I carried the rabbit into the kitchen and dumped everything onto the table beside my mail. The stuffing smelled faintly like cigarette smoke and mildew, like it had been sitting in a car trunk awhile.
The grocery receipt was from a gas station outside Omaha dated only three days earlier. The motel key card had “Room 214” written across the sleeve in blue marker. But the thing wrapped in aluminum foil bothered me most.
At first I thought it was food.
It wasn’t.
Inside was a small flip phone with the battery taped separately to the back.
And taped to that was a folded note in handwriting I recognized immediately.
My daughter Rachel’s.
My hands actually started shaking then because Rachel moved out of Iowa almost seven years ago after one of her disappearing spells. She’d call every few months from different states, promise she was getting her life together, then vanish again before Christmas or birthdays.
The note only said: “Mom please don’t answer if a woman named Denise calls first.”
That was it.
No explanation.
I sat there rereading it while my dog kept barking at the front window. When I looked outside, the woman in the gray hoodie was gone, but a dark SUV was parked farther down the street with the engine running.
I probably should’ve called the police honestly.
Instead I charged the phone.
About twenty minutes later it turned on and immediately filled with missed calls from one contact labeled ONLY DON’T PICK UP.
Then a voicemail notification popped up automatically.
It was my daughter crying.
Not dramatic crying either. Exhausted crying. Like she’d been awake too long.
She kept whispering because somebody was nearby. She said, “Mom if you’re hearing this, don’t tell Denise where I am. She thinks the baby’s with me but he isn’t anymore.”
I didn’t even know there was a baby.
Then Rachel said something else that made my stomach turn.
She said, “Check the rabbit before anybody else gets there first.”
Right as somebody started pounding on my front door.