Part 10 – The Final Route
The house was too quiet after Benny passed.
Walter noticed it most in the mornings — no paws clicking across the kitchen linoleum, no soft sighs from the living room rug. Just the hum of the fridge and the creak of his own bones reminding him that life was still going, even if a part of it had just stopped.
He left Benny’s blanket folded on the chair. The brass bell sat on the mantle now, next to Rose’s photo. Every so often, Walter gave it a gentle tap.
Not for sound, he thought. But so he knows I haven’t forgotten.
They buried Benny beneath the big tree near Rose’s bench. The cemetery allowed it, after some quiet pleading and a modest fee Walter scraped together. He chose a flat stone — nothing grand, just a smooth piece of river rock — and carved it by hand:
“Benny. Faithful to the last stop.”
Eli came every Sunday after that.
At first, Walter thought maybe the boy wouldn’t — that the bond had ended with the dog. But the next week, there he was, coat zipped up to his chin, sketchpad under one arm, a new drawing in the other.
It showed Benny, curled under the tree, with Walter sitting beside him. But above them both was a figure in the clouds — a woman with curls, smiling down.
Rose.
Walter had to sit down to breathe.
Winter settled in slowly. The kind that didn’t roar, but crept into the joints and sat there like a tenant who’d forgotten how to leave.
Walter’s health didn’t improve, but it didn’t get worse either. He still woke stiff, still took fifteen minutes just to get moving. But there was something different in the way he approached each day now — like he had somewhere to be, even if it was just a bench by a headstone, a quiet boy beside him.
They’d fallen into a rhythm, he and Eli. Some days they spoke. Some days they didn’t. But the silence was never empty.
Eli had started bringing a thermos too — hot chocolate, usually. They’d trade drinks and drawings. Walter gave him a new cap — his old backup from the bus company — and the boy wore it every Sunday like it was part of a uniform.
One cold morning in March, Eli did something different. He handed Walter a folded paper — not a drawing this time, but a letter.
The boy waited as Walter unfolded it, his fingers stiff and slow.
Dear Walter,
I didn’t talk for a long time after Mom died. I didn’t know how to say things that didn’t hurt. But Benny helped. He found me at school one day and just… sat next to me. Like he’d been waiting.
He brought me here. Every week. To the same bench. I didn’t know why until I met you.
You made the quiet feel okay again.
I think maybe he was never lost. Just waiting for the two of us to find each other.
Thank you for the seat. I’m saving you one too.
Your friend,
Eli
Walter folded the paper, hands trembling. He swallowed hard.
“I never had a son,” he said after a long time. “But if I had… I’d have wanted him to be like you.”
Eli leaned against him — not tightly, just enough.
The brass bell chimed once in Walter’s mind.
Spring came.
The trees bloomed in bursts of soft green. Walter’s garden — neglected for years — sprouted a row of daffodils, planted by Eli with a trowel too big for his hands.
Walter stood slower now. Walked with a cane. But he made it to that bench every Sunday, without fail.
He and Eli started riding the city bus once a month — just for fun. Walter would point out the old stops, tell stories. Eli listened, quiet as always, but with that spark in his eyes.
The world hadn’t gotten easier.
Walter still skipped meds sometimes. Still wrestled with fatigue, with pain, with the steady tick of time that never paused for grief or healing. But he had company now. A route. A reason.
And when he sat on the bench, beside the dog’s resting place, beside the headstone of the woman he loved, and beside the boy who reminded him that nothing was ever really over…
He felt whole.
He tapped the bell on his coat gently. Just once.
And said, with a soft smile:
“All aboard.”
THE END
🚌🐾💛