Part 8 – The Slowing
It started with the stairs.
Grace hesitated at the first step. Not out of fear — she’d climbed them before — but as though the step asked too much this time.
Eleanor saw it.
She didn’t rush her.
She simply sat down on the bottom stair, right beside her, and waited.
Grace looked at her, then rested her head against Eleanor’s leg.
They stayed that way for ten minutes.
Then Eleanor stood, kissed her dog’s forehead, and said, “We’ll stay downstairs from now on.”
The days grew longer, the light warmer. Bees returned to the rose bush, and a bluebird built a nest in the porch rafters.
Grace still walked — slower, but still with purpose. She sniffed every tree. She paused at the same fencepost each day, as if remembering something important.
Eleanor spoke less now, but what she said mattered more.
“Your body’s telling me things, sweetheart,” she whispered one evening, brushing her fingers through Grace’s fur. “And I’m listening. I promise I’m listening.”
At the shelter, they gave her another pup to sit with — a brindled girl with cataracts and a missing toe. Eleanor called her Penny.
She brought Grace’s old fleece blanket and a biscuit tucked inside her coat.
Penny didn’t move much, but she pressed her nose into the blanket and sighed.
Eleanor sat beside her, humming a hymn she hadn’t sung since childhood.
That night, she found Harold’s Bible on the shelf.
Not for answers.
Just… comfort.
Inside was a pressed flower — brittle, yellowed.
A daffodil.
She remembered the day he picked it. After a fight. After silence. After forgiveness.
On the page beside it, he’d underlined something in pencil:
“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”
— Psalm 147:3
Eleanor closed the book and wept.
Not in sorrow.
In reverence.
Grace was curled by the hearth when she returned.
The fire was low. Her breathing was slower than usual — but calm.
Eleanor lay beside her on the rug, pulling the fleece blanket over both of them.
“Can I tell you something?” she whispered.
Grace didn’t move.
“I thought I’d run out of things to give. But you… you reminded me how to care.”
Grace shifted, just enough to press her paw against Eleanor’s chest.
“I know,” Eleanor said. “I know.”
The next day, George called.
“Wanna come sit?” he asked. “We don’t have to talk.”
Eleanor smiled. “That’s my specialty.”
She brought cinnamon rolls. He brought old war stories and half a deck of cards.
They didn’t finish the game.
Didn’t need to.
Back home, Grace didn’t get up to greet her.
She lifted her head. Wagged faintly.
But stayed in her corner by the window.
Eleanor knelt beside her.
“You’re tired.”
Grace closed her eyes.
Eleanor stayed for hours, stroking her side, whispering every name she could think of:
Harold. Ruth. George. Penny. Lucky. Baxter.
And finally, her own:
“Eleanor.”
Just to remind Grace that she was there. That she mattered, too.
Night fell gently.
The wind chime stirred once.
Grace exhaled.
Not a struggle.
Not a cry.
Just… peace.
Eleanor didn’t cry.
Not yet.
She simply held her dog and watched the stars return, one by one.
