The Cave Dwellers by Christina McDowell (readict books TXT) 📕

Bunny takes a moment to think about this: a revelation. “Huh. That’s a good point,” she says. Anthony appreciates the admission, leaning back in his seat.

She considers what her mother said at her birthday, Anthony’s challenge against the things that are being passed down to her uninvited, it’s rude to talk about money. “How much did they pay your dad at the chemical plant?” Bunny asks, knowing she’ll have little to compare the answer to. The limits of her identity reduced to a birthday check of $100,000.

“Well, I guess it seemed good in the beginning, you know, like a salary he was getting, maybe around thirty thousand, but the commute got hard so he ended up just moving to the town nearby. Once the divorce was finalized, we just saw him on weekends, you know, if we could afford a bus ticket or whatever.”

“What did he do for them?” Bunny asks.

“He was a security guard, letting employees in and out of the gates. He didn’t have the kind of engineer training and education you needed to work inside the plant.”

“I see,” Bunny says. “I don’t know much about the Bankses’ business, you know, I just know they… had a lot of money.” She fishes for more from him, about money, his thoughts on money, his thoughts about the Banks family.

“Man, they got enough money to feed an entire town they be killing! People out there are dying, and they’re flying around in their private jets and shit.”

Bunny wonders if he’s referring to Audrey. Did he see her Instagram page? Did he find her? Will he find me?

“How do you know they had a private jet, did you see it?” she asks, on the edge of her seat.

“Nah, man, you just know, you just look at these people and you know. The way they carry themselves.” Bunny adjusts her body language, trying to settle into her seat more, not so erect and alert, like a real good girl, so polite, so manicured, so refined, so…

She clears her throat. “Where did you work for them? Did you work with your dad?” Bunny looks around to see if any of the officers are paying attention to her.

“Nah, I worked at a warehouse out near Fredericksburg, another one of their companies, and sometimes as a delivery guy.”

“Okay, I did read that.… So when did you find out about your dad’s cancer?”

Anthony scratches his head, the screen goes out.

“Anthony? Shit.” Bunny slams the side of it.

“Ma’am! Ma’am, you’re gonna be asked to leave the next time you touch that monitor,” a security guard says, walking over to her.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.… Anthony?”

“Yeah, I hear you.” He comes back into focus. “About eight months before he died.”

“Only eight months?” Bunny says, heartbroken for him.

Anthony coughs into his fist. “Yep.” He can hardly look at Bunny, withholding his emotion.

“Were you able to get any help or medicine to try and treat it?” she asks. Bunny doesn’t know to ask about health insurance because she’s never had to think about it.

“I’m still paying for it,” Anthony says.

“What do you mean? You had to pay for it?”

“You think they gave him benefits?” Anthony laughs maniacally. “He wasn’t working inside the plant.”

“Did you have any savings?”

Anthony leans back. Exhausted from her questions, exhausted from her place in the world, the color of her skin, the assumptions she makes.

“I—I’m sorry, I know I’m asking a lot of questions, but—”

“Savings,” he says at her. “Savings…” nodding his head at how out of touch she is. Bunny is beginning to pick up on this—that savings are a privilege, not a right.

“I’m sorry, I… think I see.”

“You wanna see how much debt I’m in for tryin’ to save my dad? Huh? You wanna know what that feels like, having the creditors calling you, threatening to sue your ass while your pops is throwing up blood in the bathroom, nearly passing out from not keeping any food down, which we can’t afford?” Anthony reins in his emotion and throws the phone receiver against the screen, leans back, folds his arms. Abandoning Bunny for a few moments, the phone still clutched in her hand, her furrowed brow—she can’t feel that she needs to breathe; the only thing she knows is that she’s in too deep to back out now, to not do something. Still holding the receiver tight against her ear, looking at Anthony to let him know that in this moment she is with him, she’s not leaving.

Anthony slowly leans over, grabs the phone back, and puts it to his ear. He looks down at the ground. “I don’t have connections, I don’t have power, I don’t have help, and my lawyer fucking doesn’t give a shit about me. What I got is information.… The company’s rich, and the people who make the company are poor. It’s not right, it’s not right, and you fucking know it. I can see it in your eyes. I don’t deserve to be here, someone else does. I need a good lawyer, I need a real fuckin’ lawyer, Grace! Please, can you help me get a good lawyer?”

“Okay, okay, I—I’ll see what I can do. But if you didn’t kill them, Anthony, then who do you think did?”

“That’s not my fuckin’ problem, is it.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Bunny ducks under the electronic gate of Georgetown University Hospital’s entrance, climbing the steep driveway in her red peacoat. A NO WALKWAY sign is inked in white paint along the gutter, and she remembers the story her mother loves to tell about the morning she was born: “When your dad pulled up to the parking attendant at the gate so we could leave, he couldn’t find his stamped ticket. You were bundled in the backseat with me, Dad frantically searching his pockets, the glove compartment. ‘Come on, my wife just had a baby!’ he pleaded, thinking it would work, but the man would not budge! So he