Five Rabbits Came Home From the Timber

She came to the last cage, the empty one with the purple rosette on top, and she read the card. Then she looked over at Della, who was standing beside me holding Smoke.

Her little boy tugged on her hand. “Mom,” he said, loud, the way little kids are loud. “Are those the bunnies that got out?”

Every adult in that barn heard him.

Shawna did not look away. She knelt down beside him on the dirt floor, right there in front of the cages, and she said, “Yes, buddy. Those are the bunnies I let out.”

He looked at her. “Why?”

“Because I was mad,” she said. “And I didn’t think. And I was wrong.”

She said it out loud in the middle of the rabbit barn at the county fair in front of half the 4-H families in the county, and she said it to her own son.

I had not expected that. I do not think anybody had.

Then she stood up and walked over to Della.

I put my hand on Della’s shoulder. I did not say anything. I was not going to stop this, and I was not going to make it easier, either. It was not mine to do.

Shawna stopped in front of my daughter. She took off her sunglasses and held them in both hands.

“Della,” she said. “I’m so sorry about Hazel and Licorice.”

Della looked up at her. She did not say anything for a long moment. Then she said, “You remember their names?”

Shawna nodded. Her eyes were wet. “I read them on the cards on the hutches every day. I just never said them.”

Della looked down at Smoke in her arms, and then up at Shawna again.

“Do you want to hold her?” Della asked. “She’s the one that won.”

Shawna’s face did something I will not forget. She shook her head. “I don’t think I’d better, honey. My asthma.”

“Oh,” Della said. “Right.” Then she said, “You can pet her. Just with one finger. On the nose. That doesn’t make you sneeze, Daddy says.”

So Shawna put out one finger and touched the end of that gray rabbit’s nose, very lightly, and Smoke wiggled her whiskers at her. The little boy laughed out loud.

I am not going to tell you that everything was fixed. It was not. Two rabbits never came home, and a ten-year-old girl laid lettuce on a rock every evening for six weeks for them.

But I will tell you what Shawna said next, standing in that barn with her son holding her hand and the whole aisle pretending not to listen.

She looked at me first, and then at Della.

“I talked to your dad,” she said. “If you want to keep raising them, we’ll build a hutch outside. A real one. In the shade, by the maple. With a roof and a fan. I’ll help him build it, and you can show me how to fill the water bottles.”

Della looked at me. I nodded.

“Okay,” Della said. “But it has to have a latch they can’t open from the inside.”

Shawna smiled, the first time I had seen her smile all summer. She held up two fingers.

“Two latches,” she said. “And I’ll build it myself, if you’ll show me where it goes.”