🪖 PART 4 – “Letters That Never Came”
Winter hit harder than usual that year.
Lake-effect snow buried the fence posts by mid-January, and Tom spent every morning chipping ice out of water bowls with the backside of a wrench. The dogs didn’t mind. Most of them had known worse than cold.
But the stillness of the season crept in deeper than frost.
Tom had started keeping a journal—at June’s suggestion. Not for his thoughts, but for the dogs. A log of their histories, if anyone asked. Most didn’t have birthdays, so he gave them one. He wrote down where they were found, what food they liked, which ones flinched at the sound of zippers or refused to go through doors.
Shadow’s page stayed mostly blank.
Under Notes, he had only written:
“Watches the mailbox. Every day.”
And it was true. Every morning, Tom would walk down the gravel driveway with a faded red pail full of kibble, and Shadow would follow—always pausing near the rusted metal box with its flag forever lowered, staring at it with the patience of someone who still hoped.
It unnerved Tom at first. Then it broke him.
One day, he walked back from the box with empty hands and said aloud, “No letters today, bud.”
Shadow didn’t move.
That night, Tom couldn’t sleep.
—
In the early hours, he sat by the kitchen table with a pen in his hand and a mug of instant coffee turning cold. He stared at a blank sheet of paper. Then he began to write.
“Dear Friend,
I don’t know if you’re out there, but there’s a dog here who waits for you…”
He kept writing.
It wasn’t really for anyone. But the words poured out anyway.
“He sits by the box like a soldier waiting for orders.
Like maybe someone promised him they’d write when they could.
Maybe they never got the chance.”
Tom folded the letter and slipped it into an envelope. He didn’t address it. Just wrote one word on the front:
“To Whoever Left Him Behind.”
The next morning, he slipped it into the mailbox.
Shadow didn’t follow him back.
He stayed by the post all day.
—
Two weeks passed.
Snow thawed enough to reveal last autumn’s leaves, soggy and forgotten beneath the drifts. The air smelled of wet bark and wood smoke. Tom was out chopping dead limbs behind the trailer when he saw the truck—a red Ford pickup rattling up the drive with mud in its tires and dust on the windshield.
A woman stepped out. Gray at the temples, military posture, boots too clean for this kind of place.
She held a manila envelope in one hand.
“I’m looking for Tom Delaney,” she said.
Tom set the axe down. “That’s me.”
She glanced past him—toward the porch where Shadow stood watching, tail still.
“I got your letter.”
Tom frowned. “I didn’t send it.”
“I know,” she said. “But it found me anyway.”
—
Her name was Lieutenant Colonel Amanda Holt, retired U.S. Air Force.
She told Tom that Shadow had belonged to her son, James, a combat engineer killed in an ambush outside Samawah in ’07. James had raised Shadow from a pup, smuggled him onto base despite every rule against it, and sent one letter home describing him:
“He knows when I’m sad. Like Whisper used to. Remember Whisper?”
Amanda’s eyes had welled when she said the name.
“He was our family dog when James was little,” she said. “She died when he was ten.”
Tom had to sit down.
She looked at Shadow. “We never knew what happened to the dog after the attack. They said he ran off. Maybe looking for James.”
Tom swallowed. “He’s been waiting.”
She nodded slowly.
Shadow didn’t run to her.
But he walked—slowly, purposefully—like a soldier reporting for duty, and rested his head against her knee.
She dropped the envelope.
Knelt.
Held him.
And wept.
—
That night, she stayed for dinner. Shadow lay at her feet beneath the table while they ate chicken stew out of mismatched bowls. She told stories—about James, about their farm in Kansas, about how the sound of helicopters still made her flinch.
When she asked if she could take Shadow home, Tom hesitated.
“I don’t want to take him from you,” she said.
“You’re not,” Tom replied. “You’re bringing him home.”
—
As she backed out the driveway the next morning, Shadow’s head poked from the open window, eyes locked on Tom until the truck disappeared behind the trees.
Tom stood there a long time.
Then he turned, walked back to the porch, and opened a fresh page in his journal.
Shadow
Found: roadside, late autumn
Returned: to someone who never stopped missing him
Final note:
“Some dogs are just waiting for goodbye.”