Chapter 1 - The Threshold
The breath caught in my throat, freezing right there in the damp autumn air.
Standing in the sliver of light pouring from the crooked doorway of that run-down house wasn't a stranger. It was a young woman I had not laid eyes on in over three years. Her hair was pulled back in a loose, frayed ponytail, and she wore an oversized gray sweater that swallowed her frame. Her eyes, wide and startled, mirrored the exact shock crashing through my own chest.
It was Maya.
Caleb’s girlfriend. Or, at least, she had been before everything shattered.
The last time I saw her was three days after the funeral, standing outside the reception hall in a black dress that looked three sizes too big for her. She had tried to speak to me then, her lips trembling, her hands clutching a small cardboard box of Caleb’s childhood books and loose photographs. But my grief had been a wall of jagged glass, sharp and merciless. I had turned my back, letting my sister tell her that I needed space, that her presence only made the bleeding worse.
She had vanished from our part of town shortly after. No forwarding address, no phone calls that made it past my blocked inbox, nothing. I had assumed she moved back to her family two towns over, or out of state entirely, desperate to escape the shadow of the accident that took Caleb's life at nineteen.
And yet, here she was. And here the scruffy dog was, calmly sitting at her feet as if he reported to her on a schedule.
"Diane?" Maya whispered. Her voice sounded fragile, like dry leaves scraping across concrete. She gripped the edge of the wooden doorframe, her knuckles stark white.
"Maya," I managed, my own voice barely carrying over the quiet hum of the neighborhood traffic far behind us.
The dog—whose coat was a dusty mix of brown and gray—gave a soft huff, stood up, and trotted right past Maya into the dark interior of the house, leaving the two of us suspended in a doorway that bridged three years of unspoken agony.
Maya looked down at the empty porch, then back up at me. A flush of deep embarrassment seemed to wash over her pale cheeks, and she instinctively pulled the sleeves of her oversized sweater over her hands.
"I... I didn't mean to intrude," she stammered, her gaze dropping to the floorboards. "At least, I didn't think he was leading anyone here. Buster usually looks behind him."
"Buster," I repeated, tasting the name for the first time. "Is that what you call him?"
"He doesn't have a tag," she murmured, stepping back just an inch, as if preparing to close the door. "He just started showing up on my porch about a year ago. Half-starved. I fed him once, and he adopted me. Then, a few months back, he started disappearing every Sunday morning for a couple of hours. I didn't know where he went until... well, I guessed. But I never thought he was visiting Caleb."
My heart hammered against my ribs, a heavy, suffocating rhythm. Every Sunday for months, while I sat weeping by my son’s headstone, this dog had been there. And when the dog left, he walked straight to the girl who had loved Caleb just as fiercely as I had, in her own quiet, shattered way.
"How long have you lived here, Maya?" I asked, ignoring the urge to turn around and walk back to my car.
She swallowed hard, her eyes glistening with sudden moisture she was fighting desperately to hold back. "About two years. Ever since... ever since the apartment downtown became too expensive after I lost the bookstore job."
The words hung in the air, heavy with unspoken hardship. I looked past her into the dim interior of the house. Through the cracked door, I caught a glimpse of a small, cramped living room. A single floor lamp cast a warm, lonely glow over a stack of paperback books, a mug of tea, and—resting squarely on the center of a small wooden coffee table—a framed, slightly faded photograph of Caleb smiling in his senior high school jacket.
Maya noticed my gaze shifting toward the table. Her breath hitched, and she quickly pulled the door inward, trying to block my view.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I should go. Or you should. We shouldn't... I know you didn't want anything to do with me after the accident. I respect that, Diane. I really do."
She reached for the doorknob, her fingers trembling. But as she moved to shut me out, I did something that defied every defensive instinct I had cultivated over the past thirty-six months.
May you like
I reached out and placed my hand flat against the heavy oak door, stopping it from closing.
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