Part 9 – The Last Appointment
Setting: Christmas week | Ashland, Kentucky
The snow returned the day before Christmas Eve.
Heavy, wet flakes that clung to power lines and rooftops and memory.
Clara stood at the window in her green flannel pajamas, watching the world turn white again.
Hollow lay curled at her feet, snoring gently, one ear flipped inside out.
Jolene was making cinnamon rolls in the kitchen, humming off-key to a carol that had played every December since before Clara was born.
The house felt full again.
Not crowded.
Just full.
The kind of fullness that comes when grief steps aside to let joy borrow the room.
After breakfast, Clara bundled herself into boots and scarves and called Hollow to the door.
They walked the long way to the cedar tree—through the back fence, past the neighbor’s empty garden, under the branches that whispered like pages being turned.
The jar was nearly buried now, the lid frosted over.
Clara cleared the snow gently, hands red from the cold.
She opened it and looked at the stack of drawings.
There were nine now.
The tenth she carried in her coat pocket.
She pulled it out and smoothed the folds.
Junebug, wings wide, standing in a doorway of light.
Clara whispered, “Last one.”
She slid it into the jar.
Then sealed the lid.
That afternoon, they drove to the clinic one final time.
Not because anyone was sick.
Not because anything was wrong.
But because Clara had asked.
“Just one more visit,” she said.
“Just to say thank you.”
The receptionist looked surprised when they walked in.
“You all alright?”
Clara nodded. “We’re just visiting.”
Dr. Whitmore came out from the back, rubbing his hands with a towel.
“Well I’ll be,” he said, seeing Hollow at Clara’s side. “This the one?”
Clara beamed. “His name’s Hollow.”
Dr. Whitmore knelt down, scratched behind the dog’s ears.
“He’s got some miles left in him.”
“He’s just getting started,” Clara said.
Dr. Whitmore looked up, his eyes damp.
“You too, Clara Mae?”
She nodded. “We both are.”
Inside the exam room, they didn’t run tests.
There were no charts. No stethoscopes.
Just silence, and soft laughter, and old grief folded neatly beside newer hope.
Before they left, Clara handed Dr. Whitmore a small box wrapped in brown paper and twine.
“For you,” she said.
He opened it later that night, alone in his office.
Inside: a tiny wooden carving of a dog, hand-painted.
Brown fur. Crooked legs. A white star on the chest.
Underneath, in neat child’s handwriting:
“Thank you for helping her help me.”
He didn’t move for a long time.
Then he placed it on his shelf beside Duke’s old photo.
And turned off the light.
That night, Clara dreamed of rain.
But not the kind that falls.
The kind that lifts.
Junebug stood in a field of tall grass, wind tugging at her ears, tail wagging slow and sure.
Clara ran to her—but didn’t cry.
Didn’t ask her to stay.
Just knelt and held her.
Junebug licked her cheek.
Then turned.
And walked into the golden light, tail high, body whole.
Christmas morning came with sunlight.
Clara ran downstairs to find a single gift waiting on the hearth.
Unwrapped. Unlabeled.
Inside, a collar.
Worn, soft.
With a tiny metal tag shaped like a star.
Jolene knelt beside her, breath caught in her throat.
“Where did that come from?” she asked.
Clara just smiled.
“She always finishes what she starts.”
That evening, Hollow lay on the rug, chin on his paws.
Clara sat beside him, sketching quietly.
Not of dogs.
Not of sadness.
But of a girl under a tree.
And a sky that was no longer waiting.
Part 10 – The Room That Waited No More
Setting: New Year’s Day | Ashland, Kentucky
On the morning of the first day of the new year, Clara Mae Benson stood in the backyard barefoot.
The snow had melted in patches, revealing muddy ground and forgotten acorns.
The sky was pale blue. Empty, but not lonely.
Beside her sat Hollow.
Still awkward.
Still loyal.
Still unnamed by anyone but her.
He blinked up at her with soft brown eyes and let out a breath that curled like smoke into the January air.
Clara reached down and touched the collar around his neck.
The new one. The one with the star.
The weeping cedar no longer looked sad.
It stood tall, branches draped like the arms of a guardian, not a mourner.
Clara walked to it slowly, feeling each step with care.
She knelt at the jar, now sealed into the ground with a thin crust of frost.
She didn’t open it.
Didn’t need to.
Inside were ten drawings.
Ten moments she had survived.
Ten pieces of goodbye.
But this time, she brought nothing to add.
She just sat, Hollow beside her, and let the breeze carry whatever was left.
Inside the house, Jolene dusted the mantle.
She didn’t flinch when she passed Junebug’s old photo.
She didn’t cry when she straightened the leash on the hook.
Instead, she smiled.
Softly.
Then walked to the window to watch her daughter, whole and upright, talking to the sky like it still answered back.
Later that afternoon, they visited the clinic.
Unannounced. No appointment.
Clara walked in holding Hollow’s leash, and something else in her coat pocket.
Dr. Whitmore looked up from a stack of files.
“Well,” he said, rising slowly. “Thought you two were done with this place.”
“We are,” Clara said. “But the waiting room isn’t.”
She stepped forward and placed a small wrapped bundle on the front counter.
Inside: a hand-drawn sign that read:
“Comfort Dog Hours – Tuesday Afternoons – 4:15 to 5:00.”
And a photograph of Hollow, sitting beside the cedar, head tilted just so.
“I think there are other people waiting,” Clara said. “He’s good at sitting still.”
Dr. Whitmore looked from the sign to Clara, then to Hollow.
He reached out and patted the dog’s head.
“Welcome to the staff,” he said softly.
That night, Jolene tucked Clara into bed without protest.
No pills on the nightstand.
No thermometer by the pillow.
Just Clara.
And Hollow, curled up at the foot of the bed.
“Do you think she sees us?” Clara asked, voice muffled by the blanket.
Jolene sat on the edge of the mattress.
“I think she never stopped.”
Outside, a wind rose—but it didn’t howl.
It whispered through the cedar, rattled the glass jar buried beneath it.
Then faded.
Like breath.
Like wings.
Clara dreamed one last dream.
A hallway lined with chairs.
The same beige walls.
The same quiet hum.
But the door at the end was open now.
Light poured through.
And Junebug was there, tail wagging slow.
Behind her stood a little girl Clara didn’t recognize.
Pale. Tired. Holding a stuffed rabbit.
Clara smiled.
“Go on,” she said.
Junebug turned.
Trotted forward.
The girl bent down, and Junebug rested her head against the child’s chest.
The rabbit dropped to the floor.
The girl smiled for the first time.
Then the door closed gently behind them.
Clara awoke with tears on her cheeks—but not from sadness.
She reached down and touched Hollow’s back.
He stirred, licked her hand.
“Someone else is waiting now,” she whispered.
And Hollow wagged.
Just once.
In the clinic, on the bulletin board above the receptionist’s desk, there were now two pictures.
Duke the bloodhound, faded and proud.
And Junebug, small and scruffy, star on her chest, sitting beneath the cedar tree.
Someone had scribbled a note beneath it in blue pen:
“Not every healer wears a white coat.”
And across town, as a light snow began to fall once more, a new mother carried her feverish child into the vet’s waiting room.
She looked around, confused.
“I—I thought this was a veterinary clinic?”
The receptionist smiled, motioned to the corner chair.
“It is,” she said. “But sometimes, it’s something more.”
And from the back, a brindled dog with too-long legs trotted forward.
Sat at the child’s feet.
And waited.
The End
But stories like this never really end.
Not in the way chapters close or doors lock behind us.
They linger—in the hush of a waiting room, in the warmth left on a chair long after someone’s gone, in the way a child breathes easier with a dog beside her.
Junebug was never just a dog.
She was a tether.
A torch.
A truth wrapped in fur and silence.
She came when the dark was deepest.
She stayed until the light could carry on without her.
And then, gently, she stepped aside.
Because sometimes love isn’t loud.
Sometimes it simply waits.
And watches.
And endures.
And if we’re lucky—
If we’re really lucky—
It leaves a little piece of itself behind
to remind us how to begin again.
So let this be the end…
…but only for now.
Because somewhere, a child sits in a quiet room.
And somewhere, just outside the door, a tail is starting to wag.