“She told me.”
“I wanted to, every year.” Odessa’s own eyes were bright. “Every Christmas concert. Every time you came into the office to drop off the shop’s donation for the coat drive. I’d think, Odessa, you open your mouth right now. And I’d see her face.”
“I know,” Leon said. “I know you did.”
Jayden was looking from one grown-up face to another with the particular alertness of a child who knows something enormous has happened and has not been told what. His eyes went to the rabbit in his mother’s arms.
“What’s that?” he said.
Tasha looked down at the rabbit for a long moment. Then she held it out to him.
“That,” she said, “is Mr. Hoppity. He was mine when I was even littler than you. He went on a really long trip.”