Rabbit is missing.

You are three years old, and based on the volume of your cries this is the worst thing that has ever happened and ever will.

Tears stream hot down your cheeks as you tear through the living room, upturning couch cushions, rummaging through toy bins with frantic little hands. Your mother kneels beside you, checking under furniture, her voice soft and reassuring. “We’ll find it, sweetheart. Think—where did you have it last?”

You don’t know. You don’t remember. All you know is that you had it, and now it is gone.

“Have you seen it?” Your mother is on her knees craning her neck to look under the sofa, but she’s talking to your father across the room.

Your father barely looks up from his chair. “Just buy her another one, how will she notice,” he mutters, taking a slow sip from his drink.

Your mother stiffens. She does not argue, only presses a hand against your back and keeps looking.

You hiccup through your tears, turning circles in the center of the room. Your little hands clench and unclench. The air feels too big. The world is too big. Your rabbit is gone.

And I know where it is.

It lies half-hidden beneath the bookshelf, fallen between the wall and the floor. It fell there the night before when your father was hiding it from you in a drunken moment of pranking hilarity. A moment he either forgot in a drunken haze, or is cruelly allowing to extend into morning.

How wonderful it would be to just reach out and hand it to you, maybe read a few pages together. But I cannot reach for it, cannot push it into sight.

The room is still. The air is warm. But then, just for a second, the temperature shifts. A breath of something cool. A whisper of movement.

Your mother rubs her arms. “Cold in here all of a sudden.”

You pause. Your tiny brows furrow. You sniffle, turning your head toward her, then behind her at the bookshelf.

And then—there. Just a glimpse of soft brown fur sticking out from the gap.

A gasp. You scramble forward, little fingers grabbing at the rabbit’s floppy ears, yanking it free. “Hop!”

Relief crashes over you, the tears forgotten as you squeeze it tight to your chest. Your mother exhales, smiling, ruffling your hair. “See? I told you we’d find it.”

Your father barely reacts. “Crisis averted,” he mutters.

You don’t care. You have your rabbit. The world is whole again.

I watch as you press your cheek into its worn fabric, content, safe.

A trail of warmth follows you out the room and into the backyard where you show your bunny all the outside he’s missed so far today.

Inside, your mother looks sternly at your father.

“Would it kill you to pretend you cared a little?”

Your father shrugs his lips, closes his eyes, and leans back.

“It might.”