Part 7: “The Things We Never Said”
Estelle hadn’t dreamed of Harold in months.
But that night, she did.
In the dream, they were back in their first apartment on Atlantic Avenue. Young again. Harold stood at the stove, humming Sinatra, stirring a pot of something too spicy. Outside, it was raining—steady and rhythmic—and there was a dog asleep by the door. Not Marlowe. Just a dog. Furry, faceless, breathing slow.
Estelle reached for Harold’s hand, but before she could touch him, he turned and said softly, “I kept waiting for you to talk again.”
She woke with a sharp gasp.
Alone.
But not shattered.
Instead, she rose, wrapped her robe around her shoulders, and shuffled barefoot to the window.
Across the alley, the rooftop glowed silver in the moonlight.
Still. Empty. Sacred.
**
The next morning, Joy knocked on Estelle’s door holding a notebook with big bubble letters across the front.
“The Rooftop Dog Book – By Everyone”
“We’re collecting stories,” she announced. “About Marlowe. About the rooftop. About anything we didn’t say when it was happening.”
Estelle blinked. “You want me to write something?”
“You have to,” Joy said solemnly. “You were the first one who saw him. That makes you kind of like a—like a rooftop pioneer.”
Estelle chuckled. “Well, I’ve been called worse.”
Joy handed her the notebook and bounded off, her braid flapping behind her.
Estelle stared down at the blank page.
The last time she’d written anything longer than a grocery list was Harold’s eulogy. She wasn’t sure she had it in her to do this.
But that night, she sat with a pen in hand and wrote a single sentence:
“He reminded me that even the quietest lives are still visible if someone’s willing to look.”
And then another:
“We weren’t just watching him. We were waiting for each other.”
**
The stories came in droves.
Naomi wrote about hearing Marlowe’s paws pacing the rooftop in the silence between her daughter’s coughs. “He felt like a heartbeat across the alley.”
Mr. Lin submitted a Polaroid with nothing written except: “He made me believe in something again.”
A man from the fifth floor—who had never once spoken to Estelle—added a short, trembling paragraph about losing his partner to COVID and how the dog’s silhouette had stopped him from drinking himself into the dark.
Even Charmaine mailed in a letter.
It read:
“I’ve rescued over 200 dogs. But Marlowe was different.
He didn’t just survive.
He bore witness.
And in doing so, he made us see ourselves.”
**
One afternoon, Estelle decided to take the subway.
It had been over a year since she’d ridden it alone. But she had a destination: a small park in Queens.
Lena had invited her.
“Radar’s stronger now,” she’d said over the phone. “He’s even started playing fetch again. We’d love for you to visit.”
It felt strange, seeing him like that—on grass, under trees, no longer on a roof.
He looked healthier. Fuller. His coat glinted in the sun. His scarred ear flopped when he ran. And though he didn’t bound toward Estelle or bark her name, he saw her.
His eyes locked with hers the moment she sat on the bench.
He padded over. Slow. Sure.
And rested his head gently against her knee.
No fanfare. No dramatics.
Just quiet recognition.
Like a bookmark slipped into an old story.
Lena knelt beside them, her eyes glistening.
“He still waits for the sunset,” she whispered. “Every night, without fail.”
Estelle smiled.
“Some things never leave us,” she said. “Even when we leave the rooftop.”
**
That night, Estelle added one more line to the notebook.
“Sometimes love doesn’t bark. It just stays. Quiet. Patient. Present.”
She closed the cover and felt something shift inside her—
Not closure.
Not an ending.
But maybe the courage to begin again.
Part 8 “When the Light Changed”
Autumn came to Brooklyn with the kind of chill that wrapped around your ankles and stayed there.
Estelle could feel it in her joints, in her breath, in the quiet way the light bent through her kitchen window. Harold used to say that fall was the season that smelled most like memory. And he was right—every step on a dry sidewalk sounded like something left behind.
She started lighting a candle at sunset.
Not because she needed the light, but because she missed the warmth. Not just physical, but human. The kind that once lived in shared dinners and murmured goodnights and hands brushing across old books.
But something else had begun to fill the space where loneliness used to sit.
Connection.
It started with the rooftop, but it hadn’t stopped there.
She now exchanged soup recipes with Naomi. Mr. Lin had taught Joy to play checkers, and sometimes Estelle watched them from her window—heads bent together, like grandfather and granddaughter. The mailman lingered longer. Even the woman from 3B, who used to wear headphones just to avoid small talk, had started waving.
The rooftop dog had stitched them all together.
Without a bark. Without a word.
Just by standing still long enough to be seen.
**
Charmaine organized a second gathering.
This time, they called it The Waiting Room.
Not for hospitals. Not for sorrow.
For people who knew what it meant to pause their lives—for grief, for aging, for simply not knowing what comes next.
They hung fairy lights. Made mulled cider. Laid out cushions. Someone brought an old radio that played Ella Fitzgerald and Bill Withers.
Estelle brought the notebook.
She placed it at the center table with a note that read:
“Add your voice. It matters.”
And they did.
One by one, neighbors flipped through the pages. Some read silently, nodding. Others added a single sentence. A memory. A quote. A prayer.
By the end of the night, there were seventeen new entries.
Estelle read one on the way back down to her apartment:
“I watched from my fire escape for ten days before I realized I wasn’t alone.
He wasn’t just waiting for someone.
He was reminding us to keep looking up.”
**
A few days later, Lena sent a photo.
It showed Radar—Marlowe—sitting on the porch with a small, round child nestled against his side. A neighbor’s son, apparently. They’d taken to napping together in the sun.
The caption read:
“He’s not waiting anymore. He’s guarding now.”
Estelle printed the photo and slid it into the notebook.
She smiled for a long time before the smile turned into something else—softer, deeper.
A kind of release.
**
She’d been thinking a lot about the last time Harold held her hand. About what he might have said, if the machines hadn’t drowned it out. About the words she never said back.
“I’m scared,” she whispered to the quiet one night. “Of not mattering. Of vanishing slowly.”
She reached for the notebook again and opened it to the last blank page.
“We leave pieces of ourselves in others without even meaning to.
Sometimes love outlives the voice that carried it.”
**
Later that week, Joy came by with a surprise.
She’d taken all the pages—stories, photos, drawings—and typed them into a small paperback with laminated covers. She had titled it:
“The Rooftop Dog: A Book for the Ones Who Waited.”
Estelle held it in her hands and felt something anchor in her chest.
“This was your idea,” she said.
Joy shook her head. “No. It was his. He just couldn’t write.”
They laughed.
And then they cried.
Not because they were sad.
But because they had been seen.
And that, Estelle thought, might be the only real cure for loneliness.