I’d barely been in my new house for a month when everything changed. The place wasn’t perfect — old floors, stubborn windows, a faint smell of lavender detergent trapped in the walls — but it was mine, and that was enough. After nineteen years in a marriage that drained the life out of me, signing those divorce papers and walking out of that courthouse felt like taking my first real breath in decades. Buying this house was the exhale. Freedom, at last, with my daughter Emma cheering me on from her college dorm.
It was early on a cold morning when I stepped into the backyard with a mug of coffee and plans to do nothing at all. That’s when I noticed the movement near the fence. For a second, I thought it was a squirrel or neighborhood cat — but then a Labrador retriever sat up, calmly parked in the center of my garden as if he’d been waiting for me.
He was clean, well-fed, and carried himself with the confidence of a dog who absolutely belonged indoors somewhere warm. When I crouched, he didn’t flinch. His tail twitched once, then started wagging with conviction. His tag said Max and listed a phone number. That tiny piece of metal was all that kept me from pretending he was mine.
Continue reading next page…