The next morning, the drawing was gone. In its place was a single white feather, a piece of sea glass, and a paw print in the damp sand pointing toward the cottage.
Her father asked where she went. “Walking,” she said. He didn’t press. He was too busy not looking at her mother’s empty chair.
“Go on,” she said.
Her mother was already in the kitchen when Eloise came home. She’d made tea. Three cups.
She walked again at noon. Nothing.
There were maybe twenty of them by then. Gray ones, brown ones, one with a white patch over its eye like a pirate’s bandana. They didn’t fight over food. They didn’t scatter when she approached. They simply were , and she was allowed to be among them.
She smiled.
“There’s a rabbit in the bathroom,” her mother said.