The Lightning Summer

Margaret sat on her front porch, watching the summer storm roll in. At seventy-eight, she'd seen plenty of thunderheads, but this one took her back to 1952, the summer she turned twelve.

That was the year old Buster, the family's golden retriever, decided he'd had enough of being just a dog. He'd taken to following Margaret everywhere — to the creek, to the library, even to her secret hiding spot behind the Johnsons' garage. Her mother called him loyal. Margaret called him a spy.

"He knows everything, Margaret," her mother had said, smiling as Buster thumped his tail against the kitchen floor. "Dogs see what we miss."

That summer, Margaret had made a friend in Mrs. Gable, the widow next door who kept an orange tabby named Clementine. The two animals couldn't stand each other — Buster would bark, Clementine would hiss, and Mrs. Gable would laugh her deep, warm laugh.

"They're like old married couples," Mrs. Gable would say, pouring lemonade on her screened porch. "Fussing one minute, sleeping in the same sunpatch the next."

The day the lightning struck, Margaret was in Mrs. Gable's kitchen, learning to make peach cobbler. A deafening crack split the air. The old oak in Margaret's yard took a direct hit, splintering into pieces that scattered like confetti. Margaret ran home, terrified, to find Buster shivering in the basement — and Clementine, of all creatures, curled up beside him.

"See?" Mrs. Gable had said later, patting Margaret's shoulder. "Even the fiercest storms bring unlikely friends together."

Now, as the first raindrops fell, Margaret looked down at the photograph on her porch swing. It was her and Mrs. Gable, both younger, both holding the peach cobbler. Buster and Clementine were at their feet, finally at peace.

Mrs. Gable had passed in 1998. Buster was gone by 1959. Clementine had lived to the astonishing age of twenty-one. But what remained — what Margaret carried in her heart — was the lesson she'd learned that summer: that kindness finds a way, even between a dog and a cat, even when lightning splits the sky.

Her granddaughter would visit tomorrow with her new puppy. Margaret had already bought two bowls. One for the puppy, she'd decided, and one for the kitten she'd secretly decided to adopt next week.

Some bonds, after all, were worth passing down.