Part 5 – The Morning After the Last Delivery
Hazel didn’t cry at first.
She’d imagined the moment so many times that when it came — quiet, still, without drama — it felt like she’d already lived it in a hundred dreams.
Barney’s body was still warm when the morning sun rose high enough to light the porch floor. Hazel sat beside him, hands folded in her lap, eyes dry but far away. The cat nestled against his side, refusing to move. The crow circled once, then perched on the mailbox post like a silent sentry.
Hazel whispered, “It’s all right. He waited as long as he could.”
By noon, Hazel had called Dr. Leonard. He said he could come by in the afternoon, bring the truck, help with arrangements.
“No rush,” Hazel said. “He’s not going anywhere fast.”
She spread his favorite blanket over him — the blue one with the pawprint stitched in the corner. Then she opened every window in the house and lit the vanilla candle on the kitchen counter.
She didn’t feel grief.
Not yet.
Just silence. The kind that echoes.
Around three o’clock, she stepped onto the porch and gasped.
There were people standing at the end of the driveway.
Half a dozen at first.
Then more.
A teenage boy with a skateboard tucked under one arm.
A woman holding a child with a stuffed bear.
A man in postal blue, cap clutched to his chest.
And slowly, others came.
One by one.
Word had spread.
Hazel walked barefoot down the gravel path.
The cat followed close behind. The crow swooped once overhead, then landed on the box with a soft clack.
No one spoke until Hazel reached them.
Then the boy with the skateboard said, “He waited for us, didn’t he?”
Hazel’s voice cracked, but she nodded. “Every day.”
The woman with the child stepped forward. “We brought a drawing,” she said, handing Hazel a folded sheet of paper with crayon scribbles of a big brown dog, a mailbox, and a heart floating above both.
“He made her laugh on hard days,” the woman added. “Just by being there.”
Hazel tucked the drawing against her chest.
Then the mail carrier stepped up, cleared her throat, and said, “I brought something, too.”
She opened her satchel and pulled out a stack of envelopes.
Dozens.
Some with paw prints drawn in marker.
Some addressed simply: “Barney.”
“People started leaving them in other mailboxes. I saved them all.”
Hazel looked at the pile, her voice a whisper. “For him?”
The mail carrier nodded. “For him. And for you.”
They stood in silence a long while.
Then Hazel did something strange.
She walked back to the porch, lifted Barney in her arms — gently, wrapped in his blanket — and carried him all the way down the driveway.
The boy with the skateboard ran ahead and cleared a space by the mailbox.
Hazel knelt and laid him there, on the grass just beneath the leaning wooden post, the same spot where he’d waited all those years.
Someone brought daisies. Another brought a tin bowl filled with water.
No one asked why.
They just knew.
That evening, Hazel didn’t write a letter.
Instead, she sat on the porch swing with a photo album in her lap, flipping pages.
Barney as a pup chewing through a pair of slippers.
Barney lying in Martin’s lap, both asleep in matching poses.
Barney, old and gray, with his chin resting on Hazel’s knee as she shelled peas in the kitchen.
She laughed once — out loud — then cried for real, the kind of cry that feels like it’s been waiting months to find a crack.
The cat jumped into her lap.
The crow landed on the porch rail.
And Hazel whispered, “All right. You two can stay.”
That night, she didn’t close the mailbox.
She left it open, just a little.
Just in case some wind wanted to carry something out.
Or something in.
The next morning, there was a note.
Just a single square of paper folded in half.
No envelope. No name.
Hazel opened it slowly, heart fluttering.
Inside, in shaky handwriting, were these words:
“He was the first friend I made when I moved here.
I never told you that.
But I always told him.”
Hazel sat on the porch steps and read the note again.
Then again.
Then tucked it into her cardigan pocket and smiled.
Barney was gone.
But the mailbox was full.
And something was beginning.