The next day felt slow.
The bunnies were spread across the dining table, still drying. They didn’t look perfect, but they were all still there.
Claire stayed quiet all day. She avoided me, and even when Liam came home from school, she kept her distance.
No apology.
But I watched her. She kept looking at the table, at the bunnies.
As if she were trying to understand something she’d missed before.
She kept her distance.
That evening, Claire surprised us by calling us all into the living room.
Liam sat beside me. Daniel stood near the doorway. Claire stood in front of us.
She looked at Liam first. “I’m sorry.”
“Okay,” Liam whispered.
Then she looked at Daniel and me. “I shouldn’t have done that. There’s no excuse for it.”
Daniel crossed his arms. “You think?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I think… I mistakenly thought that if I pushed hard enough, Liam would let go of his mom, and maybe… make space for me.”
“Mistakenly,” I repeated.
“I didn’t understand what those sweaters meant. Or what he turned them into.”
“And now?”
Clarie glanced toward the dining room. “Now I do. I’ve had a lot of time to think, and… knowing you still chose me, even after finding that box…” She looked at Daniel. “…made me realize who’s actually standing beside me.”
Clarie glanced toward the dining room.
Then she turned and walked outside.
We all sat there, unsure of what she was doing.
A minute later, we heard the dumpster’s lid. Then footsteps. Claire returned, holding the empty wooden box from the day before. She’d emptied it.
Then Claire walked straight to Liam and held out the box. “Can we start again?”
Liam looked at the box, then at her. For a long moment, he didn’t move. Then he took it. And hugged her.
Just like that.
“Can we start again?”
A few weeks later, the bunnies were ready. Cleaned. Dried. Notes fixed. Some were still a little uneven, but that didn’t matter. Liam asked Claire if she’d go with him to deliver them. Teary-eyed, she agreed.
Later, I heard from Liam that Claire stayed close to him the whole time.
She didn’t try to take over. Just… stayed.
Liam said he got to hand them out after explaining to the nurses why he was there. He said the kids in the cancer wards he visited when his mother went in for treatment held onto the bunnies as if they meant something.
Because they did.
Teary-eyed, she agreed.
On the drive home, Liam revealed he’d leaned his head against the window.
Then he said, “Mom would’ve liked that.”
He saw Claire’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.
But she didn’t say anything; she just nodded.
And for the first time since she walked into our lives…
I believed she might finally understand how to stay.
“Mom would’ve liked that.”
