📗 PART 5 – “The Empty Bowl”
The broth had gone cold by morning.
It sat untouched beside the hearth, still giving off the faint smell of smoke and hickory.
Agnes left it there. She didn’t have the heart to move it.
Bear lay still, wrapped in the blanket Earl once used during deer season.
His body didn’t look heavy anymore.
He looked like part of the room—like the firewood or the floorboards.
Like he’d always been there.
And now, part of her felt missing.
She made coffee but forgot to drink it.
She shuffled to the porch in her wool socks, opened the door, and stared at the first clean stretch of snow.
No tracks yet.
No visitors.
And no paw prints.
When Earl died, the house had felt loud.
Too many casseroles. Too many voices trying to soften the edges of something that couldn’t be softened.
But this?
This was quiet grief.
No one knew Bear was gone. No phone would ring.
Just the whisper of wind and the tick of the old wall clock.
Agnes stood there in the doorway for a long while, letting the cold creep into her sleeves.
“You carried the weight of this place, Bear,” she whispered.
“And now it’s just me again.”
She went to the shed.
There was a spot beneath the big oak, where Bear used to sit and watch the road.
It faced the woods, not the house.
As if he always wanted to be the first to see what was coming.
That’s where she’d lay him.
She grabbed the shovel—its handle worn smooth by years—and made her way down the slope.
Her steps were slow. But steady.
The snow crunched beneath her feet.
Her breath came in short clouds.
By the time she reached the spot, her hands were trembling.
She rested the shovel against the tree, took a moment, and looked around.
The sun peeked through bare branches, catching on a line of frozen paw prints from days ago—leading right to where she stood.
“Of course you picked this spot,” she said softly.
Then she began to dig.
It took her the better part of the morning.
She stopped every few minutes to rest, leaning on the handle like a cane.
Her fingers stiffened in the cold, but she didn’t complain.
No one to hear it anyway.
When the hole was deep enough, she climbed back up the hill.
She wrapped Bear tighter in the blanket, kissed the top of his head, and whispered something only he would understand.
Then she carried him—arms trembling, back bent, breath short—
but she carried him.
Because that’s what he would’ve done for her.
She laid him down gently.
Smoothed the folds of the blanket.
Pressed one hand to his chest, though it no longer moved.
Then she covered him.
Shovel after shovel.
Until the blanket disappeared beneath the earth.
She placed his food bowl upside down beside the tree.
Then his collar—looped gently over a low branch.
And that was that.
She didn’t cry much.
Just a few tears.
The kind that come from deep places and leave quietly.
Back at the cabin, the hearth was still warm.
The broth was still there.
She sat in her chair, pulled out her old spiral notebook, and began to write.
“January 28th. Gấu is gone.
The snow is still falling.”
Outside, the wind picked up.
And in the far woods, something stirred.
But she wasn’t afraid.
Not anymore.