Part 4 – A Little Bit of Rain
The morning after the wind chime sang, Eleanor brewed coffee and sat at the window like always.
Grace was quiet, curled beside her feet, one paw stretched across the rug like she was claiming it.
Eleanor traced the rim of her mug.
“You heard it too, didn’t you?”
Grace didn’t move. But the weight of her presence was enough. Solid. Grounding.
Eleanor used to believe in signs.
Not anymore.
But lately, she wasn’t so sure.
At the center, Ruth was waiting with a new story.
“I remembered the smell of my mother’s kitchen last night,” she said, gripping Eleanor’s hand like a woman grasping at a life raft. “There was lemon soap… and corn muffins cooling on the sill.”
Eleanor nodded.
She could smell it, too.
Grace leaned against Ruth’s leg, and for a moment, the silence between them said more than words.
“She’s good for the soul,” Ruth whispered. “That dog of yours.”
“She’s got more healing in her than I ever had,” Eleanor replied.
“No,” Ruth said. “You just needed someone to receive it.”
They stopped at the grocery store on the way home.
Eleanor left Grace in the front seat, windows cracked, and returned with two bags — milk, oats, canned peaches.
And a toy.
A stuffed rabbit with long ears and a squeaker inside.
Grace didn’t react at first. She sniffed it, pawed at it once, then turned away.
Eleanor shrugged. “Can’t win ‘em all.”
But that night, after the lights went out, she heard it.
A squeak. Then another.
She smiled in the dark.
By April’s end, the walks had become routine.
Grace now led the way, steady and strong, pausing only when Eleanor needed to catch her breath or lean on the fence post to rub her knees.
The field behind the house had begun to fill with clover.
Birds returned to the trees like a forgotten hymn.
And Eleanor — without realizing it — had started humming again.
Little things.
Snippets of melody. Songs Harold used to play on the record player after dinner.
One afternoon, she found herself singing aloud:
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine…”
Grace barked once.
Just once.
But it was enough to make Eleanor laugh so hard her chest ached.
That evening, she brought down a photo album from the top shelf.
Grace lay beside her as she flipped through pages of people now gone — her sister Clara in pigtails, her mother’s hands kneading bread, Harold in a borrowed tux on their wedding day.
Each photo was a memory pulled from the attic of her mind — dusty, fragile, but still alive.
She paused at one from 1979 — her first year in the trauma ward. A Polaroid, slightly overexposed, of a nurse smiling too brightly in a world where smiles were rare.
“I don’t miss the blood,” she said aloud. “But I do miss the feeling.”
She closed the book. Grace’s head nudged her knee.
“You think I still have something to offer?”
Grace yawned.
Eleanor took that as a yes.
The next week, the coordinator at the center called again.
“There’s a new client. George. Eighty-seven. Recently had surgery. Lives alone. Grumpy as a goat, but… we think he just needs someone to see him.”
Eleanor hesitated.
Grace lifted her head.
“All right,” she said. “One visit.”
George lived on a farmhouse south of town.
Red shingles. A crooked chimney. A porch that sagged in the middle like a tired spine.
He opened the door with a frown.
“You’re late,” he said.
“I’m early.”
“Well, close enough.”
He waved her in, muttered something about nosy women, and pointed toward the parlor.
Grace didn’t flinch at his tone. She wandered in like she owned the place, settled on the rug, and promptly fell asleep.
“You brought a dog?”
“She goes where I go.”
“Hmph.”
They sat in silence for ten minutes.
Then George asked, “You play cards?”
Eleanor raised an eyebrow. “What’s your game?”
“Gin.”
“You’re on.”
They played three rounds.
She won two.
He didn’t smile — not exactly — but something in his jaw relaxed.
On the way out, he said, “You can come again. If the dog wants.”
Grace wagged.
That settled it.
At home, Eleanor lit the fire for the first time since last winter.
The air had turned cooler again — one of those spring reversals that always caught her by surprise.
Grace curled close, her breathing slow and steady.
Eleanor reached for her journal.
This time, she didn’t write about loss.
She wrote about second chances.
Later that night, a storm rolled in.
Heavy rain. Thunder that shook the windowpanes.
Eleanor turned off the lights and sat beside Grace on the floor.
The dog trembled — not in fear, but memory.
Some wounds never vanish completely.
Eleanor laid a hand across her back.
“I’m here,” she said.
The thunder rolled again.
But this time, neither of them moved.
