Part 7 – The Boy at the Door
It had been twenty-three days since we said goodbye to Charlie.
Not that I was counting.
Okay—I was. Not with a calendar, but with something softer. Like how many Tuesdays I’d brought tea instead of dog treats. How many nights I’d opened my door half-expecting to hear nails on tile. How many times I thought I saw his shape from the corner of my eye.
June seemed… okay. Not untouched. But sturdy, like someone who’d learned to live with cracks and decided they made the light prettier.
We still had our Tuesdays. Still played Nat King Cole. Still filled the silence with memories and mismatched stories.
But the space Charlie used to fill—it hadn’t disappeared. It had just gone quiet.
Until the knock came.
It was late afternoon. We were folding laundry on June’s porch, mugs of peach tea sweating on the rail beside us, when it happened.
A sharp rap on the front door—firm, but uncertain.
June glanced at me.
We weren’t expecting anyone.
She called out, “Just a minute!” as she smoothed her sweater and made her way to the door.
I followed behind, just in case.
The boy standing there couldn’t have been more than fifteen.
Tall. Thin. Hair too long in the front, like he hadn’t had a proper cut in a while. Shoulders hunched like he wasn’t sure he belonged.
“Sorry,” he said. “I—I don’t mean to bother you. I’m just trying to find a dog.”
June blinked. “What kind of dog?”
The boy reached into his jacket and pulled out a worn photo.
“I know it’s a long shot,” he said. “But my uncle used to live around here. He had this dog—limped a little, real quiet, but loyal. Said he ran off about a year ago.”
He held the photo out to us.
June took it gently.
I leaned over her shoulder.
And there he was.
Charlie.
Not exactly, of course.
The dog in the photo looked younger. Healthier. Maybe a little leaner around the jaw. But the eyes—that cautious kindness, the weight of knowing things without needing to say them—that was Charlie.
My stomach clenched.
“Your uncle,” June said slowly. “What was his name?”
“Micah Brenner.”
She glanced at me. I didn’t know the name.
“He passed last winter,” the boy said. “Lung thing. Complications. I was in foster care at the time, so I didn’t get to say goodbye. But he used to write me letters about his dog. Said he didn’t have much left, but that dog was his reason to get out of bed.”
His voice cracked a little, and he cleared his throat.
“He called him Chance. Said he was always running off, but always came back. Except one day, he didn’t.”
June stepped back and opened the door wider.
“Come in,” she said.
I think it surprised us both.
He hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said. “But we need to tell you something.”
We sat in the sunroom.
June told him everything.
How we’d found the dog. The broken leash. The day it rained. The tea. The weeks that followed.
How we’d buried him beneath the lilac tree.
The boy—his name was Eli—listened without interrupting. His hands stayed folded in his lap. His eyes never left the photograph.
When we finished, he nodded once, like something inside him had settled.
“I figured he was gone,” he said. “But I needed to know what happened.”
Then he looked up at June.
“I’m glad it was you.”
And I swear, something in her face melted—like a thaw she hadn’t expected.
“Me too,” she whispered.
Later, after he left—with a promise to come back Sunday—we found ourselves still sitting in silence.
I stared at the empty corner by the heater.
June reached for her teacup but didn’t sip.
“You ever wonder,” she said quietly, “if the people—or creatures—we think are ours… maybe they’re not.”
I turned to her.
“Maybe we’re just a stop on the way,” she said. “Somewhere safe to land. To rest. Before they keep going.”
I thought about Eli.
About how much he looked like someone who needed a place to land.
And I said, “Then maybe the luckiest ones… get to be that stop.”
That night, I couldn’t sleep.
I kept thinking about the photo.
How Charlie—Chance—had come from someone else’s life. How he’d carried grief before ours. How many hearts he’d lived in before he stopped beside my bench in the rain.
Love doesn’t always start with you.
Sometimes it just passes through.
And if you’re lucky, it stays a while.
Part 8 – The Music in the Silence
Eli came back on Sunday afternoon, just like he said he would.
June had baked shortbread cookies and set out three mismatched mugs like it was the most natural thing in the world. She didn’t fuss. Didn’t ask too many questions. But I saw her check the window three times between 1:00 and 1:15 p.m., the kind of hopeful glancing you only do when you’ve been let down before.
He showed up at 1:22, clutching a beat-up guitar case in one hand and a brown grocery bag in the other.
“Hope tea still happens,” he said.
“It does,” June replied. “It always does.”
We sat in the sunroom again. Same chairs. Same cushions. Same little round table with the faded floral cloth.
But this time, it felt different.
Not heavier. Just… wider. Like the space had expanded to fit something new.
Eli pulled out a plastic container from his bag—slices of banana bread, uneven and slightly too dark at the edges.
“I made this,” he mumbled.
June took a bite and closed her eyes dramatically. “Needs more mistakes next time.”
He smiled, just barely.
I asked about the guitar.
He shrugged. “Uncle Micah taught me. Said songs were the best way to say stuff you couldn’t say regular.”
“Do you still play?” I asked.
He nodded. “Sometimes. When it’s quiet.”
June leaned forward. “Play now.”
He hesitated. “You sure?”
She just pointed to the corner. “That chair there has been waiting for someone with a guitar for a long time.”
So he did.
He played softly. Hesitant at first, then steadier as his fingers found home again. The song was unfamiliar, but the ache in it was not.
There were no lyrics—just a slow, winding melody that somehow felt like everything Charlie had been: patient, weathered, tender.
When he finished, none of us clapped.
June just said, “That was him.”
Eli looked confused. “What?”
“That’s how he felt when he looked at you,” she said. “That song.”
Eli blinked quickly and looked down at his hands.
He didn’t speak again for a while.
After he left, June surprised me.
“He reminds me of my son,” she said, staring at the closed door.
I turned to her slowly. “You have a son?”
She nodded once. “Had.”
She didn’t say more. Just gathered the dishes and walked them to the sink.
I followed.
“He passed?” I asked gently.
“Not in the way you think,” she said. “But yes. In all the ways that matter.”
We sat at the kitchen table.
No cookies. No tea.
Just the air between us, thick with something old.
“His name is Simon,” she said. “He’s fifty now. Lives in Arizona. We haven’t spoken in almost twenty years.”
“Why?”
She looked away.
“Because I loved him too hard. And too wrong. The kind of love that tried to protect instead of understand.”
She paused, then: “When he came out, I told him I loved him but didn’t know how to explain him to the world. He heard that as shame. Maybe it was.”
A long silence.
“I kept waiting for a letter. A call. Anything.”
She tapped her fingers on the table.
“But some people walk away. And they don’t come back.”
I didn’t know what to say.
So I said the only thing that felt honest.
“You’ve still got room.”
She looked at me. “For who?”
“For Eli. For me. For whatever’s next.”
She let that settle in her bones.
Then she said, “I think Charlie knew that before we did.”
That evening, I got a text from Eli.
Thanks for today.
I haven’t played for anyone in a long time.
Feels weird to be missed by a dog longer than I’ve been missed by most people.
But I think he waited.
For both of us.
I stared at the message until the screen dimmed.
Then I typed:
He didn’t just wait.
He made sure we found each other.