Rabbit Heart by Kristine S. Ervin

Author:Kristine S. Ervin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2024-01-18T00:00:00+00:00

After all of this, and just twelve days after the cold case story gave us the Colt and body bag scenes, I found out through an email to our entire family what Rolland could never say to me:

I know the news story probably surprised most of you . . . I have felt a responsibility to try and keep the investigation going. I don’t think I want to do this again. It was extremely difficult to go through the interviews and see the story in video. I expected to have a feeling of accomplishment and purpose afterwards. Instead, I felt very depressed and angry . . . While I still want her killers brought to justice, I think it is time for me to accept how it is.

I’m not going to lie, it enraged me. I couldn’t understand how he could sound so nonchalant on the phone and then write that he was depressed and angry. Perhaps it’s because he married a woman who thinks crying or expressing emotion is a weakness, especially in a man. Or perhaps he was trying to emulate our father, who when he heard the psychologist say, “Children who’ve gone through trauma need stability,” had seemed to translate that as I must be stoic at all times. Or maybe Rolland saw nonchalance as a way to protect me; after all, no matter how much I age, I’m still the little sister.

I thought of the pressure Rolland had felt, though I’m not sure where it came from. He was the one who pushed all those years, pushed what I imagine to be a shipping container, bright blue, with all his weight, and inside of it—her body and her killers and fables of white knights and the history that is masculinity, that is the son. Rolland who had wanted to contact Unsolved Mysteries when we were young, Robert Stack walking through the darkness to speak Mom’s name. Rolland who had wanted to sue the mall. Who went to law school, worked as an assistant DA because there were other women and families to save. Who’d make sure those binders never became too dusty. Twenty-two years of phone calls and meetings with detectives and interviews for the newspaper, and now it was time to give up.

I thought about how different our grief would have been, had we known, from the beginning, what had happened to Mom. The details had been parceled out over decades, and so in some ways, while her absence was sudden, her death was slow. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say she died multiple times, each death more graphic and more violent and more difficult to bear.

Now I could begin to imagine the shipping container rusting and abandoned in a field, its original spot having moved only an inch. Grass and weeds will sprout and cover its sides, concealing it. Then Rolland, his hair graying, can let his blistered hands heal, and I can search for a type of silence that offers a balm instead.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.