Part 7 – The Ache You Don’t Name
September in West Plains had a way of sneaking up on you.
One morning, the breeze came cooler through the trees, and the light angled just a little lower. Backpacks sagged with fresh folders and long division worksheets. Kids traded pool towels for pencil boxes. And Noah, now freshly nine, tugged on a jacket that still smelled faintly of last year’s leaves.
Toast didn’t like the mornings as much now.
He’d still walk Noah to the edge of the yard, still sit at the fence with his ears alert. But when the bus pulled away, he didn’t pace the gate the way he used to. He just lay down, head on his paws, and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Noah noticed first.
Not the big things.
The little ones.
How Toast took a little longer to stand. How he didn’t chase squirrels anymore—just watched them run past, like he remembered how it used to feel. How his tail wagged slower, with more rhythm than excitement.
“He’s just settling,” his mom said when Noah mentioned it.
But Noah knew.
Settling wasn’t the word.
Something was shifting. Like a season. Like the kind of change you don’t feel until you’ve already stepped out into it without a coat.
One Saturday, Toast didn’t come when Noah called.
Not right away.
He found him under the deck, lying in the dark like he was part of the wood.
Noah knelt. “What are you doing down there, boy?”
Toast lifted his head slowly. Gave a single thump of the tail.
Noah crawled halfway in and reached for him, fingers brushing the worn patch between Toast’s ears. He stayed there, the two of them tucked into the cool shadows, until the sun shifted and dappled them both in gold.
That night, Noah’s dad sat beside him on the porch swing.
He didn’t say much at first.
Just looked out across the yard where Toast lay curled under the maple.
Then: “He’s not young, is he?”
Noah’s heart did that slow, clumsy tumble in his chest.
“No.”
His dad nodded. “He’s tired.”
“Is he dying?”
The question came out before Noah could catch it. It hung there like something awful that couldn’t be taken back.
His dad didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was soft.
“I don’t know. But I think… maybe he’s just trying to make sure you’re ready. Before he rests.”
Noah cried that night. Quiet, into his pillow. Toast lay at the foot of the bed, still breathing, still warm, still his.
But something had cracked open. And no matter how he tried, he couldn’t close it again.
The next morning, he didn’t go to school.
His mom said nothing. Just kissed his forehead and left a plate of toast on the table. Not burnt. Not this time.
He didn’t eat it.
Instead, he wrapped it in a napkin—like old times—and took it outside.
He sat beside Toast in the yard and placed it gently on the ground.
Toast looked at it.
Then looked at Noah.
He didn’t eat it.
He just rested his head on Noah’s knee, and closed his eyes.
That afternoon, Rachel came by with Emily, who was now walking confidently in tiny red sneakers and saying words like “puppy” and “mine.”
She ran straight to Toast and hugged him like a stuffed toy.
Toast didn’t move.
Rachel’s smile faltered. “He okay?”
Noah shrugged. “He’s old.”
Rachel knelt and rubbed Toast’s ear.
“Aren’t we all.”
That evening, Noah reached under his bed and pulled out the photo album he’d started after the back-to-school festival.
It was mostly snapshots—blurred, badly lit, silly angles. Toast with peanut butter on his nose. Toast beside a snowman from last winter. Toast asleep on Noah’s math book. Toast looking like he knew the answer to everything and just wasn’t telling.
At the front, Noah added the new photo—the one from the fountain.
On the back, he wrote in pencil:
“You stayed.”
Then he closed the album and placed it by his pillow.
Just in case.
