That day, I knelt beside his grave while Benny stood againstmy shoe, sniffing the grass.
“Don’t eat the flowers, my boy,” I told him.
Frank had been gone 18 months.
Benny lifted his cloudy eyes toward my voice.
Then he chewed faster.
I sighed.
“You’d have liked Frank. He would’ve fed you bacon and blamed me for cooking it.”
His tail tapped my ankle.
Benny was 14, blind, and missing four teeth. I’d adopted him eight months earlier after finding him at a shelter.
“You’d have liked Frank.”
A volunteer had warned me that nobody seemed interested.
“People keep choosing the puppies,” she’d said. “Benny cries whenever someone walks away.”
I looked at the tiny, trembling dog in the kennel and understood him immediately.
I’d spent months learning how quiet a home could become after someone didn’t come back.
So I took Benny home.
