Chapter 10 - VISITATION
Three months after Mabel went home with Lauren, I visited for the first time.
Yes, that’s what we called it.
Visitation.
A joke at first.
Then not entirely.
Lauren lived in a rental bungalow with a fenced backyard and more houseplants than any one person should legally own. Mabel met me at the gate with enough full-body wagging to knock into the porch swing.
I dropped to my knees.
She nearly climbed into my skin.
Lauren laughed from the doorway.
“She checks the front window around this time every Wednesday.”
I looked up.
“She does?”
Lauren nodded.
“Same time you used to walk her after lunch.”
That destroyed me a little in the nicest possible way.
I kept visiting.
Not every week forever.
Life doesn’t stay that symmetrical.
But enough.
Sometimes I took Mabel to the park.
Sometimes Lauren and I had coffee while she snored between us.
Sometimes we talked about nothing at all.
Sometimes about everything.
I started fostering dogs six months later.
Not to replace her.
Never that.
But because losing her revealed something painful and clean at the same time:
Part of what saved me had been loving something that needed me back.
Lauren cried the first time I told her I was fostering a skittish cattle-dog mix.
“She’s impossible,” I said.
“Good,” Lauren answered. “That means you’re healing.”
A year after the driveway confrontation, Lauren invited me to Mabel’s birthday barbecue.
Dog people are insane, but I went.
There were three neighbors, one nephew, a ridiculous peanut-butter cake, and exactly one moment near sunset when Mabel wandered from Lauren’s side to mine, then lay down perfectly between our chairs.
Lauren looked at her and smiled.
“She solved it before we did.”
I knew what she meant.
May you like
The dog had never believed love was a single-house resource.
That had been our limitation, not hers.
