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    “The stuffed one. Like a toy? Ernie said the real Peter gave her the stuffed Peter to keep her company. So she wouldn’t be lonely when he couldn’t be with her.”

    “So he gave her a stuffed rabbit?”

    “Uh-huh. White and fluffy but it got dingy quick.”

    “Come on, Suzy Q, time to jump back in the saddle!” Peter called.

    He was walking stiffly toward them.

    “That was fast,” Rhonda said.

    “It doesn’t take long to get canned,” Peter said, trying to sound casual, but Rhonda heard the faint tremor in his voice.

    “What?” Rhonda asked.

    “They fired me. Said my working here was bad for business.”

    “They can’t do that!”

    “Sure they can,” Peter shrugged. “It’s a small town. People talk.” He drew in a breath, blew it out slowly, calmly. Only someone who knew him as well as Rhonda could read his face: he was seething.

    “About what?” Suzy asked.

    “A lot of nonsense, that’s what,” Peter said. “Now grab your latest masterpiece and come on. We’ve gotta get the shopping done and dinner cooked before your mama gets home.”

     

    “I DIDN’T KNOWguinea pigs were so talkative,” Warren said as he kneeled on the floor of Rhonda’s living room, stroking Sadie, who was showing off with whistles and coos.

    “I think she’s got a thing for you.”

    “She just loves me for my apple slices.” He reached into the aquarium and fed her another. “Her pink eyes are kind of freaky.”

    “Some cultures believe that albinos have magical powers,” Rhonda said.

    Warren raised his eyebrows. “Don’t tell me: that’s why you chose Sadie, to help with your mojo?”

    “Nope.” Rhonda leaned in and stroked Sadie’s head. “No magical powers here. Just a distinct lack of melanin. I rescued her from the lab at school.”

    Warren tossed in another apple slice, then stood up, wiping his hands on his shorts. Rhonda found herself staring at the fine hairs on his legs and wondered, for an instant, what it would be like to run her fingers lightly over them.

    Get over it,she told herself.

    Rhonda had dated in college. Not much, but enough to know that it always ended in disappointment. She’d gone out to the movies, dinner, even fooled around a little, but it never amounted to anything. No matter how nice the guy, how well he treated her or how much they had in common, he still wasn’t Peter.

    “You want a drink or something?” Rhonda asked, turning away from Warren and his legs. “I’ve got Diet Coke and beer. Or I could make tea.”

    “Beer would be great.” He followed her down the hall toward the kitchen, stopping to study the dissection drawings.

    “Did you do these?” Warren asked, finger hovering over the eviscerated rabbit, tracing the outline of its lungs and heart.

    Rhonda nodded.

    “They’re really good. Kind of a sick thing to put up on the wall of your home—animals all taken apart like this—but they’re excellent. Beautiful, even. You’re an artist.”

    Rhonda shook her head. “I just draw what I see. An artist interprets and manipulates—I don’t have that kind of imagination or ability.”

    “Yeah and I just film what I see too and they call it art. It’s all about perspective, Rhonda.”

    She shrugged and led him to the kitchen, where they settled inat the table with a couple of beers and some mildly stale pretzels Rhonda dug out of the back of a cupboard.

    “I’ve been thinking about this thing with Peter,” Rhonda said.

    “I think it’s shitty that Pat and Jim fired him. And it’s probably not even legal.”

    Warren nodded. “Probably not.”

    “So I thought maybe you could talk to them. Convince them that firing him isn’t the right way to handle things. It’s just going to make everything worse. People are looking to Pat as a key player in this Ernie thing—she’s had way more media exposure than Trudy and she’s pretty much become the star of Pike’s Crossing overnight. If she fires Peter, it makes him look even more guilty.”

    “I don’t know, Rhonda. Jim’s pretty easy. But Pat, once