Floppy the Bunny was the first. I was only five years old, and I was outside looking for my rabbit who had gone missing. My mother was calling me, but I wouldn't go inside. She found me in the woods behind our house and told me he left because animals ran away from children who were bad. I asked her what I had done. My room was a mess, she said.

     After that, I cleaned my room every day, but my rabbit never came back. Six months later, Sleepy the Puppy arrived at Christmas. I tried hiding him because I was afraid he might leave as well. He did. In a matter of weeks, he was gone. My mother said we were horrible children, and our pets had no choice but to leave us.

     During the following years, Mom would say if we were good we could try again with a pet. And we did. I didn't want to get attached, but I always did. I used to take the pets to bed with me so they wouldn't runaway, and yet in the morning, they would be gone. I wondered what we did that was so awful. I still did my chores and I never spoke back. I got good grades. I fed our pets, watered them, and changed their cages. I begged them not to leave me.

     By the time I was sixteen, we hadn't had a pet in years. Mom said we couldn't afford them. Dad was laid off, and he drank more than ever. I worked in a bar restaurant busing tables on weekends for pocket money. I saw my dad once drinking in the corner of the bar. I went over to say hello. He wouldn't answer me, but as I turned to leave, he spoke.

    "Don't ever speak to me here," he said. "This is my place."

    "All right, Dad," I said.

    A week later, a co-worker named May brought in some stuffed animals from a toy liquidator. I thought they were beautiful. They looked like real animals. I asked her to take me the next time she went.

    When I came home, I saw Mom notice the bag. I cringed.

    "What's that?" she asked.

    "Something for my room, "I said.

    "Show me," she said.

     I opened the bag and pulled out the stuffed animal.

     "Imagine someone your age buying something like that," she said. "I used to buy lipsticks."

     I held my breath as she looked at it. The cat was a dead ringer for Tabby the cat who left when I was nine years old. Would she notice? She didn't. That night, it felt good falling asleep with the stuffed cat in my arms. I kept buying more stuffed animals. Before I realized it, the night time rituals had begun. I couldn't sleep unless my stuffed darlings were in a certain order on my bed around me. I counted them, over and over, until I fell asleep. I loved the smell of their fur and the sweet look in their eyes. If my eyes were closed, I could tell them apart just by the touch of their fur.

    Then out of the blue, I came home one night after work to see my younger brother, Graham, in the backyard with a bonfire. He was tossing my stuffed animals into the flames. Horrified, I ran over to him, screaming for him to stop. I tried to wrench the last one away from him. The tabby cat tumbled into the raging hell.

    "It's sick what you do at night," he said. "It's not natural."

    "It's only fantasy," I said.

    "You're sixteen."

     For weeks, I hated Graham, but I slowly realized he was right. I was too old for stuffed animals. I was almost a woman. Instead, I started looking at my mother, realizing how much I hated her. I counted the days until I was eighteen.

    A week before my eighteenth birthday, I woke after a nightmare. I went to get a glass of water from the kitchen. My parent's bedroom was empty. No lights were on in the house. Outside, I saw the light in the shed was on. Curious, I went to investigate. Through the window, I saw my Mom beating my Dad with a belt. His pants were pulled down like getting a shot at the doctor's office, and he was bent over the bench. Her face was contorted with rage. His face was as white as death.

    In the morning, I watched my father come to the table. He acted as if nothing had happened. He sat down without a wince, and he wore the belt she had beaten him with. I looked at Graham, eating his cereal, oblivious. I decided not to tell him. Mom joined us with her cigarette and cup of coffee.

   "Why did you ever get married?" I dared to ask her. "Why did you ever have us?"

    "Because of the love I never had in my family," she said. "I thought I could find it in my own family. But it's all a lie."

     The day I turned eighteen, I left in a whirlwind of hate and independence. I quit the bar so I wouldn't run into Dad. May took me in for a few weeks until I found the job cleaning at a bakery. I rented a studio apartment. During the next years, I worked hard until I made my way up to a baker. It amazed me how I could mix vast quantities of things together and make something beautiful like bread. When I was living at home, I found everything I cooked turned into chard black bits. Now I was a competent baker. I loved knowing by feel how much a newly cut piece of dough weighed before I even put it on a scale.

    Now I worked at a trendy sourdough place in an upscale neighborhood. I loved making the starters. And I met a man named. His name was Paul. He was a part owner of Wild Wings, a wildlife art store around the corner. He would come into the bakery every day and buy two sourdough rolls. We started talking. He asked me out.

    I felt as if I truly started living the first night we slept together. He was there in the morning. He hadn't left. It was wonderful. Instead of reading a book in the store room, I began to go out at lunch and visit the local antique stores, even without Paul. I began buying little porcelain animal statues to celebrate my new existence. Life was good. Paul left his family and rented a flat in town.

    I never met his kids. I only saw a picture of them from years ago at Christmas. They were a few years younger than me. His wife would phone and rage at him, and his voice would be filled with impatience and bitterness. I prayed he would never use the voice on me.

    Paul told me all the time not to fall into the trap of marriage and kids. I told him there was no way. I didn't want it.

    But what I did want was Graham to meet him. Graham left home soon after I did, but he went wild. He would disappear for months at a time. Still I was the first one he saw when he came back.

    When Graham met Paul, I was so excited. My two favorite people were going to be together with me, but Graham hated him on sight. He thought he was an old man. We had a huge fight, the biggest one since he burnt my stuffed animals.

      A week after the fight, I got a phone call from Graham at work.

     "Are you still with him?" he asked.

     "Yes."

     "I don't want anything to do with you," he said.

     "Graham, how can you say that? I'm your sister. We're the only family we got."

    "He will use you up and drop you. He's a dirty old man, getting his rocks off on a young girl."

     I hung up on him.

    With Graham absent, my family began to seem a thing of the past. I concentrated on my life with Paul. I could have gone on forever with him with the way it was, but he wanted to be closer. He kept saying I was holding back. There was a tiny piece of my heart that I didn't want to get hurt. I felt as if I truly opened up and got hurt, I would die. He wanted that part. The more he pushed, the more I pulled away. Then he left.

    I was so devastated that I only slept and worked for weeks. I lost 10 pounds and cried myself to sleep. In the morning, my eyelids were glued together with dried tears.

     Then one afternoon, my coworker pulled me aside. She showed me the newspaper she was reading.

     "Is that your last name?" she asked.

      I looked at the obituary.

      "Is that you?" she asked. "Sara Leigh."

       "Yeah."

      I read the small paragraph. My dad was dead. He drank himself to death. I got the postage due notice a month later. I let it languish for days, thinking it was something else. When I finally picked it up at the post office, I was surprised to see my father's handwriting on the yellowed envelope. I didn't even know he knew my address.

     At home, I opened the it. I had no idea what it could be. Out tumbled something that chilled me to the bone. They were photographs of horrible shocking things that wrenched despair from my soul. Axes. Shovels. Ropes. She had used them on our pets. Hands shaking, I flipped them over, unable to look at them another moment. She must have done it while we were napping and later at school.

    Trembling, I went into my bedroom and looked at my miniature animal statues on my dresser. I loved my little bits. They usually brought such solace, but now it pained me to see them. After Paul left me, I felt that they had come back to me in spirit. I had cats, dogs, bunnies and a bird. There was one for every pet we had when I was growing up.

     Why hadn't Dad stopped her? Why did he take the pictures through the shed window? Why did he send them? He always said whatever your mother says, no matter what she said. How could he have taken these photos when he was so afraid of her?

    I had to tell Graham. I tucked my statues into a velvet bag so I could show Graham that our pet's souls did come back to me.

     Graham lived in the trailer park from hell. All sorts of people on the fringe of life rented the ancient tin cans for weeks and months at a time. Wary of navigating the long crowded streets with my car, I parked at the front and walked.

     At his door, I knocked, noticing all the windows were painted black. Graham answered the door. He looked shocked to see me, but he let me in. The first thing I noticed was the mounds of dishes in the sink. Graham lived on peanut butter sandwiches and melted cheese in bowls. He still had no phone. He once told me he didn't like people calling him. He still had the pewter griffin I gave him on a shelf. When I gave it to him years ago, I told him it was a mythical creature. It would never leave him.

     "Why did you paint the windows black?" I asked.

     "Because I was tired of the neighbors looking in."

      I glanced at the curse words spray painted on the walls. They were evidence of his rages. His girlfriends usually lasted only until they witnessed a rage.

      "Have you been doing that?" I asked.

     "Not for a while."

      Across my leg brushed a cat. I gasped in surprise and reached down to pet her. She was so soft, and she had six toes on each foot. In a corner was a cardboard box with kittens in it. I walked over and stroked the littlest one as it tried to play. It had six toes as well.

     "Like their mom, they will grow into feet," Graham said.

    The mom cat flopped down in the box and started to nurse them. Graham pulled the kittens away and pushed them toward a bowl of food. He rubbed the mom's head.

     "Do you know who the dad is?" I asked.

    "No," he said. "Mandy comes and goes, but she knows where home is."

    "You let her outside?"

    "All the time," he said. "But not right now. She has to take care of her babies. Most of the kittens have homes already. They are almost weaned."

     "Does the runt have a home?" I asked.

     "You can have him."

     "I've never owned a pet," I said.

     I still had that fear that mom was right. But Graham had a cat. She loved him. She lived here. She didn't leave him. He had done it.

    "He's the only one who is completely weaned," Graham said. "He's yours."

     "I don't know."

      "Why?"

     "I'm afraid of getting attached," I said. "And then losing him."

     "He won't leave you. He will stay with you for a longtime. I promise."

      "Ok" I said.

     Graham paused.

     "I take it you came here because of dad. How did you find out?" Graham asked.

      "A co-worker spotted the obit."

      "I've been reading them everyday," he said. "It was only a matter of time."

      "Did you go to the funeral?" I asked.

      "No," he said.

      "What about Paul?" he asked. "Are you still seeing him?"

      I hesitated.

      "He left me."

      "Why?"

       "I always kept a part of me closed off to him."

      "I never liked him in the first-place," said Graham. "He cheated on his wife and family."

      "He left his wife the first night we slept together."

     "He's still a bastard."

     "That's why I never told you he left," I said. "I didn't want to hear you say I told you so."

      "Still, how could you do that to his family?" Graham asked.

      "He was miserable."

       "Look at what you did to his kids."

       "Wasn't it better for him to leave than to stay miserable."

      I hadn't come to argue about Paul. Graham had to know about the photographs. He would know what I was going through. It could be a turning point in our life.

      "I didn't come here to talk about Paul," I said. "I got these in the mail."

        I handed him the envelope with the pictures. Graham opened it. His jaw dropped. His forehead furrowed. The horror on his face.

       "What the fuck is this?"

       "Dad sent them. It's his writing on the envelope. Remember the camera." I paused.

        "I don't think he wanted to hurt us, Graham. I think he wanted us to know. He's dead now. She can't do anything to him."

       "Why did he send them to you and not me? How did he know your address?"

       "I don't know," I said. "But Graham there is hope."

       I opened the velvet bag and gently poured out my little bits on the kitchen table reciting each name as I stood them up. Graham stood beside me.

        "They've come back to me in spirit. I know it looks crazy but you've got to believe me."

         "Oh Sara," he said.

        "Floppy the bunny was first. That's how I knew."

        "She's going to pay for what she did to us. To them. To you."

        I looked at Graham. We hugged. This was the closest I had felt to him since before he burned my stuffed animals. I put my statues back in the velvet pouch.

        "I need your car," Graham said. "We're going somewhere."

        "Where?"

        "Don't ask, Sara. Just bring your kitty."

        "I can't drive and hold him."

        "I'll drive, he said."

        In the car, it was so quiet. I wondered where we were going. I looked at Graham.

       "Do you have a license?" I asked.

       He didn't answer. He just glanced at me holding the kitten. It was meowing something awful.

       "Hold it close," he told me. "You're going to need kitten food and litter. Maybe a box with a hot water bottle."

        I nodded.

       "Do you still have of nightmares about your teeth falling out?"

       "Only after Paul left me," I said.

       At the beginning of the driveway, he parked. It was almost dark. There were only the headlights and the house light. It was raining.

       I looked out the passenger's window at the two oak trees next to us. One had branches low enough to climb. That one had been mine. The other one was Graham's. We used to play under the trees for hours making acorn salads on clover leaves that we left for the squirrel who lived in my tree. We never told anyone about the squirrel, and if we saw him with our parents we ignored him like an unwanted stepchild.

       Then I looked at the house, and I felt a cold deep in my belly. The porch light still flickered in the dark from a short in the wiring my father never fixed. It was a white ranch that hadn't been painted in 20 years. Rusted lawn furniture rested next to a broken bird bath that had belonged to the previous owners. There had never been any grass. Just weeds and dirt.

        "Five years ago, I left this house screaming," I said. "Mom was in a tantrum. I snapped and ran out of the house."

       "And two days later, I left," said Graham.

        "I never thought I would be back."

        "She is going to pay," said Graham.

       A light turned on in the house. Graham jumped out, taking the velvet bag with the photos and my statues. I put the kitten on the seat, opened my door and got out.

        "What are you going to do?" I cried.

        The kitten leapt outside the car and darted into the shadows.

        "Oh God, the kitten. Graham the cat!"

         He didn't stop. I went after the kitten. It ran into the ditch and then the woods. Running into the dark woods, I searched for the kitten, hearing its meows. The sound echoed in the rain and wind. Wet leaves squirmed beneath my feet. I stumbled on a large rock.

        "Here kitty kitty," I called out.

        Its meows drifted away. I couldn't find it. I started to cry. I listened as hard as I could. A woman's screams ripped from the house. I froze as I had been struck. They stop.

       "Graham," I said.

       I went back to the car. He wasn't there. I turned off the engine, and I approached the house, my heart racing, my knees feeling weak. The front door was torn off its hinges. I stepped inside.

      "Graham?" I called out.

        The lights were dim. I bumped into some stuff by the door. I looked down. Dad's stuff was shoved into a pile. The camera was on top. My eyes adjusted. In the living room, the same dingy paisley sofa with the yellowed doilies was against the back wall. A cheap print of Van Gogh's sunflowers bought at a garage sale hung above it.

       In the kitchen, there were rows of canning jars. Some were empty. Some were not. All were dusty. I heard the crackle of the deep freeze in the corner where mom kept frozen milk, butter and painfully tasteless white bread. The kitchen door leading outside was opened. I saw no Graham. I heard a moan and I peered into the shadowy lit mud room. Washer. Dryer. An old sofa piled with magazines. An ironing board.

      Mom was face down on the sofa. She was tied with electrical chord face down. Her house dress in ripped in back, revealing her bra strap. She had put on at least 30 pounds since I'd last seen her. Her hair was flat and matted with blood. On the floor was the iron and a pair of tongs beside it. He must have hit her in the head with it a few times, tied her. Then he used the tongues to hold my statues against the iron to heat them and burned them into her back. There were still there, sticking out of her flesh. Blood was coming out her nose and mouth.

     She twisted her head to the side and saw me. Her eyes were cloudy.

     "Sara help me. I'm dying."

     Graham had propped the photos in front of her face. Floppy the bunny was first. I wanted my statues back so bad. I approached her and gingerly pried them off her back. The burnt flesh around them was sticking and pulling away. She groaned and shuddered.

     "That's good. Take them off me," she said.

      I washed them off in the sink, dried them and found the velvet bag on the floor.

     "Now call an ambulance," she said. "Please, before I die. I beg you."

      But I didn't. Not a word came from my mouth.

      I left her there and went back to the car, my body so cold and heavy that I could barely move my legs. I saw something hanging from our childhood trees. Oh God. It was Graham. He had hanged himself from the branches of my tree with his belt. I ran to the tree. He was up so high I could barely touch his toes. I shouted his name. He didn't respond. I tried to climb the branches, but I couldn't pull myself up. Beneath him, I looked up into his face. His gaze was empty. His chest didn't move. He was dead.

      I got in the car, sobs ripping through chest. At first, I was so torn with grief all I could do was gulp down tears and snot, but as my vision cleared, I heard a plaintive meow. The kitten was on the passenger seat next to Graham's house keys. He must have found him before he did it. I picked it up and cuddled it close. It was soaked.