“Are you mad at me, Malone?” she asked.
“No. Why would I be mad?”
“Mother said people sometimes get mad when they’re scared.”
“I’m not mad. And I’m not scared.”
She looked at him doubtfully and chewed on her lip, considering, as if she knew full well that he was scared.
“Mary was my little girl,” he whispered. “You were right. That was her bunny.”
“She got sick,” Dani said. It wasn’t a question, and he wondered how many stories the rabbit had to tell.
“Yeah. She did. And she died. About six months ago.”
“I’m sorry,” Dani said. And he could see that she was.
“Me too.”
“You sang her to sleep. But I only hear one song,” she murmured, still squeezing the little rabbit.
“I only ever sang one song.”
She began to hum his lullaby. “I’ve never heard it before.”
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. He’d lied. He was scared. Ice skittered down his back and heat pooled in his belly. He took the rabbit from Dani’s hand, but he replaced it with the hanky from his pocket. It was the one Irene had given him before he went to France. Her initials were neatly intertwined with his.
“Tell me another story,” he insisted.
Dani took it and spread it out over her skinny knees. She stroked it a few times and traced the letters.
“Is Irene your wife?” she asked.
“Irene who?” he asked, his voice soft and without inflection.
“Irene . . . the pretty lady who made these stitches,” she said, touching the initials.
He wanted to jerk the handkerchief from Dani’s lap and be done with the whole bizarre conversation. But damn if he didn’t believe her. And damn if he wasn’t fascinated.
“Tell me more.”
She wrinkled up her nose and tipped her head.
“You were going to be away from her, and she was scared you wouldn’t come back.” She drew the handkerchief to her nose and breathed deeply. “She put perfume on it so you would think of her. But I can’t smell it. It must have been a long time ago.”
“It was.” It felt like a lifetime ago. And he’d never used the hanky. He hadn’t wanted to soil it. He’d found it a few days ago at the bottom of a box of his things Molly had kept for him during the war. He’d been trying to get his affairs in order. He’d shoved it in his pocket with Mary’s rabbit, caught in a fit of sentimentality.
“How could you possibly know any of that?” he mused aloud, but Dani thought it was a question for her.
“I just do.”
“It doesn’t make sense.”
“Just because it doesn’t make sense to you, doesn’t mean it doesn’t make sense,” she whispered, and he couldn’t argue with that.
“What else? What else do you see?” he asked.
She folded the handkerchief into a smaller square and held it a minute longer. “I don’t see anything else. I just feel you.” She shrugged. “That’s probably because it’s been in your pocket. But that’s all.”
“You feel me? What do you mean?”
She shrugged again. “Just . . . you. Kinda like I can feel you next to me without looking at you. You’re warm and you’re big and you smell clean.”
“Huh,” he grunted. He thought of the colors from his childhood, the hues that surrounded different people, and trying to describe it to his mother.
“Do you believe me, Malone?” she asked.
“Yeah, Dani,” he whispered. “I guess I do.”
She sighed like he’d given her a slice of pie with ice cream on top and closed her eyes. “Mother and Daddy said I shouldn’t tell anyone my stories. So I don’t. But I still know things. I can’t help it.”
“You ever told anyone else?”
“Not really. Mother tried to send me to school, but the nuns got mad at me. Mother said I could wear mittens, so I wouldn’t touch something that would get me in trouble, but the nuns didn’t like that either, and it made it hard to do my work. And sometimes the stories just popped right out of my mouth. The nuns told Mother I had an evil spirit. So Mother took me out of school.”
He had let the conversation trail after that, but Dani had extracted a promise from him before they parted.
“Will you find the man who killed them?” she asked. He thought about evading her query with a pat on the head and a denial of the facts.
“I don’t know, Dani. My captain thinks it was your pop who killed your mother. And then he killed himself.” It was a brutal assessment, but Dani was not a child that could be easily lied to.
“But you don’t think that. I wore your coat.”
Malone stared at her, dumbfounded.
“You put your coat around me,” she pressed.
“So?”
She sighed as if she knew he wasn’t going to like what she said next.
“A man who wants to kill himself doesn’t shoot himself in the chest. He shoots himself in the head. That’s what you thought when you saw them . . . when you saw Daddy. Isn’t it?”
“Good God, kid.”
“Daddy didn’t do it. Someone else did. You need to find him. If you don’t do it, who will?”
4
Malone didn’t join them for breakfast, so Dani made up a tray and knocked on his bedroom door. She knew he was up. She’d heard him moving around, and he’d been in and out of the bathroom. The smell of spice and soap wafted in the hall between his closed door and the sink.
Dani knocked again, balancing the tray against her chest. “Mr. Malone?”
He didn’t answer.
“Mr. Malone? I brought you some breakfast. I can leave it here by the door. I just wanted you to know it’s here.”
The door swung open, and Malone stood on the other side, his jaw clean-shaven and his dark hair slicked straight back from his square forehead. The shadows beneath his hound dog eyes were considerably lighter, and he greeted her pleasantly, though he didn’t smile. Dani would like to see him smile. She had a suspicion it might transform him. Maybe that’s why he didn’t do it. Transformation could be frightening.