He looked like the ground had shifted beneath him.
Hannah held out the box.
“I brought this because I thought maybe you’d recognize it.”
His hands shook as he took it.
He opened the paper carefully, as if whatever was inside might break.
Then he lifted the lid.
Inside was a tiny stuffed rabbit, worn almost white at the ears, and an old birthday card sealed inside a plastic sleeve.
“My God,” he whispered.
He touched the rabbit first.
Then the card.
“You kept this.”
Hannah nodded, tears running openly now.
“It was one of the only things I had from before foster care. June wrote my name on the card. I used to read it when I moved to a new place.”
Mr. Walter sat down hard on the bottom bus step because his legs had clearly stopped cooperating.
Hannah knelt in front of him.
“I know life did not go the way any of you wanted,” she said. “But I wanted you to know that I was real. I existed. And whatever love you and June had for me, it mattered. I carried it.”
Mr. Walter cried so hard he could barely breathe.
He looked at the rabbit again, then up at Hannah’s face, as though he were trying to match years of grief to the living person standing right in front of him.
