Part 8 – Letters in the Glove Box
The letter wasn’t folded neatly.
It was crumpled, coffee-stained, and wedged so deep in the glove box that Alicia had to reach behind a rusted flashlight and an expired tin of breath mints to pull it free.
She hadn’t been looking for anything in particular—just clearing space for Daisy’s growing collection of crayons and Vernon’s extra bandages.
But what she found stopped her cold.
“To the next driver of this van,” it began, in shaky blue ink.
“If you find this, you’ve already done more than I could.”
Alicia sat in the driver’s seat, door open to the warm breeze, Reggie curled at her feet. The orchard stretched out before them—sunlight glinting off dust and dry limbs.
She read slowly.
“My name is Peter Kaplan. My son, Daniel, trained dogs for the California Diabetic Alert Center before his own diabetes took his sight. He refused to stop working, even when his hands started shaking. He believed in second chances. For people. For dogs. For himself.”
Alicia paused.
Kaplan.
She’d seen that name before.
Reggie’s training file.
D. Kaplan — Sacramento
His original owner.
She read on.
“When Daniel passed, I didn’t know what to do with his things. Or his van. Or his dog, Reagan. I tried to rehome the dog. They said he was placed. But I never saw him again.”
Her breath caught.
Reggie.
He had been more than trained. He had been loved.
“I kept the van because it reminded me of him. And I told myself I’d use it to help someone. But I never did. I let it rust. I’m sorry for that. If you found this letter, then maybe you didn’t.”
Alicia turned the page over.
A second note, shorter, more rushed.
“There’s another envelope under the seat. I couldn’t open it. Too much of Daniel in it. Maybe you’ll know what to do with it.”
She reached beneath the seat.
There, in a manila envelope, was a stack of drawings—childlike, simple.
One showed a man holding a leash. The dog beside him had one blue eye and one brown.
Reggie.
Alicia’s eyes blurred.
Another page showed the man in a hospital bed. The dog curled at his feet.
The last page: just Reggie, nose pointed north. Alone, but moving forward.
She held the drawings in her lap, the orchard wind rustling the pages like old hymns
Reggie shifted against her leg.
“You were his,” she whispered. “And when he left, you couldn’t stay still. You were looking for someone.”
She looked toward the house—Daisy playing cards with Vernon, the stuffed dog now patched with duct tape and love.
“You found us.”
That night, Alicia tacked one of the drawings—the one with Reggie pointed north—onto the inside door of the van
She tucked the letter back into the glove box, but not before adding her own.
“To the next driver of this van,” she wrote,
“Reagan is still here. His name is Reggie now. He saved a man, a girl, and me. We haven’t stopped moving.”
The next day, Alicia drove into town early.
Not to run a clinic.
But to do something she hadn’t done in months.
She stopped at the permit office.
Filled out the forms.
Paid the fee.
Mobile Human-Animal Health Collaborative — Owner: Alicia Mendoza, RN
She stared at the paper.
At the name.
At the words she’d once only scribbled in the margins of old notebooks.
Then she pressed her signature into the line.
Back at the orchard, Daisy greeted her with a peach in each hand.
“I made breakfast!” she said proudly.
The fruit was bruised. Sour. But Alicia bit into it anyway.
Reggie sat beside her, tail brushing the dusty floor.
“You know,” Alicia said, wiping juice from her chin, “I think this van was always meant for more than stitches and thermometers.”
She looked down at him.
“It was meant to move people. Forward. Out of grief. Toward something better.”
Reggie leaned into her side.
That evening, they camped near a forgotten trailhead where the air smelled like pine sap and old dreams.
Alicia took out her journal.
She didn’t write about blood sugar levels or vaccine records.
She wrote about second chances.
About people who leave something behind that finds its way forward.
About dogs who never forget what they’re trained for—even when the world forgets them.