Prologue
Stevie
I still remember the sound of his laughter. The deep timbre of a chuckle that was unmistakably his. I remember his scent too. Fresh air and earthy moss tinged with a little sweat from a long day on the construction site. I remember the feeling of jumping into his powerful arms as soon as he got home and the unease I felt in my belly every time I didn’t see his truck pull into the driveway at 5:35 PM.
“How’s my little bunny?” My father would ask, with a gigantic smile gracing his face.
I remember watching my chubby little toddler hands reach up towards his face, trying so hard to rub away the strange lines around his eyes. The ones that marred my dad’s otherwise youthful face. I hated those lines. I think even back then, I knew they were mocking me. Serving as a constant reminder that our time together was fleeting. That one day he would leave and I’d be alone… with her.
From an early age, I knew that my mother hated me. At first, I didn’t want to believe it. I mean, everything I saw about mothers told me that their job was to love their children unconditionally. To be the ones to kiss their wounds and make everything feel better. But making me feel loved was never my mother’s priority.
Carla Alexander hated me with every fiber of her being. Everything I did would set her off, but she especially hated when I drew attention to myself. Under her care, I quickly learned what wasn’t acceptable in her household. Every time I cried, she’d slap me. Every time I whined, she’d pinch me or pull my hair. Every time I expressed any emotion at all, there were consequences awaiting me. At just four years old, I learned to live in constant fear of the ticking time bomb that was my mother.
After a while, my self-image became skewed. I saw myself as weak and defective. After all, I was the one letting my feelings spill out. I was the one that was “acting out” against my mother’s wishes. There was something wrong with me.
I thought that if I could just do what she wanted and keep my feelings at bay, she would have no other choice but to love me. So I did just that. Day by day, hour by hour, I taught myself to feel less. I’d sit by myself for hours practicing how to bottle up my emotions until the day came where I stopped feeling them at all.
My father loved my mother, but he loved me too. It terrified him to see his lively and energetic four-year-old dwindle down to nothing more than a shell of a person. He’d beg me to tell him what was going on, beg me to talk to him, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. My father didn’t know my mother was hurting me. Carla left no lasting marks.
I knew that if I told my father, I’d be forcing him to choose. So I suffered in silence.
Despite the secrecy of it all, her hatred towards me still had a way of seeping into their relationship. Their relationship turned rocky and by my fifth birthday, they were fighting nearly every night. The fights would start out over something unrelated, but eventually, they’d find their way back to the most polarizing issue in their relationship, me.
My mother wanted to send me to boarding school in the fall. Her family came from money and she passed it off to my father as a family tradition she wanted to uphold. But my father grew up in a tight-knit working class family. He didn’t want strangers raising his daughter.
One night, during an exceptionally explosive fight, my mother finally acknowledged the elephant in the room. Her rage had reached a boiling point, and she confessed what my father and I had always feared.
“You stole everything from me, you vile leech.” She screamed, pointing an accusing finger at me. “My looks. My life. My husband. You are the reason I’m miserable. Giving birth to you was the biggest fucking mistake I’ve ever made.”
Her words shattered my tiny heart. I hoped that if I just behaved enough or if I just stayed quiet enough that she would learn to love me.
People in fairytales fell in love all the time. My five-year-old mind figured that if I tried hard enough, my mother could learn to love me. But there was no mistaking the conviction in her voice. She hated me. Earning her love was just a little girl’s naïve pipe dream.
My father never wanted to have to choose, but her brutal words left him with no other option. We left the house that night. He contacted a lawyer to start the divorce proceedings the next morning, and he never spoke to her again.
My father adorned me with the love and affection of two parents. He did everything he could to repair Carla's damage, and though I could never quite show it, I loved the hell out of my father.
Before his untimely death three years later, my father made me make him a promise. One that I etched into my heart and carried with me.
“Bunny, I need you to listen to me carefully.” My father said as he wrapped his large hand around mine.
His skin was icy to the touch, so much colder than I remembered. I let out a ragged breath as I stared at our intertwined hands. I could do this, I could be strong for the man who stayed strong for me.
“The next words I say will not mean much to you now, but one day, when you’re older, you’ll understand.”
I nodded as I looked into the brown eyes that looked just like mine and took in a shaky breath.
He smelled different too. Still clean, but gone was the earthy muskiness I’d always associated with him. His scent carried remnants of the sterile hospital room they had banished him to for the last two weeks.
God, I was going to miss him.
“I need you to promise me that no matter what happens, you move on and you live.” He said, drawing out the last word with agony in his eyes.
Pain sliced through me as I replayed the words over in my head. He wanted me to move on without him. Live forever without him. Gnawing on my lower lip, I shook my head. I couldn’t promise him that.
“I don’t want to move on and I don’t want to forget you. If I live forever, we’ll never see each other again.” I mumbled, casting my eyes to the dull linoleum tiles beneath him.
“I want you to live, Bunny.” He said, squeezing my hand as hard as his weak body would allow. “It’s okay to die when it's your time, but you have to live.”
