Chapter 8: What the Rabbit Was For
Anna's room was on the third floor, in the staff wing at the east end of the house.
I had been in that wing twice in five years.
Both times for maintenance inspections.
I knocked.
A pause.
Then Anna's voice.
"One moment."
When she opened the door, Lily was behind her on the narrow bed, the rabbit in her lap, looking at a picture book.
The room was small and very clean.
A single window faced the east garden.
On the windowsill was a small succulent in a terracotta pot and a framed photograph I could not see clearly from the doorway.
"Mr.
Moretti." Anna stepped slightly to the side, not quite an invitation in, not quite a barrier.
"I won't come in," I said.
"I wanted to tell you what's happening."
She waited.
"Evelyn has left the property.
My legal team is involved.
The financial investigation is underway.
She won't be returning to this house."
Anna's expression did not collapse into relief the way I had expected.
She absorbed it the same way she had absorbed everything else that morning — steadily, carefully, as if she had learned not to trust good news until it had proven itself over time.
"And the route?" she said.
"The plaque comes down today.
I'll have the threshold assessed this week.
If it needs modification, it gets modified."
She nodded.
"Lily." I looked past Anna to the bed.
"I owe you an apology."
Lily looked up from her book.
"That step has been hurting you for a long time, and nobody fixed it.
That was wrong.
I'm going to fix it."
Lily considered this.
"Okay," she said.
Then: "Are you going to fix it yourself?"
"I'm going to have someone fix it."
"Do you know how to fix steps?"
"No."
She seemed to find this reasonable.
"Mama knows how to fix things," she said.
"She fixed my rabbit's arm when it came off."
"I believe it," I said.
Anna made a sound that was not quite a laugh.
It was the first sound she had made that morning that wasn't controlled.
I looked at her.
"The request you submitted fourteen months ago.
I want to formally acknowledge that it was received, that it was suppressed, and that the failure to act on it was a failure of this household's management.
Not yours."
She looked at me for a long moment.
"Thank you," she said.
It was quiet and direct and cost her something to say, which made it mean more than if it had been easy.
"There's one more thing," I said.
"I'd like to speak with you tomorrow, when you've had time to rest, about your role here going forward.
I'll need someone in this house who understands how the staff communication channels actually work.
Someone who isn't afraid to submit a report."
She was quiet.
"That's not a small thing you're asking," she said.
"No.
It isn't."
"I have Lily to think about."
"I know."
"If I'm the person who reports things, and something goes wrong—"
"Nothing will go wrong the way it went wrong before.
Because the system that made it possible is gone.
But I understand if you need time to decide whether you believe that."
She looked at the window.
At the east garden, still wet from the morning rain.
"I'll think about it," she said.
"That's all I'm asking."
I turned to go.
"Mr.
Moretti."
I stopped.
"The rabbit," she said.
"I wrote on it because I needed somewhere to put it.
The truth.
Somewhere Evelyn wouldn't look." A pause.
"I didn't actually think anyone would read it."
"Lily showed it to me."
"I know." She glanced back at her daughter.
"She's been waiting for the right moment for eight months.
She decided this morning was it."
I looked at Lily, who had returned to her picture book with the satisfied air of someone whose plan had worked out.
Four years old.
May you like
Eight months of patience.
"She was right," I said.
