The Third Bear by Jeff VanderMeer Page B

bean casserole, and potatoes au gratin with cheese crisped in frozen waves on top.
    We ate silently because it was delicious and we were starving, Aunt Etta smiling at us from time to time from her newfound "shining city on the hill" as the church preacher might've put it.
    Sensio didn't eat much, but this didn't seem to bother Aunt Etta. Mostly, Sensio had a sense of watchful waiting about him. But I ignored that, just as I put aside any misgivings about Aunt Etta's cheer.
    Finally, Aunt Etta disappeared once more into the kitchen and came out wearing oven mittens and carrying a huge silver bowl, twice as large as the others, with an ornately etched lid.
    She placed it on the table in front of us, and produced a ladle. A stillness had come over her, a kind of grand anticipation.
    "This is something extra special for you, Sensio," she said. "I hope you like it."

    With a flourish, Aunt Etta uncovered the bowl. Steam rose, and with it a smell familiar to me. Rabbit stew.
    You might think I would've been horrified. But, oddly, I wasn't. Some cruel little part of me perked up in sudden fascination. What would Sensio do? Perhaps I was mad Sensio didn't talk to me as much anymore, even though that impulse would've been perverse, irrational. It was Aunt Etta who had ruined our conversations, after all.
    Aunt Etta placed a generous portion in Sensio's bowl.
    Sensio sniffed it hungrily, jumped onto the table, put his forelegs on the lip of his bowl. With extraordinary grace and agility, he used his teeth to pick out a carrot next to a meat-rich bone in the thick gravy.
    "It's rabbit stew," Aunt Etta said, as if revealing the twist in a thriller on the radio. Her voice was slick with a kind of self-satisfaction, a sort of smugness.
    Sensio sniffed again, looked over at Aunt Etta, said, "I am not a rabbit," lifted a bone out of the bowl, and crunched down on it with teeth never intended for the task. The sound of the bone cracking and then splintering was loud and grotesque. A sloppy, brutal sound that made mockery of the silver dining service, the opulent dining room, and, especially, of Aunt Etta.
    The air had disappeared from my lungs without me noticing it, and I took a huge gulp. Neither Aunt Etta nor Sensio took any notice of me. Aunt Etta slowly sat back in her chair, struggling with emotions that only occasionally broke the surface of her face in the form of a tic, a tightening of the jaw, a strange look that hinted at both hatred and defeat. All those dollar signs were receding from eyes grown small and cold. Except, thinking back, I don't think it was really about making money off of him anymore.
    But the crunching continued as Sensio, with great delight and deliberation, ate his stew, sucking out marrow as well as he was able, the pink of his nose, the white fur of his muzzle, soon muddy with the gravy.
    It wasn't quite over, but it might as well have been. Aunt Etta attempted a kind of recovery, to overcome the moment with halting conversation, to somehow undercut the enormity of not just one, but two things that defied explanation. As I glutted myself to shut them out, and became drowsy, I seem to recall Sensio saying matter-of-factly, "...there is no time" or "...there isn't time yet," while Aunt Etta whispered over and over, as if to confide in Sensio, "Don't make me look like a fool. Don't make me look like a fool."
    Their conversation seemed to narrow and narrow, like light withdrawing until it was only a single bright point reflected in the darkness of the dining room table.

    I know I should think of Aunt Etta every day. I know I should be kinder to her memory. I know I should be sorrier about what happened. But even when I came across the photo again yesterday, while cleaning up the attic, all I could see was Sensio, and all I had inside of me was frustration, and a kind of anger that won't go away. That I didn't ask the questions before, or the right way, and that this would've made all the difference. Whenever I