Chapter 8 - Ellie’s Rabbit Had Belonged to Grace
The destroyed stuffed rabbit mattered for another reason.
Grace bought it before Ellie was born.
There was a photograph.
Grace in a hospital bed.
Newborn Ellie against her chest.
The cream-colored rabbit tucked beside them.
Luciano found the photo while searching old albums.
He sat on Ellie’s bedroom floor with the torn toy beside him.
Its head remained detached.
Stuffing still missing.
He had not allowed anyone to repair it yet because Ellie said she didn’t want anyone touching it.
“She killed Bunny,” Ellie had said.
“He can be fixed.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because then everybody will pretend it didn’t happen.”
The sentence stunned him.
Six years old.
Already understanding how adults erase damage by cleaning it up too quickly.
So he left the rabbit exactly as it was.
Stored safely in a clear box.
Not as a punishment.
As evidence.
Then he found something inside the torn body.
A small fabric tag.
Handwritten initials in faded ink.
G.W.
Grace Whitmore.
Ellie had been carrying one of the last objects her mother personally prepared for her.
Celina knew that.
She had once complained:
“Why does she still drag Grace’s old toy everywhere?”
The attack on the rabbit was not random rage.
It was symbolic.
Celina wanted Grace removed from the house as much as she wanted Ellie removed.
That realization made Luciano understand something painful.
Celina had not merely been competing with a child.
She was competing with a dead—or missing—woman.
May you like
And she had been punishing Ellie for carrying the memory.
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