Part 7: The Woman on the Bench
It was one of those rare, clear days in early spring—the kind that pretends winter never happened.
Hope and I were walking our usual loop around Lincoln Park, her leash loose in my hand, her tail swaying with easy rhythm. The breeze carried the scent of thawing earth and the distant sweetness of the waffle truck down the block.
We passed joggers, strollers, a man reading Moby Dick like it wasn’t impossible, and two kids chasing pigeons. Hope ignored it all. She always walked like she’d already seen every version of the world and was simply choosing calm.
We were about to turn toward the exit when I saw her.
A woman on a bench. Alone. Young—maybe mid-twenties. Messy bun. Torn hoodie. Her arms were wrapped tightly around herself like armor. And her eyes? Red-rimmed. Shaky.
Hope stopped. Just… stopped.
She stared at the woman the way she sometimes stared at me—like she knew.
Before I could say anything, Hope pulled toward the bench.
“Hope,” I said gently. “Come on.”
But she didn’t budge. Instead, she sat at the woman’s feet and waited.
The woman looked down, startled. Then up at me.
“Is she yours?” she asked, her voice barely audible.
“She is.”
“She’s beautiful.”
I nodded. “She’s more than that.”
We stood in silence for a moment. The woman ran her hand through Hope’s fur, tentative at first, then deeper, like she was grounding herself.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, eyes brimming again. “I didn’t mean to cry in public.”
“You don’t have to be sorry.”
She laughed bitterly. “It’s just… everything. All at once. You know?”
I sat down beside her. Close, but not too close.
“I know.”
She glanced at me. “You do?”
I nodded. “I was left, too. Thought I’d never trust again. Then she found me.”
I nodded toward Hope. “She’s helped me find my way back. To myself.”
The woman stared at the tag on Hope’s collar.
“‘Worth it,’” she read. “Wow.”
I swallowed.
“She came with that tag. From someone who left something toxic behind. And gave the next person—me—a second chance. I didn’t realize how much I needed those words.”
The woman looked back down at Hope, her face crumpling.
“His name was Tyler,” she said. “Three years. He never hit me. Never cheated. Just… chipped away at me. Bit by bit. Told me I was too much. Or not enough. Depending on the day.”
I didn’t speak. Just listened.
She sniffled. “I finally left last week. And I’ve been sitting here every day since. Trying to remember why.”
Hope laid her chin on the woman’s knee.
“You don’t need to remember why,” I said quietly. “You just need to believe that leaving was an answer in itself.”
Her breath caught.
Then, a question—quiet and trembling:
“Do you think I’m worth it?”
I didn’t rush to answer.
I wanted her to hear it like a truth, not a platitude.
“I don’t just think it,” I said. “I know it.”
She nodded slowly, eyes locked on Hope.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Riley.”
I reached into my bag and pulled out a tiny slip of paper. It was something I’d written months ago, never knowing when I’d use it.
On it, just four words:
You are worth it.
I handed it to her.
She read it once. Then again.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
We sat a little longer. No need to say more.
When she finally stood to leave, she bent and kissed the top of Hope’s head.
“You’re magic,” she said softly.
And then she was gone.
—
That night, I added something new to the drawer beside my bed.
A notebook.
On the first page, I wrote:
Hope’s Women
Stories of healing. Passed on. One stranger to the next.
Underneath it, I wrote:
1. Claire
2. Maren
3. Riley
Because it wasn’t just my story anymore.
And maybe that was the point all along.
Part 8: When the Light Flickered
It started with the stairs.
Hope, who used to follow me up and down without pause, hesitated halfway up one night. She stared at me, one paw raised, confused. Embarrassed.
“You okay, girl?” I asked, kneeling beside her.
She wagged her tail, but not all the way. Just once. Tired.
That was the first flicker.
The second came two days later when she didn’t finish her breakfast. Hope, who usually licked the bowl so clean it could go straight back in the cabinet, walked away after two bites and lay down by the door instead.
By day three, she wasn’t interested in our walk.
And that’s when the dread crept in—quiet but unmistakable. Like the moment a storm starts to form on the edge of your sky.
I took her to the vet the next morning.
The waiting room smelled like antiseptic and fear. I rubbed Hope’s ears while she rested her chin on my knee. She was calm. I was not.
Dr. Ellis had kind eyes and a gentle touch. He ran his hands along Hope’s spine, checked her gums, listened to her heart.
“She’s older than we thought,” he said gently. “Maybe ten. Maybe more.”
I blinked. “But the shelter said eight.”
He gave a small shrug. “Shelters guess. Her teeth suggest more. And she’s got some signs of arthritis. I want to run some bloodwork, maybe x-rays.”
“Is it serious?” I asked, trying to hold still.
“We’ll know more soon,” he said. “But either way… she’ll need a little more care now. Softer walks. More rest. Joint support.”
I nodded. My throat was tight.
“She’s been through a lot,” I whispered.
He looked at me. “So have you.”
—
Back home, I laid a thick blanket beside the heater and helped Hope ease down onto it. She groaned softly, then exhaled the kind of sigh that sounded like a chapter closing.
I sat beside her, stroking her fur in slow, steady circles.
“I can’t lose you,” I said.
She blinked up at me, unbothered. Content.
That was the thing about Hope—she had already learned how to let go. She didn’t cling to what was fading. She didn’t fear silence.
She simply stayed present.
Still, I felt myself unraveling.
What if she was only meant to be with me for this little stretch of healing? What if that was the point?
And yet—what would I do with all this space she’d filled?
I reached for the notebook in my drawer.
Hope’s Women
I added a new entry.
4. Me again. But different now.
Because I needed to remember that healing wasn’t a line. It looped. It returned. It asked more of you the second time around.
—
The bloodwork came back the next morning.
Not terrible. Not fatal.
Kidney function slightly off. A little anemia. Mild arthritis. Early signs of aging—nothing dramatic, but enough to change the way we’d do things now.
“She’s okay,” Dr. Ellis said. “But she’s not young.”
Neither was I, in the same ways I used to be.
Not after everything.
That night, I laid beside her on the rug and whispered, “Whatever time we’ve got, I’ll make it count.”
She licked my nose. Once. Then fell asleep.
—
The next few weeks were slower.
We took shorter walks. I bought her a heated dog bed. Switched her to joint-support food and gave her daily meds wrapped in peanut butter.
We sat in the sun more.
We noticed the birds again.
One afternoon, I found a gray hair in her fur. It reminded me of the first one I’d found on myself—after Evan left. I had plucked it then. But this one? I tucked it inside the notebook.
A keepsake of all the things I didn’t need to hide from anymore.
—
One Sunday morning, I woke early and found Hope already by the door, tail wagging slow and steady.
She wanted to walk.
Not far. Not fast. Just forward.
So we did.
Through a neighborhood blooming with daffodils. Past couples holding hands. Past a child learning to ride a bike.
At the corner of Pearl Street and Walnut, we passed a woman sitting on her porch, hugging her knees. She looked at us the way I used to look at people who seemed okay.
And I wanted to stop. To say something. To offer her the notebook. The story. The tag.
But Hope simply paused. Looked at her.
And the woman smiled—barely—but smiled.
Sometimes, that’s enough.
—
That evening, I lit a candle and added one more page to the notebook:
5. Whoever comes next.
You don’t have to be brave to begin again.
You just have to stay soft enough to let the light find you.
I pressed my hand to Hope’s back, felt her breath rising and falling, steady as a lighthouse.
She wasn’t mine forever.
But she was mine for now.
And that was everything.