Part 6 — “Strangers on the Bench”
Nathan had just finished his second coffee when he saw her.
Late fifties, maybe early sixties. A kind of timeless tiredness around the eyes. She wore a denim jacket, pale from years of wear, and carried a leash that dangled empty in her hand.
She paused at the edge of the platform like someone stepping into memory.
Switch raised his head from under the bench but didn’t move. That was one of his gifts — knowing when to be still.
The woman spotted Nathan and offered a faint smile.
“Mind if I sit?”
He nodded. “Plenty of room.”
She lowered herself carefully onto the bench and folded the empty leash in her lap. For a moment, neither of them spoke. The early train rumbled by in the distance, just sound and shadow. No passengers. No stop.
“Used to bring my dog here,” she finally said. “Every Friday. He loved the noise.”
Nathan glanced at the leash. It was frayed at the clasp, like something that had been held onto long after its use had passed.
“He’s gone now,” she added, eyes on the tracks.
Nathan nodded slowly. “Mine too. Not long ago.”
She looked down at Switch, who rested his chin on the red wagon’s worn edge.
“But you’ve got this guy now.”
“Not really mine. He found me,” Nathan said. “Behind the switch lever over there. Thought he was just passing through.”
Her eyes flickered. “Funny how they do that. Just show up. Like they know where to go.”
He looked at her more closely now. She seemed familiar, not in face but in presence — like someone who’d waited at too many doors that never opened.
“I’m Nathan,” he said.
She hesitated, then offered her hand. “Jo.”
They shook once. Quick and dry. Like something exchanged in the rain and remembered forever.
Over the next few days, Jo kept coming back.
At first she’d just nod, say a few words, then sit and stare at the horizon. But by the end of the week, she brought a thermos and two mismatched mugs. Coffee that was a little too strong. Conversation that was a little too honest.
“He was a Lab mix. Name was Murphy. Had him thirteen years,” she said one morning.
Nathan sipped. “How long’s he been gone?”
Jo looked out at the gravel beyond Track 2.
“Six months and three days.”
Nathan didn’t ask how she knew the exact count. He knew.
“And you?” she asked.
“Mine was named Benny. Had kidney problems at the end. We buried him behind the station.”
Jo smiled, sad and soft. “That where the flowers came from?”
Nathan nodded. “Every Tuesday. Habit.”
She took a breath. “I used to walk Murphy here even when the trains stopped running. He’d sit by the bench like he was waiting for someone. I never had the heart to tell him there wasn’t anyone coming.”
Nathan’s throat tightened. He looked down at Switch, who was dozing again.
“I know that feeling,” he said.
It was Jo who asked the question.
They were watching the wind push dust across the platform, neither saying much. Switch snored softly. The note box — now a tin biscuit tin repurposed for letters — sat on the bench between them.
Jo reached out and touched it.
“Mind if I read one?”
Nathan hesitated. “They’re not all mine.”
She opened the lid and leafed gently through the slips of paper.
Some were his. Some were Clyde’s.
A few were from strangers who’d found the box and left a note without ever speaking to him.
Grief tended to be like that — half anonymous, half desperate for witness.
Jo pulled out one.
She read silently, then tucked it back.
“I wrote something last week,” she said. “Didn’t sign it.”
Nathan looked over. “The one about the daughter learning to grieve?”
Jo nodded.
“I figured it was you.”
She rubbed her hand down her leg. “Didn’t think anyone would notice.”
“I always read them. Even the ones that hurt.”
Jo exhaled, then leaned back.
“Do you think it’s weird… all this?” she asked. “Coming to a dead train station just to talk to a ghost dog and write notes no one might ever read?”
Nathan smiled. “I think it’s the most honest thing I do all day.”
She laughed then — not loudly, but fully. Like someone who hadn’t let herself laugh in a long time.
That afternoon, they walked together. Just down the platform and back. Jo told him about her late husband, a quiet electrician who never liked dogs until Murphy showed up. Nathan told her about Clyde — the notes, the mop bucket, the old habits too heavy to put down.
As they reached the edge of the gravel, Jo stopped.
“Can I see where he’s buried?”
Nathan led her to the back, near the fence where wildflowers had started growing again. Benny’s grave was marked by the wagon and a small wooden cross Nathan had carved himself. Someone had tied a faded blue ribbon to the handle. He didn’t know who.
Jo knelt beside the wagon. She didn’t cry. She just placed her hand on it gently, like thanking it for letting her borrow some of its silence.
“Maybe I’ll bring Murphy’s leash next time,” she said.
“You’re welcome to.”
They walked back in silence. Not the kind that needed filling. The kind that felt full already.
That night, Nathan wrote another note.
He didn’t put it in the tin.
He folded it and placed it on the bench with a rock on top.
Just in case.
To whoever needs it —
You’re not alone.
Even if no one answers, even if no one sees, your grief is real. It matters.
This bench doesn’t judge. These tracks don’t forget.
Leave your note. We’ll read it. We always do.
The next morning, the note was gone.
But two new ones were inside the tin.
Nathan read one aloud to Switch.
It simply said:
My wife loved this bench. I think she still sits here sometimes.
Switch blinked slowly.
Then laid his head down.
And Nathan, for the first time since Clyde’s funeral, felt something more than grief.
He felt part of something bigger than pain.
A small, unspoken community.
Built not by rails and timetables —
but by love, loss, and the dogs that helped us carry both.