“He said he needed proof first.”
“And the envelope?”
“He told me not to give it to Laurel unless she had nowhere left to go.”
I looked at the paper bag.
“She’s sleeping in a van.”
“I know.”
“You knew?”
Mrs. Alvarez’s expression filled with pain.
“I learned last week. Laurel hid it from me because she thought I would worry.”
“Why didn’t you give her the letter immediately?”
“I tried. She kept rushing away. Then I became ill.”
“What’s inside?”
“I never opened it.”
She reached for my sleeve with surprising strength.
“But there is something else.”
“What?”
“The rabbit.”
My gaze dropped to her hand.
“Dash’s stuffed rabbit?”
“Elias gave it to him the week before he disappeared. He told me it was the bravest rabbit in the world because it always remembered the road home.”
“That sounds like something a father tells a child.”
“No.” Her fingers tightened. “Elias repeated it three times. The exact same words.”
The bravest rabbit in the world because it always remembered the road home.
I had spent enough years listening to frightened clients hide important facts inside ordinary sentences.
“You think it was a message.”
“I think Elias believed Laurel would understand someday.”
“Did she?”
Mrs. Alvarez released my sleeve.
“Laurel believes he abandoned them.”
There was nothing more she could tell me. Before I left, I promised to return the next day and bring news of Dash.
Outside the hospital, rain had begun to fall.
I drove back to Milton Street with the envelope on the passenger seat and the sentence about the rabbit repeating in my head.
When I entered the family center, Denise was locking the front office.
“Laurel’s upstairs,” she said. “Dash is asleep.”
“Did she eat?”
“Half a sandwich.”
“That’s something.”
“In this house, we count small victories.”
Laurel sat on the floor beside Dash’s bed.
The room was simple: two narrow beds, a wooden dresser, and curtains printed with faded yellow flowers. Dash slept beneath a blue blanket with one arm around the rabbit.
Laurel looked up when I entered.
“Mrs. Alvarez?”
“She’s at St. Vincent’s. She had a cardiac episode, but she’s stable.”
Laurel pressed one hand to her mouth.
“I should have gone to see her.”
“You can go tomorrow.”
“She was sick, and I was angry at her.”
“You were scared.”
“I left Dash there.”
“You believed she was coming.”
“That doesn’t change what happened.”
“No,” I said. “It changes what happens next.”
Her eyes moved to the envelope in my hand.
