed, ghosting toward her without ever making contact. Hands that had waved away her tears and pleading words.
Her eyes drift from those hands across the front pages of the newspaper, the black bolded headline above a grainy portrait of Avalon Rivers. Almost everyone that had grown up in Cardinal Hill knew the Rivers name; and families in the know ( like the Walkers ) knew of the other-wordly power they possessed. The magic of their bloodline. To lose such a figurehead ' was already a blow to the community, ' as her father had said. . .but for Bunny, it raised more questions than anything else.
She takes another sip of her coffee, her hands encircling the mug. Her thoughts flash to Bishop, and a shiver runs down her spine — would he know things she didn't? Things about the suspicious death of Avalon Rivers? Suddenly, she needs to see him.
Bunny is preparing to abandon her coffee cup and make for The Captain's cottage when her father flips a page of the paper, and a new headline catches her eye.
WE KNOW WHAT YOU'RE HIDING.
But its the picture below that unsettling title that freezes Bunny in her tracks. She knows at once that it's her — except it's not her, but something from a nightmare. Her pointed face draws down, too far, mouth hollow and open; only gaping blackness where her lips and teeth should be. Her eyes are white and pupil-less, her too-long fingers are twisted in her hair.
In her horror, Bunny is unaware of how her own expression shifts; a mirroring of that grotesque portrait. She hears a scream and stumbles back, the chipped mug slipping from her hands. It shatters on the floor, and hot drops of black coffee splatter her bare shins. It is only after this that Bunny realizes the scream came from her.
When her gaze snaps back to the paper, she's startled instead to see her father's watery blue eyes peering at her from above his spectacles. The paper rests open on the tabletop, and Bunny's horrified eyes drop to the newsprint, scanning the headlines.
"Bunny?" Her father asks, cautiously, his brow creased. She tears her eyes from the paper to look at him.
"I'm. . .It's. . ."
"What's wrong?" He asks, and there's an undercurrent in his tone that sets her on edge. Like he's anticipating a meltdown from her and doesn't quite have the space for it in his schedule.
Didn't you see that? She wants to scream. But she only shakes her head, tears brimming in her eyes. She wants to flee the kitchen, to fling open the front doors and race to Bishop at their grandfather's cottage. But there's chips of glass on the floor and a puddle of coffee on the linoleum. She snatches a dish rag and stoops to the floor to clean up her mess.
