Part 5 – All the Ways We Say Goodbye
The call came while I was rinsing dishes.
Just a Tuesday morning. Nothing special. Blue sky outside, cinnamon-sugar oatmeal cooling on the counter, the faint sound of my neighbor’s windchimes tapping out a lazy rhythm.
I didn’t expect it to be the vet.
Didn’t expect her voice to sound so… gentle.
Like she’d already rehearsed what she had to say.
“We got Charlie’s bloodwork back.”
I held the phone tighter. My fingers were damp. Soapy.
“It’s not good, is it?”
A pause. The kind that’s more honest than any words.
“There’s a tumor on his spleen,” she said. “It’s advanced. We believe it’s hemangiosarcoma. It spreads quietly, and then fast.”
“How long?”
“Could be weeks. Maybe less. I know that’s hard to hear.”
I nodded, but I was alone in my kitchen, and she couldn’t see me. Couldn’t see the way my knees buckled slightly or how my chest went quiet—like someone had flipped a switch and all the noise in me just… shut off.
I went to June’s that afternoon.
Didn’t call first. Just showed up with a rotisserie chicken and a box of tissues I wasn’t sure either of us would use.
She was in the sunroom with Charlie, both of them bathed in light. His head rested on her foot. Her hand moved slowly through his fur like she was memorizing it.
“I know,” she said before I even opened my mouth.
“How?”
She looked up. “I’ve had enough people leave me. You start to feel it before they do.”
I sat beside her.
“He doesn’t seem scared,” I said.
“No. But he knows.”
She pulled the chicken from its paper bag, tore it gently into strips, and fed Charlie each piece like holy communion.
That week, everything slowed down.
Charlie stopped following us room to room.
His steps were shorter. His eyes a little duller. But still, when I came in each evening, he’d lift his head, and for just a moment, that tail would thump against the rug like a soft drumbeat saying you’re here. Good.
I stopped going on dates. Stopped scrolling through apps, stopped pretending I wanted to meet someone new.
June and I joked about it once over mint tea.
“You’re already taken,” she said, glancing at Charlie.
I smiled. “Yeah. And he doesn’t ghost me or talk about crypto.”
We both laughed, but there was something raw underneath it.
That sharp awareness that this was a love we didn’t get to keep.
I started writing things down.
Little things.
The sound Charlie made when he stretched. The way he yawned like he’d been holding in a secret all day. The way he pressed his paw against the side of June’s teacup like he needed to feel the warmth himself.
I didn’t know why I wrote it all down—only that I had to. Like I was afraid he’d vanish completely if I didn’t find a way to keep him somewhere.
And maybe that was true of all the people I’d lost. All the almosts. The nearlys. The ones who stayed long enough to leave a mark and then disappeared.
Charlie wasn’t going to disappear.
He was going to die.
And I was going to feel every second of it.
One night, I asked June, “Did you ever consider getting married again? After Lawrence?”
She took her time with the answer.
“I had offers,” she said. “But I don’t think I needed a person. I needed a witness.”
“To what?”
“To my life. To who I was when I wasn’t being someone else’s something.”
I nodded, too fast, because the truth of it landed in my throat.
That was what Charlie had become for me.
A witness.
He’d seen me without makeup. Without armor. He’d seen me cry into cold leftovers and laugh until I snorted. He’d watched me become someone I didn’t think I could be anymore: soft.
I hadn’t guarded my heart.
I’d handed it over—without even realizing.
The next morning, Charlie couldn’t get up.
His legs just… gave out.
June and I didn’t panic. Not outwardly. We didn’t cry or scream. We just knelt beside him and whispered like mothers and daughters and old friends all rolled into one.
We laid him on a folded blanket by the window.
Opened the curtains so he could feel the sun.
June pressed a record into the player—Nat King Cole again.
And then she said, without looking at me, “When it’s time… will you be with me?”
I took her hand.
“There’s nowhere else I’d be.”
That afternoon, I called the vet and asked about home visits.
She said she could come. Said it would be peaceful. Said we’d know when.
But we already did.
Charlie slept for most of the evening.
Breathing slower.
Dreaming maybe.
His tail flicked once in the middle of a Nat King Cole bridge, and June and I both smiled, because it felt like a thank you.
Or maybe a goodbye.
Part 6 – The Last Good Day
The morning of his last day, the sky was gentle.
A muted gray with threads of gold at the edges, like it couldn’t decide if it wanted to rain or shine. The kind of sky that didn’t interrupt—just held the quiet for you.
Charlie hadn’t moved much since the night before. But when I knelt beside him, he opened one eye and gave a tiny thump of his tail.
“Hey, handsome,” I whispered, brushing his ear with my fingertips. “Still with us?”
Another tail flick. The smallest one yet.
I pressed my forehead against his and breathed in that warm, earthy scent that only old dogs carry. Like dry grass, comfort, and time.
June had made toast and honey and set the table for three. The third plate stayed empty, but it didn’t feel wrong.
“I was thinking we could read to him,” she said. “Before.”
“Read what?”
She left the room, returned with an envelope. Pale blue. Familiar handwriting.
My throat tightened.
“Is that—?”
She nodded. “I never answered her. Lily. But I wrote this a year later. I never sent it. Didn’t even seal it.”
She sat beside Charlie and began to read aloud, her voice fragile but clear:
Dear Lily,
I used to think love only counted if you were chosen first. If someone said the words out loud. If they stayed.But time has taught me other things.
That there are quieter kinds of love. The kind you don’t see until it’s standing beside you, panting, tail wagging, waiting to walk you through whatever comes next.
I don’t hate you.
I never really did.Because the truth is, loving someone doesn’t mean you own them. It means you’re grateful for the part they shared with you.
He loved you. And me. And maybe that’s not a tragedy. Maybe that’s just the truth.
Sincerely,
June
By the time she finished, tears had pooled in the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t wipe them.
And I couldn’t speak.
Because I knew—deep down—that letter wasn’t just for Lily.
It was for me too.
For anyone who had ever loved in the in-between. The quiet. The not-quite-enough. The after.
Dr. Klemm arrived at 10:48 a.m.
She came with soft steps and soft eyes and a voice that knew when to speak and when not to.
She let us sit with him a while longer.
Let us hold his paws.
Let June hum a song I didn’t recognize—a lullaby, maybe.
And when she gave the final injection, Charlie’s breathing slowed, then stopped.
No sound. No struggle.
Just peace.
Afterward, we didn’t say much.
We wrapped him in his favorite blanket—the red one with the frayed edges and the pawprint stitched into the corner. June had made it herself the first winter he came home.
We carried him to the garden. Buried him beneath the lilac tree.
June placed the tag he’d found—the one from her father’s dog—inside the grave.
I added a photo. One I’d taken the week we met, both of us on the bench after the rain. My makeup was smudged. Charlie was soaked. But we both looked… alive.
“Thank you,” I whispered, before the last bit of soil.
Not to anyone in particular.
Or maybe to all of them.
The ones who’d come before.
The ones who’d stayed.
The ones who’d led us here.
That evening, June and I sat in the sunroom. The same chairs. The same teacups. But something had changed.
Not just the absence of a warm body by our feet.
Something quieter. Like we were two women who had walked each other to the edge of something irreversible—and survived.
“I didn’t think I had room in my heart for another goodbye,” she said softly.
I reached across the table and took her hand.
“You didn’t say goodbye,” I told her. “You said thank you.”
She closed her eyes. Nodded.
And for the first time since Charlie’s last breath, she smiled.
The next morning, I opened my apartment door to find a package.
No return address.
Inside: a framed photo of Charlie under the lilac tree. Someone had handwritten the words beneath it:
“Some loves never leave. They just walk beside us, quietly.”
And there, tucked behind the frame, was a note from June:
Come by for tea. Tuesdays are still yours.
And Hannah—next time, bring someone new.
Doesn’t have to be a man.
Just someone who sees you.—June
I cried harder reading that note than I had at the garden.
Because it hit me in a place I hadn’t touched in a long time.
The part that still believed I could be seen. Not as a date. Not as a placeholder.
But as a person. A home. A whole heart.
That night, I pulled out my journal.
Wrote down one last thing.
“The leash was broken, but he still led me somewhere true.”
And I let that be enough.