📖 The Note in Her Collar — Part 5
January arrived like a slow exhale—bare trees, pale skies, and the kind of cold that slipped through windowpanes no matter how tightly you shut them. Walter Bell moved slower now, but he kept moving. It had become a quiet vow he made each morning: Don’t stop. Not yet.
The days followed a rhythm, but the body began breaking it.
Some mornings, his fingers wouldn’t quite close around the spoon. Other times, his vision swam while standing, the room turning soft at the edges. He hated the feeling—like his body had started keeping secrets from him.
But he never said a word to June.
Or to anyone.
Only to Lola.
And she never interrupted.
She only listened.
—
At Mayfield Pines, June had her own battles.
She still recognized Walter most days. But not always.
Sometimes she called him “Henry,” the name of her brother long gone. Once, she asked where her mother had gone, and when he said “she passed,” June cried like it had just happened. Then an hour later, she was laughing at a joke he couldn’t remember telling.
Walter never corrected her. He simply stayed.
There were good days, too.
Like the afternoon they watched home videos on a dusty VHS player the staff dug up. The colors were faded, but the sound was clear—laughter, barking, the squeal of kids in sprinkler spray.
June reached for his hand and held it, as if the decades between that moment and now had melted away.
“I remember this feeling,” she whispered.
He squeezed back. “Me too.”
—
But the hardest days were still the quiet ones at home.
He began to forget the small things—where he left his keys, whether he’d taken his insulin. The notepad on the counter grew cluttered with scribbled reminders. But some days, even those were too late.
He once found himself in the pantry staring at a can of beans, unsure if he was supposed to be cooking them or putting them away.
When he sat down that evening, Lola nudged his leg with a quiet insistence.
He looked down.
“Don’t you start worrying about me now,” he muttered.
She didn’t move.
Just kept her eyes on him.
So he stood, made himself a sandwich, and ate it under her watchful gaze.
—
One morning, he woke up dizzy.
The floor pitched beneath him like a slow-moving boat. His legs buckled as he reached for the bathroom sink.
When the world steadied, he took his sugar reading.
Too low.
Again.
He sat on the tile, head against the wall, breathing like he’d run a mile.
Lola padded in, laid down beside him.
He reached over and rested a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he whispered. “I’m still alright.”
But he wasn’t.
—
A week later, while walking through the frozen lot toward the nursing home, he stumbled.
Not a dramatic fall—just a knee giving way, a hand scraping on the ground.
The staff rushed over.
He waved them off.
“Just tired,” he lied.
But when he sat in June’s room, she tilted her head and said, “Your face looks different.”
He smiled faintly. “Yours still looks better than mine.”
She didn’t laugh.
Instead, she said something that cut him straight through.
“I don’t want to lose you, too.”
He looked away.
Tried to breathe.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
And then he added, softer, “Not yet.”
—
That night, back home, he opened the small cedar box by his bed. Inside were Marjorie’s letters, yellowed and soft at the edges.
One caught his eye.
It wasn’t from her.
It was from June.
Folded twice, written in pencil.
1963.
He unfolded it with shaking hands.
“Walt,
If you ever feel lost—if the world gets too quiet—promise me you’ll find someone who reminds you to smile. I think you’ll know them when you see them.
Love,
June”
He read it three times.
Then he looked at Lola.
And smiled.
“You did it, girl,” he whispered. “You brought me back.”
—
The following morning, he wrote a note of his own.
Folded it carefully.
Slipped it into a plastic sleeve.
And slid it into Lola’s collar, beneath the tag.
“If found,” it read,
“please remind her that I kept my promise.”
—
But that night, as he lay in bed, listening to the wind against the windows and the soft snore of the dog beside him, he wondered something for the first time:
If he didn’t wake up tomorrow, would anyone know what this life had meant?
Would anyone see the quiet battles he’d fought?
The little victories?
The old man who still brought flowers to the woman who forgot his name, but remembered the shape of his kindness?
Would they know he didn’t give up, even when his body begged him to?
And then Lola stirred in her sleep, stretching until her paw touched his hand.
And in that moment, he knew the answer.
Yes.
She knew.
And maybe that was enough.