📗 PART 7 – “The Sound Beneath the Steps”
The house had changed.
Not in shape. Not in smell.
But in weight.
It felt lighter now—not freer, just more hollow. Like someone had taken the center out of a loaf of bread.
Agnes still lit the fire every morning.
Still made two cups of coffee out of habit.
Still muttered, “You want the last biscuit?” to an empty corner.
No answer came.
But sometimes… she heard something.
It was little things.
The soft creak of the porch step after dusk.
The click of nails across the kitchen floor—too quick to catch, too real to dismiss.
The gentle puff of air by her bedside, as if a body had just curled up there to rest.
She didn’t tell anyone.
She didn’t need to.
One night, as she sat with her mending basket, needle dancing in stiff fingers, the radio hummed low beside her.
Old country ballads. Nothing flashy.
Just voices she knew. Sounds Bear had grown up hearing, too.
And then—
A sudden thump beneath the floorboards.
Right under her feet.
Like a paw pressed once, then disappeared.
She paused, thread halfway pulled.
“Is that you?” she whispered.
No wind outside.
No branches on the roof.
Only the fire, crackling like a slow heartbeat.
Agnes didn’t cry.
She just let it be.
Whether it was Bear, or the echo of years he’d filled, didn’t matter much.
He was gone.
But not absent.
Two days later, something strange arrived.
Not a letter. Not a visitor.
But a cardboard box, dented on one side, marked with a crayon heart.
It had no postage.
Just a tag:
To Agnes — from us
She opened it on the porch, hands trembling with curiosity and cold.
Inside, wrapped in an old flannel shirt, was a tiny red puppy.
No bigger than a boot. Ears too big for his head. A black nose twitching.
And around his neck, a tag:
“HERO JR.”
Agnes sat back against the porch rail.
She didn’t speak.
She just reached out one gnarled hand and let the pup sniff her fingers.
Then he did the most unexpected thing—
He licked the tip of her thumb, gave a high-pitched whimper…
and curled right into her lap.
That night, Agnes didn’t hear the steps under the floor.
She didn’t hear the nails in the kitchen.
She didn’t need to.
Because something was breathing beside her again.
Not as a replacement.
Not as a distraction.
But as a reminder that love, once planted, finds ways to bloom again.
Even after the snow.