Regret14 min read
The Little Rabbit and the Quiet Letters
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I am a woman who loved until her love became hunger.
"I am Harriet," I say to myself in the dark, and the name tastes like a promise I once made and later broke.
"You always said you wanted him to be yours, Harriet," my mother told me once. "Do not be ashamed. Use what you have."
"Use what I have?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "You are a daughter of rank. You know how to take."
"Do you think I did not try?" I whispered.
"You did," she answered. "Too much."
My voice is the first-person witness and the slow knife in this memory. I tell this as I remember the little rabbit, the letters, and the way Jaxon Webb would look at Emmeline Monteiro.
"Why do you keep staring?" Emmeline asked me the day Jaxon left for the north.
"I was not staring," I lied.
"He will come back," she said calmly. "He always comes back."
"You make it sound like he owes you the act of returning," I snapped.
"Perhaps he owes no one. Perhaps he returns because he can."
Her voice settled on me like cool water. It did not spread panic. It did not try to drown me. It did not see me as a rival.
"I am a princess," I said.
"You are Harriet," she said. "A woman who loves and is loved in certain ways. Names do not always carry power."
"You are blind," I told her. "You do not know how people lift you up."
"I know enough." She smiled, and the smile was all light and no claim. "Come look at this rabbit."
She had found a white rabbit in the snow and wrapped it in cloth. "Jaxon wanted you to have it," she said.
"You are lying."
"No." She looked down, then up. "You asked for one day of his attention. He came home with this and said he thought of a rabbit for you."
"Why would he—" I stopped. The candle trembled in my fist. "Why would he think of me and a rabbit?"
"He thought of gentleness," she said. "You said once you liked certain small things. He remembered."
"I did not say that," I lied again.
When I smash a mirror I remember the sound of glass and the clean line that cuts the face into pieces. When I threw the small rabbit into the river, I remember the way the water swallowed white fur and the little weight of the animal. I remember Jaxon's face came cold as stone when he learned.
"Harriet," he said slowly. "Why would you do such a thing?"
"Did he mourn?" I demanded. "Did he break anything? Did his face change? Tell me."
"He looked at me like you do at a bottle on a high shelf," Emmeline replied.
"A bottle?"
"He looked, but he did not move himself to reach."
The truth is not graceful. I had hoped cruelty would make him reach, or at least make him angry enough to look back at me. It did neither.
"You went too far," Jaxon told me another night when he returned wounded and covered in frost and he only wanted sleep.
"I did what I had to do," I said. "You always say you prefer those who are difficult, who survive storms."
"I prefer those who know how to survive," he answered. "I do not prefer to be used as a prize to be won through pain."
"You speak as if I used you," I hissed.
"You used yourself," he said. "And now you must understand how others see you."
He left for the field soon after. He went where war smelled like iron and sweat. I watched him mount his horse from the city wall and felt no imperious grief. Instead, something hollowed me.
"Do you have to go, Emmeline?" I asked.
"I will watch his back," she said simply. "And I will keep letters."
"Letters?" My chest tightened. "You keep his letters?"
"They are only notes," she said. "Words that cross long nights. Would you like to hear them?"
I had demanded the words of another woman many times. I believed that in hearing them I could reverse the order of things, cut the thread between Jaxon and Emmeline, stitch myself in between.
"Only the words," I said.
She read.
"He calls you 'little dawn,'" she whispered.
"Stop," I ordered. "Change the name."
"I cannot change his handwriting," she said. "But I can place your name into the sentences if that helps you sleep."
"Do it," I said.
She read and she did not falter. Her voice braided around me like smoke. He wrote of nights on watch, of sunlight shattering on armor, of a remembered braid of hair that once brushed his hand, of a laugh. He called her "little dawn" twenty-seven times.
"Why does his voice soothe me when it is meant for her?" I asked when the letters finished.
"Because you are human," she said. "Because you want to be seen."
"Then be seen," I told Emmeline that afternoon with the sharpness of someone who had nothing to lose.
"You do not need someone to see you by breaking another," she said.
"I need him to choose me," I said.
"Choices are not trophies," she replied. "They are the slow work, the patient daily tending. You will not sow with fire and expect roses."
I slammed a tea cup to the floor that night.
"Stop," Jaxon said quietly when he found me after a long day. "Stop with the breaking. Stop believing you will be whole if you break everyone in the room."
"I am whole," I cried. "I am what I am."
"Do you know what you are, Harriet?" he asked.
"No," I whispered. "Tell me."
"You are someone who remembers everything she loses," he said. "Someone who thinks possession equals love. But love is not a ledger."
"I love you," I said.
"I know," he said. "And that is why I cannot be yours."
"You would choose her," I said with a small animal's panic.
"I have chosen no one to own," he answered. "I have chosen a shared quiet with someone who does not demand the rest of the world burn to be warm. Her presence does not need to be snuffed to make me turn my face."
I tried to gouge the meaning from his words and found none that helped me. So I did what I had always done when feeling small: I struck out. I humiliated, I mocked, I bound and threw, I whispered poison into the ears of others. I wanted reaction. I wanted attention that was not pity. I wanted him to notice the length of the cuts I could make.
"You made her cry," my mother said one evening when the house felt like a bowl holding steam. "You made a woman cry who never raised her face to you."
"She deserves to be humbled," I told her.
"Humbling a child will not win a man who loves another," she said flatly. "Harriet, you are a daughter of advantage. You must go softer, not sharper."
"Do you not care how he smiles at her?" I asked her. "Do you not hate that smile?"
"My love," she said. "Smiles change. People change. You have choice to change yourself. Try kindness. Try shame, even. A woman who cannot be humbled cannot also be gentle."
She could say gentle as if it were an idea instead of a thing earned. I wanted not to be gentle. I wanted to be seen standing above a pile of deeds and triumphs.
When Jaxon returned from campaign months later, his hand in Emmeline's, I had to hide the noise in my chest while everyone else welcomed him. They called his name. They clapped his shoulder. He smiled briefly, then settled against a table like a man who had finally found a warm coat.
"Emmeline," I said later that evening. "Why do you stay close to him like that?"
"I stay close where I am needed," she said calmly. "You have known the world from a high window, Harriet. I have known it by sweeping beside a hearth. My place is not your measure."
"Do you believe him?" I asked suddenly.
"Believe what?" she said.
"Believe that he wrote those letters with his own hand."
"He wrote them," she said. "He has always written to me."
"He is a man who writes to his mistress," I said. "A soldier who loves the woman who mends his clothes."
"He is a man who writes to someone he trusts," she answered.
"Trust?" I spat. "Do you think men who trust are rare? I would be trusted too if I were less proud."
"Trust is not earned by cruelty," she said.
"Then teach me," I demanded. "Teach me to be soft."
"I cannot teach softness to someone who is only learning to sharpen."
"You are cruel," I accused.
"I am not," she said. "I just see. I hold truth when it is offered. I accept small gifts of quiet."
The truth was that I had wanted to be the one to receive small gifts of quiet. I had wanted the warmth of a shared hearth, the low murmur of his breath. But I wanted those things to be proof. Proof that I had conquered. Proof that my bitterness worked.
"You are cruel," I repeated.
"Perhaps," she said, and she touched my hand. "But I will not be your enemy. Not for love. I will not knuckle under to ruin."
I remember the night someone tried to take that away from me in a way I could not control. I remember the street slick with snow and a figure moving in the dark with steps like a clock. I remember the sudden weight at my throat, the world tilting, and then the cold.
"Who did this?" I croaked on the floor when I came to in the room above my father's study.
"Liam Garza," a voice said.
"Liam?" I asked, my voice a thread. "Our neighbor?"
"He was there," my mother said. "He hired men on the road. He wanted to frighten you."
"Why?" I rasped.
"It was to shame you," she answered. "To make you look weak. He thought weakening you would lift his standing."
"But he sought—" I paused, remembering the blade and the smoke. "He sought to end me."
"He did not end you," my mother said. "You survived."
I looked at Emmeline then. She sat quietly in the corner as if she had lived a hundred lives and could hold whatever was thrown at her.
"Why would anyone try to kill you?" she asked softly.
"For the same reasons you have always known," I said. "We make enemies when we push the world. We make them when we cut like a careless blade."
"Do you want him punished?" Emmeline asked.
"Yes," I replied. "I want him taught what it costs to make a woman fall silent."
"Then let him stand," she said. "Let him stand in the square."
He did stand. I insisted.
The square filled with faces. Vendors paused in their work. Soldiers leaned against posts. Women carrying bundles set them down. The mayor brought a bench. It was a public place chosen for the very cruelty of public witness.
"Bring him forth," I said. I could not make my voice not shake.
He arrived in chains, his coat ragged, his eyes slick with surprise. He had never thought he would be here. He had thought his men would be paid and his acts hidden and his name smudged only near the circles that mattered. He had not expected me to demand a tribunal in the open square, with every neighbor who had ever watched me stand at a window present.
"Why bring this here?" Liam snapped when they dragged him near the bench where I stood. The crowd hummed.
"Because some things must not be hidden," I said.
"You are a proud woman," he sneered. "You roll in your pride and you throw the weight of a house at me."
"Did you send men to my road?" I asked.
"People serve where gold reaches," he said. "You know how the world works."
"Not in this town," I said. "Not in my sight."
Liam grinned like a wound. "You are a princess," he spat. "You think you will make me kneel?"
"You will apologize," I said.
"I will not," he answered.
"Then you will tell us why you wanted me quiet," I demanded. "Why you tossed a blade in the dark."
He laughed, a short laugh that made several people in the crowd back away.
"You are fragile," he said. "You cry louder than you bleed. The house you sit under has built enemies. I thought to make you one more broken thing to watch. Your father would weep for a son-in-law and then the rest would smile. I was offered coin."
"Who offered coin?" I asked.
He blinked, then named a man I knew only by the hush of his anger, a name that shook the crowd because it was someone we did not blame ordinarily. The accusation inflated and flew like a bird. Heads turned. Faces drained.
"Is it true?" someone shouted.
"No," another said quickly. "He would not dare."
"Did you not say he would stand to gain?" I pressed.
Liam's bravado began to crack because his mouth had opened too wide and now words came with teeth showing.
"He is not here to answer," he said.
"Your men are witnesses," I told him. "Tell us why you were paid to do this."
"You cannot prove—" he began.
"Then tell us who paid you," I said. "Look at us. Look at the people who buy bread from the same hands as you. Look at the women who sweep the path you cross. Tell us who would pay for the silence of a woman here."
He looked, and for the first time his defiance lost shape. People in the crowd were no longer just onlookers. They were neighbors. They remembered small humiliations Liam had given. They remembered his bargains. A mother in the throng began to cry aloud about a stolen chicken. A grocer told of a short coin loan gone bad.
"You have made others small," a soldier said. "You have long thought yourself powerful. So you sent the knife."
"Admit it," I demanded. "Admit you were paid."
He spat at the ground. "Fine," he said. "Fine. I was paid."
"By whom?" I asked.
The name came out like a thrown stone. The crowd grew loud. I let the loudness roll over like surf.
"Who would pay to kill a girl?" a child asked.
"Not a girl," I said. "Not now. A woman."
"I was told..." Liam started, then gagged. He looked at the faces, the many faces who had watched him take small advantages from them. He had thought wealth put a cloak over his actions. Now the cloak burned away because everyone who had felt him had no reason to cover him.
"I was told the house would fall," he said finally. "I was told to make an example. I was told a daughter should be shown to fear."
"Who told you?" I repeated.
He named a neighbor then, a man whose name under the sun seemed to have little evil. He did not expect that when names fall into a square they do not land softly.
"Where is he?" a voice demanded.
"He's at home," Liam said. "He is safe."
"Bring him," I said.
They found the man that day. He came out to the square sweaty and pale. The crowd formed two lines like a river channeling a stone. He had not wanted to be seen. He had thought a secret would remain secret. He had not thought about the people who were watching me at my window, nor the people who had been waiting for a ground where truth could stand.
"I thought it would be hidden," he said weakly.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because it was politics," he answered. "Because he wanted more favor."
"Favor?" I repeated. "Favor at the cost of a life?"
"He said it would be a lesson," the man stammered. "He said a woman must be taught not to think she may take what is not given."
At that the crowd changed. The hum thickened with heat. People began to press closer. Mothers clutched children. An old man spat on the ground near the accused's boot and would not wipe his shoe.
"This is not a lesson," I said softly, and people heard the calm. "This is a crime."
"I did not—" the man started to say.
"You did," I said. "You paid him. You thought it would be hushed. You were wrong."
"My house—" he began, but he stopped because he saw the cost.
"Because you are rich?" I asked. "Because you liked the show of frightening a woman?"
"It would fix things," he said weakly.
"Did you think killing me would correct what happens in your head?" I asked. "Did you think you could erase how Jaxon loved? Did you imagine a woman could not survive being targeted and therefore you would win enough favor to own pity?"
"No—" he said. "I did not think—"
"Then own it," I said. "Stand and own it. Tell them you thought your coin could buy justice."
He looked at the faces again and now instead of looking for their grace he looked for an escape. There was none.
The crowd began to change from noise to verdict. People who had once tolerated his small cruelties now spoke. An artisan climbed the bench and shouted about the taxes Liam had avoided. A widow spoke of the men Liam had hired to rough her husband. Each testimony cut deeper than any blade he had paid for.
Liam's eyes rolled with panic. He had expected to laugh and walk past. He had expected the square to be empty. Instead, it had become a mirror showing all the small harms he had committed.
"Did you think water forgets?" an old woman asked. "Did you think small rips do not become a great tear?"
He began to plead. "I was paid. I thought it would be easier."
"Easier for whom?" I asked.
"For me," he said like a child.
The moment changed. He first tried to be crafty, then proud, then defiant. Finally his shoulders slumped. He looked like a man who had been unmasked and had nowhere left to put his hands. People shouted. He tried to deny, then to blame the coin, and finally his face softened into the shape of a trapped animal.
"Please," he begged at last toward the man who had arranged this.
The man would not meet his eyes. He tried to drag Liam's guilt upward higher than a single man, but the square would not hold that lie. Shame moved through the crowd like a wind. It stripped the men of their polite excuses and left them breathless.
"Will you make amends?" I asked the paid man.
He reached into his coat as if to take a coin, but there was no coin that would settle the noise in the square. He opened his mouth and said nothing. His silence was a kind of confession.
"Publicly," I said. "You must stand here and apologize to the woman you nearly took. You must witness every eye that saw fit to call you a neighbor. You must return the coin and tell us the true cost."
He swallowed hard. He said the words with skin-raw honesty, and then people spat and told their stories. He was forced to hear how his favor had been bought with the terror of small people.
Liam wavered. He moved from arrogance to shame. He grovelled. He begged. He tried to buy forgiveness with apologies, then with promises to help, then with pleas for mercy.
The crowd would not relent. They were not bloodthirsty; they wanted redress. They wanted to be seen after being trodden on. They wanted a voice.
"It will not bring back the night," I said quietly. "It will not mend the blade in the dark. But it will make your crime visible."
"Please," Liam repeated.
"A public apology," I said. "A labor to the house of those you've wronged. And you will never step into my window's sight again."
He crumpled like paper when they read the list of his wrongs. He begged at the feet of women he had mocked. He spat apologies. The crowd recorded it all with shouts and with hands pointing. They did not strike him down, but they removed the cloak he had worn for years. He left with his reputation shredded in the same square where he had thought to teach me silence.
The forced apology lasted more than an hour. The paid man was made to stand and list who he had wronged and to promise reparation. Liam's men were made to give testimony. People filmed with their small trade devices, and the shouting made the sun feel like a witness. I watched him change: from swaggering to dismissive, to proud, to bewildered, to pleading. He tasted the range of powerless emotion that I had learned long ago.
When it ended, when the last cry subsided, the market returned to breath. People picked up their baskets. A child laughed somewhere. Someone quietly handed me a wrapped rabbit—small, white furless toy given by a woman who had watched too long and wanted something to fix.
"Do you feel better?" Emmeline asked softly.
"No," I said. "But I feel less alone."
"Will you be kinder?" she asked.
"I do not know," I admitted. "I may not be kind tomorrow. I may be cruel. But I know how small the world becomes when you make others small for your gain."
Jaxon watched all this from the edge because he did not want to be in the center of anything he did not choose. He came to me after the tribunal and stood beside me as people drifted away.
"It's not the kind of justice I'd asked for," he said.
"Neither did I," I replied.
"You struck at the wrong things," he said simply. "Doing harm to be noticed is not the same as making your life worthy of notice."
"I know," I said. "I wanted him to burn like I burned. But I see now that public spectacle is only smoke. The kiln of habit is inside us."
He took my hand in a way that belonged only to him and no one else, and it felt at once like kindness and not. "Will you stay?" he asked.
"Stay where?" I answered.
"With someone who will write you letters without being asked," he said dryly. "With someone who will not trade your quiet for a show."
"I don't want to be a prize," I said.
"No one asked you to be," he said. "Just be Harriet."
I thought of the little rabbit again—alive, then taken by my hands. I thought of the letters read aloud as if they were comforts stitched into cloth. I thought of the square where faces transformed from bystanders to judges.
"Do you forgive me?" I asked Emmeline once.
"I forgive much," she said. "But forgiveness is not a free pass. You will need to spend the currency of change."
"And if I cannot change?" I asked.
"Then you will be visible in the way the square made him visible," she answered. "You will be known. Known is not always kind. But it is true."
The last scene I hold close is small: the toy rabbit in the market shaken by a child's laugh and me wrapping it under my cloak. Jaxon said nothing. Emmeline smiled and took my hand.
"Do you think you'll love him again?" she asked quietly.
"I will stop measuring love as possession," I answered. "That is what I must learn."
A bird flew over the square and its shadow passed like a stitch over the crowd. The letters still lay in Emmeline's chest, a stack of paper already read and reread. They were quiet and steady and not meant for show.
"I named him 'little dawn' once," Jaxon said later, as we walked back down a lane lit by small lamps.
"You did?" I asked.
"I did," he said. "And he was not yours to take."
"I know," I whispered.
We walked with the rabbit hidden in the folds of my cloak until the town was quiet. I thought of my mother and the lessons she gave me and how they had been blunt where I needed softness.
"Will you teach me to be less sharp?" I asked her that night.
"I will try," she said.
I do not know if my attempt will be enough to change the world. I only know that the market day taught me the useful thing: when wrongs are done, they must be seen. And when a name is given in quiet letters, you cannot shout it to death.
The little rabbit will live on my mantel for many nights. It will remind me that some small things cannot be smashed into the sea to make a heart turn. The letters will remain with Emmeline, and sometimes she will read them aloud to me without changing names. I will listen like someone learning to breathe.
And if anyone ever wonders whether the square's verdict was cruel, I will say this: it was public because some wrongs are communal. It lasted long enough for men to learn that small harms become big debts. It made a villain look small. It taught me, a woman who thought love was ownership, that love is something you tend, not seize.
The rabbit sits beside my window. I wind the tiny toy like a thought and set it on the sill. The last thing I hear before sleep is the hush of the town and the faint memory of Jaxon saying, "little dawn," not to me but to whoever needed the light.
The End
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