Maggie stepped forward and held out her hand.
In it was Frankie’s stuffed bunny.
Time stopped.
My heart stopped.
Everything stopped.
“She left this on the bed,” Maggie said softly.
I stared at the bunny, unable to move, unable to breathe. The worn gray fabric. The floppy ears. The mismatched button eyes.
My hands were shaking as I reached out and took it from Maggie. The fabric was soft under my fingers, worn smooth from years of being held, clutched, loved. The weight of it, so light, so familiar, made my knees buckle.
I sank down onto the porch step, clutching the bunny to my chest.
Frankie never went anywhere without this bunny.
Never.
When we’d lived in the car, she’d held this bunny while she cried herself to sleep. When we’d moved into the shelter, she’d kept it clutched in her arms like it was the only thing keeping her tethered to reality. When the trailer exploded, she’d grabbed this bunny before anything else.
And now it was in my hands.
Left behind.
On purpose.
I looked up at Cami. “She left this deliberately.”
Cami’s eyes filled with tears, but she still wouldn’t meet my gaze. She nodded once, a small, guilty movement.
“She planned this,” I said, my voice hollow. “She chose to leave.” I closed my eyes, wondering why my daughter would run. After everything we’d been through. Everything we’d survived, why now?
“Cami,” I said, my voice breaking. “Where is she? Where did she go?”
“I don’t know...” Cami started, then stopped. She looked at Maggie, then back at me. “They wouldn’t tell me.”
They.
Frankie and Nox. Together. Planning this.
“Her father gave it to her,” I heard myself say, my voice hollow and distant. “Before he signed away his rights and left. It’s the only thing she has from him.”
I looked down at the bunny in my hands. She’d had this bunny for ten years. Ten years of holding it, sleeping with it, crying into it, whispering her secrets to it.
And she’d left it behind.
“Why would she leave it?” My chest constricted with every breath.
My vision blurred with tears, and I pressed the bunny against my face, breathing in the familiar scent. Frankie’s shampoo, strawberry and vanilla. The faint smell of lavender detergent. And underneath it all, that indefinable scent that was justFrankie.
“She’s had it since she was two,” I choked out. “She takes it everywhere. She sleeps with it every night. Why would she leave it?”
Sam had gone very still beside me. When I looked up at her through my tears, her face was pale, her eyes wide with shock.
“Kat,” she said carefully. “When you say her father gave her this bunny—”
