movement inside.
A floorboard creaked.
The dog stood.
My stomach tightened for reasons I couldn’t explain.
The door slowly opened a few inches.
And I stopped walking.
Standing in the doorway was someone I never, in a hundred years, expected to see.
“Ms. Diane?”
I stared at her.
It took several seconds before I recognized the face.
“Sadie?”
Her eyes widened.
Sadie had dated Caleb during his final year of high school.
She had been 17.
Caleb had been 18.
For almost a year, she had been everywhere.
At our dinner table.
On the couch during movie nights.
Sitting beside Caleb on the back steps while they whispered about whatever teenagers believed adults could never understand.
Then they broke up.
Caleb barely talked about it.
A few months later, Sadie disappeared from our lives completely.
Now she stood in front of me.
She was three years older than when I
had last seen her, thinner than I remembered, with her dark hair loosely tied behind her head.
The dog pushed past her legs and walked inside.
Sadie looked from him to me.
“What are you doing here?”
I swallowed.
“I followed your dog.”
Her expression changed.
She looked toward the house.
Then back at me.
“You followed Jasper?”
“Is that his name?”
She nodded slowly.
I almost laughed from sheer confusion.
“He’s been sitting at Caleb’s grave.”
Sadie’s face went pale.
For several seconds, she said nothing.
Then she opened the door wider.
“You should come inside.”
Every instinct told me something was wrong.
Still, I stepped onto the porch.
The front room was small but clean.
A worn couch sat against one wall.
Children’s books were stacked inside a plastic crate near the television.
I noticed them immediately.
Then I saw the tiny blue sneakers near the hallway.
My
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