📖 Part 4: The First Signs
The days grew shorter, the wind colder.
Shadow had claimed a permanent spot by the fireplace. His breath, steady and low, became the house’s new metronome — a rhythm Clara found herself listening for as she moved between rooms. If she couldn’t hear it, her heart caught in her throat.
She hadn’t realized how much of her had gone quiet until something alive filled the silence again.
Every morning, she knelt beside him with a warm cloth to clean his paws, check the leg, and speak in soft murmurs that felt like prayer. “Still sore?” she’d ask. Shadow would wag his tail once if it hurt less, twice if she guessed right.
It became their ritual.
But one morning, the tail didn’t move at all.
He didn’t rise when she approached. His breathing was faster. Shallow. His eyes opened — still gentle, still him — but dimmer somehow. As if something inside was fading behind the brown.
Clara’s hands paused mid-air.
She ran her fingers down his flank. No wounds, no heat. But he shivered under her touch. Not from pain — from weakness. He tried to lick her wrist, but missed, his tongue dry.
She whispered, “You’re not just tired, are you?”
He laid his head back down, nose pressed to the floor.
Clara brought broth, warmed just right, and cupped it near his mouth.
Shadow took only a few sips before turning away.
Outside, Ash Hollow braced for snow.
Inside, Clara braced for something she couldn’t name.
She opened the clinic again — quietly. Not for business. Just for him. She cleaned the counters, sanitized the thermometer, and opened drawers she hadn’t touched in years. Her old stethoscope still worked. She placed it gently to Shadow’s side.
The rhythm was there — slow, irregular, fluttering.
Her chest clenched.
That evening, she sat by his side on the floor with an old photo album on her lap. One page at a time, she turned the years like worn linen. Daniel laughing in the barn. A pup licking his ear. A younger Clara holding a bottle to a rescued raccoon.
Shadow didn’t move.
But when she turned the page to a photo of Toby — Daniel’s stray — Shadow gave a faint noise. Like recognition.
A low, contented breath.
That night, Clara didn’t sleep in her bed.
She laid a pillow beside Shadow and rested there, her arm over his chest. The firelight flickered low. His chest rose and fell beneath her palm, and she counted each one like beads on a rosary.
At one point, he tried to rise.
She stopped him with a whisper: “Stay.”
He obeyed.
But his eyes never left her face — as if memorizing it.
In the morning, she called an old friend — Dr. Franklin, now retired in Eugene.
They hadn’t spoken since Daniel’s funeral.
He asked no questions. Just listened as Clara explained the symptoms. The shortness of breath. The loss of appetite. The sudden weakness in his limbs.
Franklin was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “It may just be age, Clara. Or… the heart.”
That word felt like a bell tolling in her ribs.
Clara hung up and returned to Shadow.
He had not moved.
Only lifted his eyes when she entered — as if checking she was still there.
She knelt again, stroked behind his ears, and whispered, “I’m not going anywhere, boy. Not this time.”