Not a cupcake eaten beside a humming mini-fridge.
Something she could unwrap and know I had chosen just for her.
The afternoon before her birthday, I was driving to pick her up from school when I saw a GARAGE SALE sign taped crookedly to a telephone pole.
I almost kept driving.
Then I noticed a folding table covered in small porcelain animals.
Rabbits.
There were dozens of them.
I pulled over.
Exactly thirty-three rabbits covered the table. Some held carrots or flowers. One carried a tiny basket. Another wore reading glasses and had a little book painted between its paws. Several were dressed in old-fashioned coats, and the largest was a white rabbit almost a foot tall with a pale gold crown.
Piper had loved rabbits since she was little.
She had three stuffed ones on her bed, drew them in the margins of her school papers, and had been asking me for a real bunny since she was five.
Whenever we passed one in somebody’s yard, she’d whisper, “That’s a lucky rabbit, Mom.”
I don’t know why she believed that.
But standing there with barely any money and her birthday less than a day away, I wanted to believe it too.
A cardboard sign beside the collection read:
ALL 33 — $10.
I checked my wallet.
Twelve dollars.
I should have walked away.
Instead, I bought thirty-three porcelain rabbits.
The woman running the sale looked to be in her early seventies. Her name, I would later learn, was Nadine. She had silver hair twisted loosely at the back of her head and dirt on the knees of her gardening pants.
“Somebody really likes rabbits,” she said.
“My daughter.”
“Birthday?”
“Tomorrow.”
Nadine smiled.
“Then I think they found the right little girl.”
I don’t know why that kindness got to me.
Maybe because I’d spent three months listening to lawyers discuss my life as if it were paperwork.
When Nadine noticed my eyes filling, she gently asked if I was all right.
That was enough.
I told a complete stranger more than I intended.
I told her about Gavin.
The motel.
The money.
How Piper had asked if she could still have cereal.
Nadine didn’t interrupt.
When I finished, she looked toward the rabbit collection and said, “Your daughter sounds lucky.”
I gave a tired laugh.
“She lives in a motel.”
“I didn’t say her situation was lucky.”
Before I could ask what she meant, I glanced at my phone.
“Oh, no. I’m late for school pickup.”
I pointed toward the rabbits.
“Would you mind packing them? I’ll come back tomorrow morning.”
“Of course.”
As I turned to leave, Nadine called after me.
“Wait. Did you grow up around here?”
I stopped.
“Yes.”
