Page 14 of The New Year's Party
Her ex-husband, Elliott the Ex as she liked to call him, was a vindictive piece of work, and had called Child Protective Services on her because the apartment she’d signed for in a panic was too small for Bunny plus two kids. And, fine, it was abitinfested with roaches—flyingroaches, mind you, and by the way, why a good Creator would choose to endow cockroaches with wings was just, I mean, it really cast doubt on everything they taught you in Sunday school—but the point was... actually she’d lost the point. But the other point was, Bunny needed money now, to make this problem go away. And not just that, but to buy her some space, some time. She had to hustle so hard, she barely had a minute to sit down with her guitar. It had been years since she’d even dusted it off, since she’d feltinspired, and she wasn’t young anymore... Sheknewshe had talent, she’d always known it, but between the kids and the bills... This money could have bought her that time, damn it! Could have enabled her to finally write the best-selling country song sheknewwas in her, if she could just make space for the miracle of inspiration. She’d paid her heartbreak dues. She finally had the chops to write the song she never could have written ten years ago—
A loud honking made Bunny yelp.
“Watch where you’re going!” she shouted at the car creeping behind her. She moved and it sped around her, sending slush up on her knee-high boots.
“Asshole!” she shouted, jabbing her middle finger in their direction.
This was not how Bunny had pictured her life. Not at all. She’d gone to college for fashion merchandising. Paid her way by selling sex toys at small parties, since gigging with her original songs only ever paid for beer money. Graduated. Got engaged to her high school sweetheart, Nathan. Moved to Nashville to follow her musical dreams. Weathered Nathan’sbetrayal. Got over him. Moped and drank for a week, then started half a dozen side hustles—selling on eBay, selling essential oils, trying to resurrect her sex toy business, and even selling Mary Kay makeup to little old church ladies, of which Nashville had many. She started dating Elliott, who at the time she’d thought was a hunk. Unfortunately, she’d been too fixated on the impressive width of his chest and shoulders to notice his head was multiple sizes too small for his body, and too in-lust to realize that Elliott’s proportion of shoulders to head corresponded exactly with his ratio of ego to empathy. Anyway, two weeks after meeting Hunk of Burning Narcissism Elliott, she realized she was pregnant, and not from Elliott. Thankfully, modern medicine came to the rescue and Elliott was none the wiser. He proposed. They got married at a cute little chapel and she sang herself down the aisle with her guitar strapped around her. It had been a song she’d written for Nathan, originally, but it was a great song, it feltgoodto repurpose it for Elliott, and she could just imagine Shania Twain crooning it on the radio:I’ll love you forever, no matter what comes...
They had their first kid. And their second. AndthenElliott had to go and fuck some little twentysomething named Mandy whose body had never been put through the ravages of childbirth. Elliott literally cited “reverse body dysmorphia” as a reason for leaving Bunny. “What the hell does that mean?” she’d shouted, and she almostnevershouted. “It means... you don’t look like you used to!” he shouted back.
His pinhead just couldn’t process it all, she thought vindictively. And if his head was too small to lead the way, other things must. Like his dick.
“God,” Bunny groaned as she reached her car, tilting her head to the cold distinctly non-Tennessee sky. Where had things gone so wrong?
She reached for the door handle, but the damn thingwouldn’t open. It was supposed to unlock itself when the key was nearby, but as she pulled and pulled, the stupid door remained stubbornly shut.
“Fuck,” she said, surprising herself by starting to cry as she fumbled in her purse with frozen fingers for her keys to manually unlock it. Everything was in the way of her finding them. She threw her gloves onto the ground, then yanked the keys out from the bottom of her bag, sending multiple receipts and a tube of lipstick flying. She hadn’t deserved to be left by Nathan, who didn’t even have a college degree, who had no ambition. She hadn’t deserved to be left by Elliott the Ex because of the purple stretch marks he claimed filled him with quote, unquote, “dysmorphia,” even as he apologized and told her howguiltyhe felt, as if she was supposed to comforthim!
Finally in the car, she leaned her head on the steering wheel, her hair cascading around her face. Grandpa Max’s house had gone to her bitch of a cousin Sonia, who had three kids from different dads and then went and “repented” and joined the Pentecostal church. Grandpa’s money had gone to her second cousin Adam Dunders, who was the most boring person Bunny had ever met, which is probably why he was perfectly content to attend the boring Presbyterian church full of people as devastatingly boring as him. He’d save the money, Bunny was convinced, not because he was financially conscientious, but because he had no better ideas of what to do with it.
Bunny had been left only one thing. A note, sealed in an envelope, and even though Sonia and Adam had clearly wanted her to open it in front of them—they were just as surprised as she was about the inheritance—she wasn’t about to give them the pleasure.
Lifting her head from the steering wheel, she slid a long nail through the envelope and pulled out the paper inside. She unfolded it against the steering wheel, immediately startingto cry again at the sight of her grandpa’s handwriting. He had loved her, he really had. And she had loved him.Story of my life, she thought.People love me, and theystillbetray me.It did make her wonder... was it something about her?
No!You couldn’t think like that. The problem was them. She was not internalizing the assholery. She wiped a stray tear off her cheek and focused on the letter.
Dear Rebecca,it began.
I know this likely comes as a shock to you. It pains me to go back on our little agreement, as I always intended for you to be my sole heir. Allow me to explain myself in my own words. When your friend called me, at first I could hardly believe my ears...
She could barely make out the rest through her tears, but she forged her way through, each sentence more unbelievable than the last.
“What?” she said out loud, then blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and read it again, her lips moving silently.
... you were raised to believe in the sanctity of life, and I was heartbroken to be told that you had gone so far astray...
Reading the letter was like looking through a shifting kaleidoscope. It was all the same pieces in the little tube, but you turned it, and they made a completely new shape.
... I pray every night, dear Rebecca, that you will come to a place of repentance and return to the values of your childhood...
Fiery chills traveled up her neck, spreading over her scalp. So this was about... herabortion? Her abortion that she had kept a complete fuckingsecret?
Well... not a complete secret. She had told one person.
She folded the letter with trembling hands.
She was seething.Seething.Well, everything had been explained, in Grandpa Max’s own hand. There was no more mystery as to why he’d chosen to cut her off. And if she was mad before, it was nothing compared to how she felt now. Explosive.Nuclear.
The one thing Grandpa Max hadn’t spelled out was the identity of this “friend” of hers. But that wasn’t rocket science. William Bernanke was the one she’d called in those horrible minutes after the pink line appeared on the stick.
Technically Will was Nathan’s friend, but over the years, he’d become Bunny’s friend too. He was a Christian, sure, and a hell of a lot more conservative than Bunny, but she’d never felt judged by him. They had different opinions, but Will was safe. Or so she’d thought.
Her phone dinged again.
With cold fingers, as sleet launched itself furiously against the windshield, Bunny pulled it out. Nathan had texted six or seven more times.
Handsome?
