Her skin was thin, her hands trembled, and her shoulders seemed too delicate to support the weight of her head. Yet there was a remarkable gentleness in her face.
She was holding a small brown stuffed rabbit.
One eye was missing.
A faded blue ribbon was tied around its neck.
I stopped breathing.
“Mr. Buttons,” I whispered.
The elderly woman looked up.
Her eyes widened.
The rabbit slipped from her hands and landed in her lap.
“Emmy?”
The word was barely audible.
I stared at her.
“What did you call me?”
She leaned forward, gripping the arms of her wheelchair.
“Emmy? Is that you, my little Emmy?”
No one had called me that in more than forty years.
Not my adoptive parents. Not my friends. Not even the relatives who had known me as a child.
Only one person had used that nickname, according to a story my father once told me: my grandmother, who supposedly had given me a stuffed rabbit before I was old enough to remember.
