📖 The Note in Her Collar — Part 8
The house was too quiet.
Not just silent—but hollow, like something had been removed and the walls hadn’t caught up yet. The bowls were still in the kitchen. The leash still hung by the door. Her fur clung to the edge of the quilt, and Walter couldn’t bring himself to brush it off.
He moved through the days like someone walking in shoes a size too big—everything loose, uncertain, and slow.
He buried Lola beneath the dogwood tree out back, where spring blossoms would fall like soft kisses on the mound. He placed a small wooden marker at the head of the grave and carved into it with his old pocketknife:
“She reminded me to smile.”
He didn’t cry at the burial.
He cried the next morning when he realized he’d poured two bowls again.
And again the next night when he reached down for her head while watching TV and touched nothing but air.
—
The nurses at Mayfield Pines noticed the change in him before June did.
He still came every other day. Brought flowers. Sat with June while she folded napkins or rearranged the same three photos on her nightstand. But he smiled less. Talked less.
It wasn’t until the third visit after Lola’s passing that June looked up at him, studying the lines on his face like they were clues she couldn’t quite read.
“Something’s missing,” she said.
Walter hesitated.
Then nodded.
“I buried her by the dogwood,” he said. “Where the light touches early.”
June stared at the carpet a long moment.
Then whispered, “Did she suffer?”
“No,” Walter said. “She waited until I got home. Just… slipped away.”
June turned her head, eyes shining with that deep, distant ache that memory loss couldn’t dull.
“She was our girl.”
He took her hand. “Still is.”
They sat in the late-afternoon sun, the warmth slanting through the window like a blessing neither of them had asked for but welcomed all the same.
—
The next few weeks passed in low tones.
Walter kept up with his health. Mostly. There were still days when the routine broke—when he skipped meals or forgot to check his sugar until the room tilted.
But something had shifted in him since Lola passed.
He didn’t want to fall apart.
Not now.
Not when June still had pieces of herself to share.
One day, he arrived at the nursing home to find June pacing her room, agitated.
“Something’s wrong,” she told him.
“What is it?”
She looked at him, confused. “Where is she? The dog?”
He froze.
Then slowly sat down. “She’s not coming today.”
June’s hands fidgeted with the hem of her blouse.
“I think I did something wrong,” she said. “She left because I forgot something.”
Walter shook his head. “No, June. She didn’t leave. She just… finished what she came to do.”
June turned her back to him, shoulders stiff. “I don’t understand.”
He reached into his pocket and handed her a folded page. A copy of the note he’d written and slipped into Lola’s collar the day before she passed.
“If found, please remind her that I kept my promise.”
June stared at the paper. Her hand shook.
“Did she… did she carry this?”
“Yes.”
She read it again.
And again.
Then sat beside him and whispered, “Then I remember. I remember you came back.”
He nodded, eyes misting.
“And I remember… that we were happy once.”
Walter smiled. “We still are.”
—
That evening, he walked home slowly. The sun was warm, but the wind carried a chill.
He passed the park where he used to throw sticks for Lola. A little girl sat in the grass with a floppy-eared puppy, laughing as it chewed on a shoe.
Walter stopped to watch.
She looked up and waved.
“Hi, mister!”
He waved back, and for a moment—just a flicker—he saw it again. That spark. That reminder.
That maybe there was still joy in the world, waiting in soft places.
—
Back home, he sat on the porch.
The chair beside his was empty now.
But he reached over anyway.
Set a hand on the cushion.
And whispered, “I’m still here, girl.”
The wind picked up.
A single dogwood petal floated down and landed in his lap.
He didn’t believe in signs.
But that night, he dreamed of her again.
Healthy.
Running.
And waiting for him under a blooming tree.