Sometimes two people can shout into the same world and never hear each other.
That truth felt larger than Nacho.
It felt like every lonely person who believed nobody cared because nobody answered.
Maybe the answer had been looking too.
Maybe the distance between them was one wrong street, one missed post or one day too late.
Marcus looked toward Lily.
“She used to ask why nobody was looking for him,” he said.
“I was.”
“I know that now.”
“I was looking every day.”
He nodded.
“She will need to know that.”
I looked at him.
“So will I,” I said.
After they left, I took Nacho’s old bowl from the cabinet again.
I washed it carefully.
Then I placed it beside the wide bowl Marcus recommended.
Nacho sniffed both.
He drank from the wide one.
I laughed even though it hurt.
For the next week, Marcus and Lily visited twice.
Nacho gained weight. His eye cleared. His coat began to shine.
He slept under my chin some nights and on the blue blanket on others.
I began to understand that one did not cancel the other.
Lily brought a photograph of Dana and one yellow flower on her mother’s birthday.
We placed them on my coffee table.
She told me stories about Sunny. I told her stories about Nacho.
By the end, we were laughing at the same cat.
After they left, I kept Dana’s flower on the table.
I could have thrown it away.
I did not.
Three days later, Nacho disappeared again.
I woke before dawn and knew something was wrong.
The house was too quiet.
He was not on the bed.
He was not on the blue blanket.
He was not beneath the couch or behind the dresser.
I checked every room twice.
Then I saw the kitchen window.
It was open three inches.
The old latch had broken.
The screen was pushed outward.
For a few seconds, I could not move.
Then the four missing years crashed into me all at once.
“NACHO!”
I ran outside barefoot.
The street was empty.
I called until porch lights came on.
A neighbor stepped outside in a robe.
“Claire?”
“He’s gone.”
The words barely came out.
“Who?”
“Nacho.”
I ran back inside for shoes and my phone.
My hands shook so badly I dropped the keys twice.
The first person I called was Marcus.
He answered on the second ring.
“What happened?”
“He got out.”
