I noticed the rabbit hiding in the bushes while I was doing the dishes. It was the right color gray to be a real rabbit, and I was almost fooled, but the carved indentations in its ears gave it away as a stone lawn ornament.
The problem was, I had no idea where it came from.
I meticulously keep records of everything that happens in my life, writing my notes down in leather-bound journals. Among my scribblings is a record of every gift I’ve ever received, and everything I’ve ever bought since I was in high school.
I found no record of receiving a stone rabbit as a gift, nor a record of buying one. Surely, I’d remember purchasing a stone rabbit. Especially since I wouldn’t have chosen that particular one, its beady eyes were almost staring me down from where it sat.
It seemed unlikely that someone left it there as a mistake. I brought it inside, looking for the label to see where it’d come from. It didn’t have one. I picked up my phone and dialed my mother. Maybe she’d left it there by mistake the last time she’d been out in my garden tending my plants, as she sometimes did. She knew nothing about it, nor did she ever recall me unwrapping one at Christmas.
By now I realized I was more than an hour late for work, so I called in and took the day off. I was going to get to the bottom of this. I picked up my phone and started dialing everyone I’d ever shared gifts with. No one remembered giving me a rabbit, but at least a couple of my friends said it was possible. I went back to my journals. Could I have missed something? One friend who couldn’t remember said she gave me a set of pots to put plants in, which I had written down. Could she also have given me a rabbit and I failed to make a record of it?
I doubted it. There were only two occasions where I didn’t make notes, and both times involved me being in the hospital. Nobody came to my hospital bed with a lawn ornament for a gift, or if they did I’d surely remember it and would’ve written it down.
The sun was sinking towards a velvet horizon when I went over to the apartment next door to see if my neighbor, Jill, had accidentally left it in my yard. I’d been stalking the driveway, waiting for her to get home, and rushed over as soon as she opened the door to her white Camry. She looked shocked to see me.
I rushed it out as fast as I could. “Jill, did you leave a stone rabbit in my yard? Like, by mistake?” I could feel my face crinkle with anxiety as I exhaled.
“No. I don’t own a stone rabbit,” her face turned white. “Is something wrong?”
“It just suddenly appeared. I’m sure I didn’t put it there.”
“I’m sure it’s a mistake of some kind,” she said softly.
“Oh,” my heart sank. I was hoping she was the source so that I could rest. Instead, all she gave me was a tap on the shoulder and the warmest smile I’d ever seen. The golden rays of evening cast her face aglow, and I had the strangest feeling. Like, somehow we were connected and this rabbit had a part of it. Maybe she knew something, and in her old age had forgotten it? We hadn’t spent too much time together, and I hadn’t realized how gray her hair had become, or how many wrinkles now joined the lines of her face.
“You’ll be OK,” she said, slowly walking towards her front door. “If you’d like, you can come over for tea anytime.”
“That’s OK,” I deflected, my mind focused on finding the origin of the rabbit again. “Maybe another day.”
She bid me farewell and I walked back inside. I gasped a little when I saw those eyes staring at me from the countertop. I thought about tossing it in the rubbish but then thought that whomever it belongs to might want it back. So I stuck inside a nook in one of my kitchen cabinets.
I went to draw a bath, thinking it might do good to calm my thoughts. While the water ran I couldn’t stop thinking about Jill. Something didn’t feel right. It occurred to me that maybe she had put it there and didn’t want to tell me. But why? It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t make any sense for Jill to be connected to this at all.
The warm cozy water soothed me at once. I stretched out my legs and forgot about the rabbit, forgot about the day. In the words of my mother, “it wasn’t like me to lose track of things, but it wasn’t the end of the world if I did.”
I’d come to the conclusion that I’d probably received it as a gift and forgot to write it down when I heard a clang outside. Jolted back into reality, I rushed out of the bath and poked my head out the window. Jill had left her trashcans out. Behind them, I could’ve sworn I saw something move in the light cast by the streetlamp. I blinked, and it was gone. I tried to piece it together again from my memory, but all I could see was a large adult-size rabbit moving in the bushes, the long slender ears forming dark shadows in the night.
I blinked again. Stop. I was making a big deal out of nothing, a mountain out of a molehill.
I put on my bathrobe and went to the kitchen, being careful not to look at the cabinet where I’d stored it. Instead, I focused on making tea. I found my favorite, Bengal Spice, and started brewing water.
Everything is normal. Everything is OK.
I poured the hot tea into my mug and curled up on the couch. I turned on a movie, some old action flick from the 80s that I didn’t recognize. I yawned as the warm tea trickled down my throat. The images on the screen started to blur and everything began to slow down.
The next thing I saw were red and blue lights coming through the window in waves. I gasped and fumbled for my phone. 5:55 AM. I got up and looked out the window. Two police cars and an ambulance were pulled in behind the white Camry. I rushed to the door, realizing when I made it I was still in my bathrobe. Normally, I’d have gotten dressed, but I was so anxious about Jill that I threw on my bath slippers and went over anyways.
The night was cold. I shivered a little as I walked up to two police officers having a discussion on her front yard.
“Ma’am you can’t be here,” one of them said as they saw me.
“I’m Jill’s neighbor, is everything OK?”
They looked at each other. “When was the last time you saw her?” one of them asked, pulling out his notepad.
“Just yesterday, right as she got home from work. I came over to ask her about a strange stone rabbit I’d found in my yard.”
“She seemed OK?” the other officer asked.
My heart started to pound in my chest. Something wasn’t right. “Yes, she- she- was fine.”
“Wait, did you say, a rabbit?” the other asked.
“Yes… a stone bunny. I’d never seen it before. In my yard.”
He screamed back towards the house. “Jimmy! Can you bring the rabbit?”
A third officer came forward a moment later. In his hands was the stone rabbit I’d seen in my yard, with the same beady eyes. “We found her… with this sitting on her chest.”
“No, no way…” I stammered. I turned and fled towards the house as fast as I could, the cops calling “hey” behind me. I ran into the kitchen and pulled the rabbit out of its nook in the cabinet, half expecting it not to be there for some strange reason. I ran back to the cops with it in hand.
Jimmy looked at the two side by side, they looked identical. “You found this one in your garden?” he asked.
“Y-yes,” I could barely speak through shivering.
“Can we break it open?” Jimmy asked.
“S-sure,” I said.
He lightly tapped it on the ground until the stone cracked. When he had it open, a small black plug fell from inside. He prodded it with a stick, turning it over to reveal a small lense.
“You were being watched,” he said.
I’m sad. I’m angry. I’m terrified. I hope they find Jill’s killer soon, and I’m not going back home until they do. The lesson here is that you should always keep track of what’s yours. Some people think it is onerous that I keep those journals, but this is why. I’m just so glad that I have that habit.
It could’ve been me.