“Make sure Mr. Bunny gets home to my mommy,” she said. And I promised he would, but keeping that promise became harder than I could’ve imagined.
I think she knew she wouldn’t make it.
I read that line three times, and then I couldn’t read at all. Some sound came out of me that I’d never heard before.
“Mom?” Lily asked quietly, and my heart shattered.
I went to the funeral to give you the rabbit, but when I saw you standing next to the caskets, crying, I couldn’t do it. What do you say?
I told myself I’d wait until the hurt wasn’t so fresh. But as time passed, it became harder to keep my promise.
Then you walked into my hospital room.
“Make sure Mr. Bunny gets home to my mommy,”
He hadn’t placed my face at first. But my name and my stories about my family had done the rest.
I should’ve told you then, but I couldn’t. I kept waiting for a perfect moment until my illness made sure there wouldn’t be one. I hid the box and asked Lily to wait a year so you could have time to become a family.
I’m sorry I failed your daughter’s promise.
I folded the letter very carefully, the way you handle something so you don’t throw it.
I failed
Then the grief turned. I felt it happen, the way you feel a car shift gears.
He knew.
He knew who I was every single day. He knew what that rabbit was worth to me. He married me with Mr. Bunny sitting in a box somewhere in the same house.
Then he died and passed the burden of his promise to Lily… someone innocent, and the one person I could never allow my grief and anger to touch in this moment.
Then the grief turned.
Daniel picked the one person on earth I couldn’t be angry at and put the truth in her hands.
Coward. That’s what I thought. Coward.
And there were things I’d never get to ask. Was Josie scared? Did she call for me?
He was gone. There would never be a fight, or an apology I could throw back in his face. Only a rabbit that didn’t even smell like my Josie anymore.
Coward.
“Are you mad at Dad?”
Lily’s voice was tiny. She was sitting on the floor with her knees pulled up.
Could I lie to her? I’d like to tell you I could have. But she deserved honesty, and I was too tired to do anything else.
“Yes,” I said. “I am. But listen to me. None of this is your fault. Not one bit of it.”
Her chin wobbled anyway. And then she asked the question she’d probably been holding for days.
Could I lie to her?
“Are you going to leave me?”
Everything in me stopped.
Here was a child who’d already lost both her parents. Now she’d watched her last person cry over something she’d delivered, and she was doing the math.
“No,” I said. “No, no, no. Come here.”
She climbed into my lap and held my collar in her fists.
“Are you going to leave me?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told her, over and over, until her breathing slowed.
But I’d be lying if I said my head was quiet. Because I kept seeing that line he’d made her repeat. You still have no idea why he chose you.
And here’s what my mind did with it, and I’m not proud of this.
I thought I finally understood. Daniel knew I was a mother once. He’d seen what happened to my child.
You still have no idea why he chose you.
Maybe he’d looked at a broken woman with an empty space where a daughter used to be and thought, There. That’s who can fill it.
The memories I had of Daniel began to feel different. I no longer knew how much of what I had seen in him was love and how much had been guilt. I hated him a little bit more.
