Part 8 – “The Voice That Carried”
The podcast aired on a Tuesday.
Leonard had sat at his kitchen table for the interview, Shasta’s blanket folded beside him like a promise. Her IV drip had been removed the day before, and though she still moved gingerly, she was home—tail slower, appetite small, but eyes bright. The vet called it a “strong response.” Leonard called it a miracle.
He’d spoken slowly during the recording. Not from nerves—though they were there—but from a quiet kind of care, like placing stones one by one in a river crossing. Meredith asked gentle questions, never pushed.
“What did it feel like?” she’d asked. “The moment you realized you’d been scammed?”
“Like someone had pulled the rug out from under everything I believed I was good at,” Leonard said.
“And what changed?”
He hesitated, then smiled toward Shasta curled by the fridge.
“A box showed up at my door,” he said. “Inside it was a dog with ears too big and a note from my wife, who had already passed. That box held more than a dog. It held a reason to keep talking.”
After it aired, Leonard didn’t expect much.
But the letters came anyway.
Dozens, then hundreds. Postcards. Envelopes with scrawled return addresses from Idaho, Maine, Arizona. Some typed. Some handwritten in blue ink that trailed into tearstains. All saying some version of the same thing:
“Me too.”
“I told no one until now.”
“Thank you.”
Carla from the library brought over a box to keep them in.
“You’ve started something, Mr. Price,” she said, wiping her eyes behind round glasses. “I hope you know that.”
One envelope stood out.
Thicker than the rest. No return address. Just his name—Leonard Price—written in precise, old-fashioned cursive.
He opened it at the table with Shasta on his lap.
Inside was a folded photograph. Black and white. Edges soft from time. It showed two women on a bench near a lake—one of them unmistakably young Marilyn, smiling sideways at the camera, hair in loose waves, dog at her feet.
On the back, in the same elegant handwriting:
“Her name was Penny. Marilyn’s first dog. She never forgot her.”
Below it:
“She spoke of you often. What you gave her. What she hoped she gave you. Thought you might want this now.”
No name. No number.
Just memory, delivered.
Leonard sat back, letting the weight of it settle. He traced the outline of Marilyn’s face, then the shape of the dog beside her. Penny.
He’d never seen the photo before. Marilyn had spoken of childhood pets, but never this one in such detail.
He looked down at Shasta.
“You weren’t the first,” he whispered. “But you might be the last.”
The dog blinked slowly.
Leonard framed the photo that evening. Hung it beside the kitchen window, where the light hit in the morning. Below it, on a shelf, he placed the heart-shaped tag.
For Leonard. Love, Marilyn.
The next day, he wrote another card.
“If someone trusted you once, you can trust yourself again.”
And then another:
“Even in the last chapter, new characters can walk in.”
He signed it the same way as always:
— L & S
Later that afternoon, Shasta surprised him by nosing her leash and wagging once. Just once—but enough.
Leonard smiled.
“All right, girl. Let’s go remind the neighborhood who you belong to.”
They walked down Pine Bluff Drive together—old man, older dog, side by side.
A voice in his head, her voice, seemed to whisper:
Go on, Leonard. The world’s not done listening to you yet.
And this time, he believed it.