What the Dog Knew

The cabin smelled of cedar and something else — something that had been rotting for a long time. Sarah's dog, a weathered golden retriever named Bear, watched me from the doorway, his muzzle gray now, his dark eyes knowing. He knew why I was here. He'd always known, even when we didn't.

"You coming?" I asked, already walking toward the lake. Bear followed, his gait slower than I remembered, matching the grief that had settled in my own bones since Sarah's death three months ago.

The water was colder than expected, the kind of cold that makes you question every decision that led you to this moment. I started swimming, each stroke a prayer to a god I stopped believing in when the diagnosis came. Bear waded in after me, his chocolate-colored head bobbing among the reeds, watching me with that same maddening patience.

Sarah and I had been swimming here the summer we turned twenty-five, drunk on cheap wine and the mistaken belief that adulthood would grant us the certainty we craved. Instead, it gave us metastatic cells and mortgage payments and friendships that eroded like sand castles in the tide.

A noise from the shore interrupted my spiraling. I treaded water, heart hammering against my ribs. A young black bear stood at the water's edge, wild and impossibly alive. It watched us with mild curiosity before turning back into the forest.

"You see that?" I laughed, the sound jagged in the quiet dusk. Bear paddled closer, nudging my hand with his wet snout.

In that moment, I understood what Sarah had meant when she said the world would keep going without her. The bear would keep foraging. Bear would keep aging. The water would keep freezing and thawing with the seasons. The friend who couldn't swim with grief anymore would simply be replaced by a friend who learned to float.

I climbed out shivering, the dog pressing his warm flank against my leg. "Okay," I whispered to both of them — the one I couldn't see, the one who'd stayed behind. "Okay."