Part 5 – The Dog Who Knows Too Much
The next morning, Daisy vomited on the kitchen floor.
It wasn’t the first time she had seemed off lately. She had been pacing more, panting even when the house was cool, and sleeping in short bursts instead of long, snoring stretches like before. I had chalked it up to stress—my stress, her stress, the whole house soaked in tension.
Still, seeing her crouched in the corner, sides heaving, stirred something in me that even divorce papers couldn’t. I could lose a marriage, maybe. I couldn’t lose the one creature who had stayed pressed against my leg through every sleepless night.
I called the vet and managed to get a same-day appointment. The clinic was across town, a place with murals of cartoon animals on the walls and a jar of treats at the front desk. Daisy shook in the waiting room, nails clicking on the tile as she leaned into my legs.
When the vet, a calm woman in her forties named Dr. Keller, walked in, she greeted Daisy first.
“Hey there, pretty girl,” she murmured, letting Daisy sniff her hand. “You don’t look like you’re feeling your best today.”
While she examined Daisy, listened to her heart and lungs, and gently pressed along her abdomen, I found myself talking more than I meant to. I rambled about the stress at home, about Ethan moving out, about the hospital smell that clung to his clothes.
“She’s been growling at him,” I said. “She never did that before. And now she’s acting weird all the time. Do you think she could be…traumatized?”
Dr. Keller tilted her head thoughtfully. “Dogs are incredibly sensitive to changes in their environment,” she said. “They pick up on our anxiety, our routines, even subtle smells. It’s possible that all the tension in the house is affecting her.”
I nodded, feeling guilty. “Could she be…sensing something about him?” I asked. “Like, people say dogs can tell when someone is bad.”
Dr. Keller smiled faintly. “I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “They don’t think in moral terms the way we do. But they can react to illness, pain, and stress.”
She paused, scratching Daisy’s neck gently.
“There have been studies,” she added, “about dogs detecting certain health conditions. Some can sniff out changes in blood sugar or even certain types of cancer. Others just react because hospitals and treatments bring out a lot of strong smells—chemicals, antiseptics, medications that cling to clothes and skin.”
The word “cancer” hung in the air for a second too long. Daisy’s ears twitched.
“So she might be reacting to…hospital smells?” I asked slowly.
“It’s possible,” Dr. Keller said. “If someone in your life is spending a lot of time in that environment, she might find those scents unsettling or threatening. She might associate them with fear or pain.”
My stomach turned. Suddenly, I saw Ethan in a different light—not as a man stepping out of another woman’s bed, but as someone walking out of oncology rooms, soaked in the scent of chemo drugs and disinfectant.
“Sometimes,” Dr. Keller continued, “a dog’s behavior is less about who a person is and more about what that person is carrying—in their scent, in their body language, in their stress.”
I swallowed hard. “So she might not be warning me about him,” I said slowly. “She might be warning me about…something happening to him. Or around him.”
“Could be,” she said. “It’s hard to say for sure. But I wouldn’t jump straight to ‘He’s a bad person’ just because the dog is uneasy. I’d look at the whole picture.”
I thought about the whole picture and felt dizzy. Blonde hair, hospital rooms, secret appointments, a sister I had tried to erase from my heart. The whole picture looked less like a crime scene and more like a mess of human fear.
Dr. Keller prescribed some mild medication for Daisy’s nausea and suggested extra quiet time, gentle walks, lots of reassurance.
“And maybe,” she added, “less yelling in the house, if that’s been happening. Dogs don’t understand the words, but they feel the energy.”
On the drive home, Daisy sat with her head on the console between us, her eyes fixed on the road ahead. The world outside the windshield looked washed-out, like someone had turned the saturation down on everything.
At a red light, I glanced at the treatment schedule on the passenger seat. The next appointment was tomorrow afternoon.
“Do you think I should go?” I asked Daisy, feeling ridiculous for talking to her and even more ridiculous for expecting an answer.
She blinked at me and let out a soft huff, fogging up the glass.
“You’re not much help,” I said, but my voice lacked heat.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling, listening to the hum of the refrigerator and the occasional car passing outside. My phone sat on the nightstand, screen dark, but my mind replayed my post over and over.
I had dragged Ethan through the digital mud based on what I thought I knew. I had turned my marriage into a cautionary tale shared by thousands, all without understanding the full story. The thought made my chest tighten.
What if I had been wrong? Not about the lies—those were real—but about the kind of lies they were.
Around midnight, I got up and went to the living room. I opened the box of old family photos I’d dug out after Ethan’s visit. The one of me and Lily as kids stared up at me again, two gap-toothed girls with matching grins.
I remembered the first time she dyed her hair blonde in high school. Our mother had scolded her while secretly admiring how the color made her eyes pop. I had rolled my eyes and called her dramatic. She’d laughed and said, “Somebody has to be.”
After our mother died, there had been less laughing.
In the morning, I woke up groggy and hollow. The clock on my phone said it was almost noon. I had just a few hours before Lily’s next treatment. The idea of walking into that hospital felt like trying to step back into a life I’d slammed the door on.
I fed Daisy and watched her eat slowly, her appetite not quite back but better. When she finished, she came to sit in front of me, head tilted.
“Do you remember her?” I asked quietly. “My sister?”
Of course she didn’t. Daisy hadn’t been around when Lily and I still spoke. But something in her steady gaze made it feel like she understood that this was about more than a cheating scandal.
I grabbed my keys and the treatment schedule.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s go see the woman who turned my life upside down without even being in the room.”
At the last second, I hesitated, wondering if the hospital would allow a dog inside. The thought of being turned away at the entrance almost made me stay home. But something in my chest pushed me forward.
If I was going to face my past, I wanted Daisy there. She had walked me to the brink of the worst version of this story. Maybe she could walk me toward a different ending.
We drove toward the hospital, the building’s silhouette growing larger in the windshield. My hands shook on the steering wheel, but I didn’t turn around.
Daisy sat upright in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, as if she already knew that today, we were going to sniff out a truth much bigger than a few blonde hairs on a shirt.
Part 6 – Sisters and Silence
I didn’t go inside the hospital that day.
I parked in the lot, turned off the engine, and sat there with my hands gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles went white. The building loomed in front of me, all glass and concrete and quiet dread. People walked in and out, some limping, some wheeling small suitcases, some holding hands so tightly their fingers must have ached.
Daisy shifted restlessly in the seat, looking from me to the entrance and back again. Her tail flicked once, uncertain.
“I can’t,” I whispered, more to myself than to her. “Not yet.”
Fear can look a lot like anger if you squint. For years, I had told myself I was angry at Lily. Angry that she left when Mom got sick. Angry that she chased her own life while I sat in hospital rooms and waited for bad news.
The truth, if I was honest, was that I’d been afraid.
Afraid that if I forgave her, I’d have to admit I hadn’t been as selfless as I made myself out to be. Afraid that if I reached for her and she pulled away, I’d lose her twice. Afraid that our mother’s death had broken something in us that couldn’t be glued back together.
The last time I saw Lily, the hallway outside Mom’s room smelled like disinfectant and stale coffee. Machines beeped softly behind the closed door. Our voices had been too loud, ricocheting off the walls.
“You can’t just leave,” I had hissed. “She needs you.”
“I can’t breathe in here,” she’d snapped back, her eyes rimmed red. “Every time I walk down this hall, I feel like I’m drowning.”
“So drown with us,” I’d said, the cruelty tasting like acid as soon as it left my tongue. “That’s what family does.”
She’d stared at me, wounded. “You don’t own grief, Hannah,” she whispered. “You’re not the only one who’s hurting.”
“Could have fooled me,” I said. “You’re always running.”
The fight had blurred after that. There were accusations, years of built-up resentment, old jealousies. I remember saying, “If you walk out that door, don’t come back,” and I remember her actually doing it.
I remember slamming my back against the wall after she left, sliding down onto the linoleum, and letting the sobs come. Not because she had gone, but because I had meant it when I told her not to return.
In the parking lot now, years later, I looked at the hospital entrance and felt that same old panic creeping up my spine. Daisy pressed her nose to my arm, sniffing at the sweat on my skin.
“Okay,” I said finally. “Not today.”
I drove home with a knot in my chest. Once inside, I took out my old box of photos again. There were pictures of birthday parties, school plays, summer vacations. In almost every one from our childhood, Lily and I were within arm’s reach of each other, like a two-person gravitational field.
I found a photo of us in our early twenties, sitting on the porch steps at Mom’s house, legs stretched out in front of us, beers in hand. Our shoulders were touching. We looked tired and worried and very much like we owned the world together.
It was taken a few months before Mom’s diagnosis.
I thumbed through the stack until I found the last picture we’d taken together—at a holiday dinner during Mom’s first round of treatment. Lily’s smile was too wide, her eyes too bright, the kind of expression you wear when you’re trying not to cry. I looked stiff, my arm draped over the back of her chair but not really around her.
I had spent years telling myself I was the good daughter, the loyal one. She was the selfish one who ran. Stories like that are easier to live with than the truth, which is usually messier and shared.
That evening, the phone rang.
The number on the screen was unfamiliar, an out-of-town area code. My first instinct was to let it go to voicemail. Then I thought of Ethan’s folder, of the treatment schedule, and something whispered, “Answer.”
“Hello?” I said, my voice cautious.
“Hi, is this Hannah Collins?” a woman’s voice asked. Her tone was gentle, practiced, the way people talk when they’re used to delivering hard news.
“Yes,” I replied, my heart climbing into my throat.
“My name is Joy,” she said. “I’m a social worker at the regional medical center. I’m calling because your name came up as an emergency contact for a patient here. Her name is Lily Matthews.”
For a second, I thought the line had gone dead. The room tilted around me. I sat down heavily on the couch, my knees no longer trustworthy.
“Are you sure you have the right person?” I managed.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “Your husband—Ethan—listed you. He’s been the primary support for her during her treatments, but we always ask if there’s additional family our patients might want us to connect with.”
The mention of Ethan’s name made my stomach twist. “Is she okay?” I asked.
There was a pause that told me more than words could.
“She’s stable today,” Joy said carefully. “But her oncologist is concerned about how she’s responding to treatment. We’re entering a more critical phase. I can’t share details without her consent, but…she’s been very tired. And scared.”
I swallowed hard. “Did she ask you to call me?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Joy said. “She mentioned you a few times. She said she didn’t think you’d want to see her. But when I saw a missed call from your number yesterday, I thought maybe you were trying to reach us.”
I remembered the moment I had dialed the clinic number from Ethan’s phone record, then hung up as soon as it started to ring. My fear had built a wall, then criticized me for standing behind it.
“I…did call,” I admitted. “I hung up.”
“That happens more than you’d think,” Joy said softly. “Look, I’m not here to pressure you into anything. But if you ever decide you’d like to see her, I can help arrange that. Sometimes having family there makes a big difference.”
Family. The word felt both too big and too small.
“What if she doesn’t want to see me?” I asked.
Joy hesitated. “I can tell you she talks about you like someone she misses,” she said. “Not like someone she hates.”
I pressed my fingers to my eyes, willing back tears. “She should hate me,” I said. “I told her not to come back.”
Joy’s voice gentled even more. “People say a lot of things when they’re hurting,” she said. “What matters now is what you want to do with the time in front of you.”
Time. Cancer has a way of turning time into a more fragile, noticeable thing.
“I’m…scared,” I admitted, the word tasting like rust. “I don’t know what to say to her.”
“That’s okay,” Joy said. “You don’t have to have the perfect words. Sometimes just showing up is enough.”
Daisy, who had been lying on the rug, got up and came to rest her head in my lap. Her eyes searched my face like she was trying to read my mind.
“If I come,” I said slowly, “can I bring my dog? She’s…kind of part of this mess.”
Joy chuckled softly. “We actually do have therapy dogs on some floors,” she said. “But we’d have to get special permission for a personal pet. If you want, I can look into it.”
“I’d appreciate that,” I said.
We hung up with no firm plans, just an open door.
That night, I lay awake again. The house creaked in familiar ways. The space in the bed where Ethan used to sleep felt huge. My phone glowed on the nightstand, my social media post still racking up reactions and comments like a heartbeat I couldn’t slow.
A new message appeared in my notifications from an account I didn’t recognize. I clicked it with the detached curiosity of someone scrolling through someone else’s life.
It was a link to my own post, shared in a support group for people whose partners had cheated. The caption read, “Another story that proves your gut is never wrong.”
I stared at it until my vision blurred. My gut wasn’t wrong about the feeling that something was off. It had just misread what that something was.
I put the phone face down and turned to the darkness.
In the quiet, I could finally hear it—that small, insistent voice beneath the roar of anger and online affirmation. It sounded a lot like my mother when she used to settle arguments between us.
Call your sister, Hannah. You don’t know how many more chances you’ll get.