Part 9 – “The Letter Under the Floorboard”
The morning after the lights in all those windows, Harold found himself doing something he hadn’t done in years.
He swept the shop.
Slowly, methodically. Not to clean — there was nothing particularly dirty. But because motion made the ache quieter. And there was a kind of comfort in the scrape of bristles on wood, in the rhythm of each step forward.
He paused at the heater vent. The towel was gone now, washed and folded into Jasper’s box. But the space still held a warmth — not from the air, but from the absence that lingered like scent in an old coat.
He knelt down, touched the floorboards.
Then tapped twice on the one just beside the vent.
Hollow.
He pried it loose.
Inside was a small tin. Dusty, sealed with a rubber band that had gone brittle with time. He’d almost forgotten it.
A letter.
Written years ago.
Addressed to no one.
Harold sat cross-legged on the floor and opened it.
The handwriting was his. Shaky in places. Jagged where his emotions had bled through.
It read:
If you’re reading this, the dog is gone.
And maybe you are too. But just in case…
Just in case someone finds this — someone who wonders who the man in the shop was, and who that dog by the vent used to be — I want you to know a few things.He came on a rainy night.
He didn’t ask for shelter. He didn’t wag or whimper. He just looked at me like I already belonged to him.I gave him ham. He gave me the rest of my life.
I don’t know what I was before Jasper. I just know what I wasn’t.
I wasn’t kind, not really. I wasn’t steady. I wasn’t willing to stay.
He taught me how to do all three.
So if you’re reading this, and if you’re grieving, I want you to know this:
Grief is not the price of love. It’s the proof that love was real.And proof — in this world — is rare.
Keep something. Anything.
A ribbon. A photo. A carving. A pawprint in dust.
It’s enough.— H.B.
Harold folded the letter and placed it back in the tin. But this time, he didn’t put it under the floorboard.
He left it on the counter, next to Jasper’s carving.
For anyone who might need it.
Later that day, he started building a frame.
Not for a picture.
For a window.
He didn’t explain it to anyone. Just moved to the workshop out back, cleared the dust off the saw horses, and got to work.
Oak, sanded smooth. Joints mitered with care. He hadn’t built something this big since his army days. But his hands remembered, even when the rest of him forgot lunch.
By sunset, the frame was done.
He leaned it against the outside wall of the shop, just beneath the cedar tree.
Then, using Jasper’s box — the one full of cards, tokens, pressed flowers, scribbled memories — he began filling the empty frame.
Not with glass.
But with presence.
Dozens of cards, arranged like stained glass.
One said: “He helped me stand when I was too ashamed to walk in.”
Another: “He was just a dog. But I still tell my kids about him.”
One, folded into the shape of a dog’s ear, simply read:
“Still here.”
That night, Harold sat on the bench outside the shop, the carving in his hands.
The window glowed behind him, full of memory.
He looked up at the cedar branches.
“I didn’t know how to raise anything,” he whispered. “But somehow, I raised you.”
The wind moved through the tree.
The carving warmed in his palm.
And somewhere deep in his chest, Harold felt the first clean breath in days.
Not a goodbye.
A beginning.