Part 4 – The Man in the Driveway
Marlene didn’t believe her ears at first.
She stood frozen on the porch, one hand gripping the frame of the screen door. The voice came again—closer this time, rough from years of silence but wrapped in something gentle.
“Socks… buddy, you really still hanging on out here?”
Then she saw him.
Brandon Fisher stepped from the beat-up Ford with slow, uneven movements, like someone who’d been driving all night—and hadn’t slept for most of it. He was no longer seventeen. His jaw was rough with gray stubble. His jacket had a tear near the collar. But his eyes—those soft, sharp, hopeful eyes—were still the same.
He stood at the bottom of the porch steps and took off his hat.
“Marlene,” he said, his voice cracking. “You still got my boy?”
Her lips parted, but no words came. Instead, she opened the screen door wider and stepped back.
“He’s waiting for you,” she said.
Brandon knelt beside Socks, not caring about the cold or the porch dust on his jeans. His fingers trembled as he touched the dog’s fur, now thin and patchy in places, and pressed his forehead to Socks’ bony head.
“You remember me, old man?” he whispered.
Socks stirred.
Just a blink. Just the faintest twitch of the tail.
But it was enough.
“I got your letters,” Brandon said, still kneeling. “All of them. Didn’t answer. Didn’t think I had the right to come back. But when I read the last one… the one about the lump…”
He stopped.
Socks made a faint sound—not quite a growl, not quite a sigh. Something tired. Something that said, You came. That’s enough.
Marlene wiped at her cheek with her sleeve and stepped back to let them have their moment.
Rachel, the assistant vet, stood quietly by the driveway, uncertain whether to approach.
Marlene waved her over.
“He’s got company now,” she said softly. “Let’s give them a little space.”
Rachel nodded. “If he holds on another day, I can come again in the morning. But… if it’s time tonight, I left everything you need in the kit by the door.”
Marlene didn’t reply right away.
She looked at the porch—the donkey standing still and silent, the barn cats draped like mourners, and Brandon with his arms around a dying mutt who hadn’t moved in hours.
“He’s not alone,” Marlene said. “That was all he ever really wanted.”
That afternoon, the snow fell in slow, lazy drifts. Brandon stayed beside Socks, telling stories about the city shelter, about the first time Socks pulled him out of a fight, about sneaking the dog into a motel laundry room one winter and drying his paws in the warm tumbling air.
“He was always braver than me,” Brandon said, brushing flakes from the dog’s ears. “Always knew when to stay and when to run.”
He paused.
“I never did figure that out.”
Socks lay still but not cold. His breath came in steady waves, slow and long. His eyes fluttered once, and his paw moved barely an inch—just enough to rest against Brandon’s boot.
It was the same paw Brandon had wrapped with duct tape years ago when the mutt stepped on broken glass behind the diner.
“You still remember,” he whispered.
As night fell, Brandon stood and stretched his legs. His joints popped like brittle twigs, and his back ached more than it used to. But he didn’t care.
He walked to the truck, dug into the passenger seat, and came back with a small bundle wrapped in old newspaper.
He unwrapped it carefully, then set it beside the blanket.
It was a rubber chew toy. Faded red. Shaped like a fire hydrant.
Socks used to carry it everywhere. It had a tear along the bottom where he once bit through it during a thunderstorm.
“I kept it,” Brandon said. “Don’t know why. Just did.”
He placed it gently between Socks’ front paws.
The wind picked up, and a few flakes swirled into the porch light’s glow. Somewhere down the hill, an owl called once. A deep, lonely sound.
Then another offering appeared.
A brown, smooth stick. Bare of bark. Almost polished.
No one saw who left it.
Later that evening, Marlene stepped onto the porch with a thermos of soup and two mugs. Brandon was still sitting there, his arms now around Socks, his eyes red but calm.
“He waited for me,” he said softly.
Marlene nodded.
“He wouldn’t go until he knew you were okay.”
Brandon looked down at the dog’s chest, rising slower now. “I was never really okay.”
She sat beside him.
“No one is. But you came back. That’s what matters.”
He reached into his coat and pulled something out—an old photo. Bent corners, slightly torn.
Socks, young and muddy, standing beside a grinning teenager with crooked teeth and a spray-painted skateboard.
“He saved my life,” Brandon said.
“I know,” Marlene replied.
Just before midnight, as the fireflies flickered low to the ground and the porch turned silent except for the wind, Marlene heard it:
Not a sound.
But an absence of one.
The breath that had been steady… was no longer there.
And Brandon, still holding Socks, whispered, “You can rest now, buddy. I’ll take it from here.”