Part 7: The Keeper of Treasures
New Iberia, Louisiana – Early December 2005
Jasper’s breathing had grown thinner than the frost edging the porch rail.
Drew knew the sound of goodbye, even if no one had spoken the word yet.
He slept beside the dog every night now, his small body curled close, one hand always resting on Jasper’s ribs, as if touch alone could keep time from passing. Anna set a pillow beside them and tucked the lavender quilt tighter. She never said no. Not anymore.
Thomas watched from the kitchen, his hat in his hands.
“He’s choosing,” he said once. “Not which house. Which moment.”
By then, everyone knew.
Jasper had come to the end of his path.
But no one dared say it aloud. As if the truth, once spoken, might scatter the magic between them like dry leaves on wind.
Instead, they moved slower. Softer. More grateful.
Drew fed Jasper broth by the spoon. Thomas hummed tunes from long ago. Caleb repaired the loose plank in the fence. And Anna lit a candle each night on the porch, placing it beside the music box.
“We are the watchers now,” she whispered.
One morning, Drew approached the Memory Hole.
It had rained the night before. The earth was dark and soft, like freshly turned cake.
He knelt and carefully placed a toy firetruck into the soil.
Thomas had seen it from his porch.
“Why that?” he asked gently.
Drew looked over his shoulder. “It was my favorite when Daisy died.”
Thomas came closer, knelt beside him.
“It’s not about letting go,” Drew said quietly. “It’s about not letting it hurt when I remember.”
Thomas breathed in deep.
The boy, the hole, the dog—they were his compass now.
That night, Thomas brought over a journal.
Brown leather. Frayed ribbon bookmark. His wife’s name etched on the first page: Elaine.
“I haven’t opened this since the hurricane,” he said.
Anna raised her eyebrows.
“You sure?”
Thomas nodded. “She wrote in it every day. About Jasper. About me. About the ache.”
He handed it to Drew.
“I want you to keep it. You’re the only one who still listens like she did.”
Drew’s hands trembled as he took it.
“I’ll keep it safe,” he whispered.
Thomas smiled. “You already have.”
Jasper didn’t howl anymore.
But on one still night, after everyone had gone quiet and the candle burned low, he lifted his head and pressed his nose against the music box.
It let out one note.
Clear. Pure.
Then silence.
The next morning, the sun rose through a haze of silver clouds.
The back porch was empty.
The quilt folded.
The leash coiled like a comma.
And Jasper was gone.
Part 8: The Space He Left Behind
New Iberia, Louisiana – December 2005
The porch felt wrong without him.
Too wide. Too still.
The lavender quilt lay untouched in the corner. The music box, unmoved since the last note. And Drew—small, pale, hollow-eyed—sat with his arms wrapped around his knees, staring at the place where Jasper used to sleep.
“He didn’t even say goodbye,” he whispered.
Anna knelt beside him. “Sweetheart… maybe he did. Just not in words.”
Drew shook his head. “I didn’t get to tell him I wasn’t done loving him yet.”
Anna’s throat tightened. “That’s the thing about love, baby. It doesn’t stop just because someone’s gone. It keeps going. Even if it has nowhere to land for a while.”
Thomas came over midmorning, carrying something under his arm wrapped in brown paper.
He looked older, smaller somehow, like something in his chest had caved in.
“I figured this morning would feel heavy,” he said.
Drew didn’t say anything.
Thomas knelt, joints cracking, and placed the wrapped bundle beside the sandbox.
“I built this for him years ago. It sat on our porch in Jeanerette. I kept it stored after the storm, but…” He paused, then looked Drew in the eye. “He never stopped needing a place to watch from.”
The boy carefully peeled the paper away.
It was a small wooden bench.
Worn smooth. Etched with a single word along the back slat in carved cursive: Wait.
“He used to sit on it and just stare,” Thomas said. “At the road. At the trees. At the stars. Always waiting.”
“For what?” Drew asked.
Thomas smiled faintly. “For the people he loved to come home.”
They placed the bench near the sandbox.
Drew sat on it first, tracing the word with one finger.
He didn’t cry. Not that day.
Instead, he asked if they could bring the music box out again.
Thomas nodded.
So they set it in the sand and wound it.
The tune played softly into the winter air.
But this time, no one waited for a howl.
It was enough to just listen.
The red leash remained coiled on the windowsill.
Anna had reached for it twice, both times stopping short. Caleb suggested framing it. Drew said no.
“Leave it where it is,” he said. “So he knows we’re still here.”
Thomas said little that week. Mostly watched. Sometimes walked the perimeter of the yard like Jasper used to. They all noticed.
On the sixth night, as the sky went navy and the wind stirred the oaks, Thomas stood by the sandbox.
“I used to think he came back for me,” he said. “Because I needed him.”
He looked at Drew.
“But maybe I was just the road. And you were the home.”
Drew nodded but said nothing.
Instead, he opened the journal Thomas had given him and read aloud one line in Elaine’s handwriting:
“Some loves outlive the bodies they began in.”
Later that evening, when the house quieted and the porch lights dimmed, the wind rose gently and swept a dusting of sand across the bench.
And for the first time since Jasper left, Drew smiled.
Just a little.