🟣 PART 7 — The Last Morning She Woke
Ellen woke just after dawn.
The light outside was gray and full of hush, the kind that comes before a summer storm or something else you can’t name. She blinked, adjusted her neck, and sat forward in the chair.
Her hand was still resting on Rosie’s paw.
It was warm.
Rosie hadn’t moved.
But when Ellen whispered her name, the dog’s ears twitched—just barely—and her eyes opened.
They were cloudier now, rimmed with the kind of exhaustion you can’t sleep away. But they were there.
“You’re still here,” Ellen breathed.
And Rosie, impossibly, wagged her tail once.
It wasn’t much. A whisper of movement. But Ellen felt it in her chest like a gong.
She leaned down and kissed the old girl’s muzzle.
“You don’t have to keep doing that,” she whispered. “Not for me.”
Rosie blinked slowly.
Then, with effort, shifted her head closer to Ellen’s palm.
Maybe I do, it seemed to say.
—
Moth was already on the windowsill, watching the lavender sway in the wind. Something was different out there—Ellen felt it in her bones.
She opened the screen door and stepped into the yard.
The lavender patch was in full bloom.
Not just blooming, but singing—a low hum from the bees, the swish of stems brushing one another, the breeze carrying that impossible perfume through the air like a hymn.
Ellen closed her eyes and stood barefoot in the grass, arms loose at her sides, letting the scent wrap around her.
It smelled like everything she’d ever lost and somehow still carried.
It smelled like Rosie.
When she opened her eyes again, she knew.
This was the last morning Rosie would wake.
—
She carried Rosie out wrapped in the sunflower blanket, one arm beneath her chest, the other cradling her hind legs. The dog didn’t resist. She merely blinked at the shifting sky, letting her weight rest fully in Ellen’s arms.
Moth trotted beside them, occasionally darting ahead, then circling back.
They reached the patch.
Ellen laid Rosie down where the stems were softest, where the lavender bloomed tallest. The same place Rosie had crawled to after her first seizure. The place she’d returned to again and again like a faithful churchgoer seeking silence.
She tucked the blanket around her and whispered, “There.”
Moth climbed atop the old girl’s ribs and settled, tail tucked, eyes facing the field.
And Ellen sat down beside them and waited.
—
The hours passed without measure.
People might’ve thought it strange—to sit with a dog as she died. To let her do it in her time. But for Ellen, there was no other way.
She’d buried Buck with her hands in the earth, but he had gone fast, to a twisted gut the vet couldn’t save. Rosie was different.
Rosie asked for time.
Not more years. Just a few final mornings.
Around mid-afternoon, Rosie stirred. Opened her eyes. Lifted her head for the first time that day.
She looked past Ellen.
Toward the porch.
Ellen turned and saw the wind chimes hanging above the doorframe—still, though the air moved.
And then—
One rang.
Not all of them. Just one: the smallest, shaped like a teardrop, Miles’s favorite.
A single note.
High, clear, brief.
Ellen didn’t cry.
She simply nodded.
“Okay,” she whispered.
Rosie lowered her head.
Moth purred louder, as if calling the moment into being.
And Ellen reached for the little velvet pouch in her pocket—the last sachet of the Rosie Batch.
She tucked it beneath Rosie’s chin.
“For the next patch of lavender,” she whispered.
—
By evening, Rosie was gone.
It was gentle.
A breath out that never came back in.
No twitch. No sound.
Just silence.
Moth sat very still.
And Ellen, after a long moment, reached over and closed Rosie’s eyes.
Then she laid down in the lavender beside her.
And let herself cry.
—
She didn’t bury Rosie that night.
She sat with her until the stars came out, and then carried her back inside, wrapped in the sunflower blanket, placed her on the armchair under the window, and lit the lavender warmer on the table.
It filled the room with peace.
Moth lay beneath the chair and didn’t make a sound.
That night, Ellen dreamed of the field behind the house. Except it wasn’t lavender. It was all wild things—foxglove, Queen Anne’s lace, goldenrod. And Rosie was there, not running, not barking—just there, watching her.
When Ellen reached out in the dream, Rosie turned and walked away.
But the field smelled of lavender still.
—
The next morning, Becca arrived without calling.
She knew.
She stepped onto the porch, removed her hat, and stood for a moment before knocking.
When Ellen opened the door, she didn’t speak. Just nodded and moved aside.
Becca knelt beside the chair, touched Rosie’s paw, and whispered something too quiet for Ellen to hear.
Peaches, poking from her sling bag, whined softly.
“I think she knew,” Becca said finally, looking up. “I think she held on until the field was in bloom.”
“She did,” Ellen said.
And she believed it with everything she had.
—
Together, they buried Rosie beneath the hawthorn bush at the edge of the lavender patch.
Ellen wrapped her in the sunflower blanket. Tucked her old toy fox under one arm. And placed the sachet at her chest.
“I used to think lavender was just a smell,” Ellen said quietly, once the soil had been returned. “Now I think it’s a promise.”
Becca placed a smooth river stone at the foot of the grave and whispered, “Sleep gently, little one.”
Moth pressed her nose to the dirt once, then curled beside the stone and closed her eyes.
And the wind blew softly through the patch.
As if agreeing.