Page 32 of Raised By Wolves

The chief and I follow Mrs. Hill into a big dirt yard lined with dozens of homemade chicken-wire cages. Inside the cages: hundreds—thousands?—of rabbits. As we get closer, they hop nervously back and forth. Their little ears and noses twitch adorably. Mrs. Hill picks up a bucket of feed and starts pouring it into the nearest cage.

“Julissa’s gone off before and always come back,” Mrs. Hill says. “I don’t think no harm’s going to come to her.”

“What if it does?” the chief asks.

“No one looked after me, and no harm came. I turned out just fine.”

It’s obvious the chief doesn’t entirely agree with her on this count. “This is an unofficial visit, Mrs. Hill. What one neighbor would do for another. But if you file a missing persons report, there’s a lotmorethat I can do.”

I walk over to the nearest cage. A fluffy brown rabbit sniffs my fingers. I touch its soft cheek through the wire.

“If she don’t turn up, I’ll give you a call,” Mrs. Hill says.

The chief sighs. “I hope I hear from you soon. Actually, I take that back—I hope you hear from your daughter.”

“Uh-huh.” Mrs. Hill moves on to the next cage, dumps more pellets in.

Another rabbit, a gray one, hops over to check me out. “You’ve got a lot of pet bunnies,” I say.

Mrs. Hill turns around with the bucket in her hand and shoots me a look like I’m crazy. Then she barks out a laugh. “Pets?” she says. “Ha, that’s a good one.”

The gray rabbit nibbles my thumb. Its whiskers tickle.If you’re not a pet, I think,then you’re—

“Come along, Kai,” the chief says. “Let’s go.”

As we walk back to the car, the chief looks worried. Angry, too.

I don’t know this Julissa person, but I can sympathize. “If that was my mom, I probably wouldn’t hang around much, either,” I say.

But isn’t a bad mom better than no mom?It’s the tiny thought that I quickly push away.

The chief gives a heavy sigh. “Being a police officer teaches you a lot about human nature, Kai,” he says as we drive away.“I know why people steal and cheat—even why they fight and kill. I’m not saying that it’s right. I’m saying that I canunderstandit. But I’ll never get why folks don’t do better by their kids. ‘Youmadethem,’ I want to say to these people. ‘Why can’t you take care of them?’”

Then he looks over at me like he’s just realized that he’s said something wrong.

And sure—maybe for a second there’s another little tiny thought that goes:Why didn’t my parents take care ofme?

But that’s an old question. An old wound. I don’t pick at it anymore.

“Kai,” the chief says. “Are you okay?”

I stare out the window at the trees going by, the green world that Holo and I left behind. The world of dirt and stone and sky. “I’m just thinking about all those rabbits,” I tell him.

“Did that upset you?”

“You mean because they spend their whole entire lives in pens, and then they end up in a stew?” I say.

The chief grimaces. “Yes.”

I can still feel the rabbit’s soft gray fur on my fingertips. Still picture its bright black eyes. But nature’s nature, right? We all need to eat.

I shake my head. “Chief, mountain cottontails taste great, but they runfast. It’s a lot easier to catch a rabbit for dinner if it’s already in a damn cage.”

The chief looks a bit queasy now. But he just says, all quiet and pleading, “We don’t say that word, either, Kai, okay?”

CHAPTER 24

DRIVING BACK INTO Kokanee Creek, the chief asks if I want to keep riding along on his rounds. “I’ve got to check on a report about a sick raccoon in someone’s garage. Then I’ll go make sure Dougie isn’t causing trouble. It’s ten a.m., so he’s sure to be drunk already.”