We head inside, and Marley stops along the way to examine the budding flowers as we go, the warm spring afternoon making everything feel new and happy and right in the best way. I nudge her lightly as she leans forward to smell a blossom, catching her before she topples over, the both of us laughing.
We head to the front desk, and I poke around while Marley asks to see the dogs. A chunky orange tabby with a tag that says OLIVER lumbers up to me and rubs against my pants, purring until I give him a quick scratch behind his ears.
One of the employees takes us back, and Oliver trots around behind us, clearly in charge of the entire operation.
As we peer through the cages, Marley looks more and more somber.
“I wish we could take them all,” she says, using her pointer finger to pet the nose of a Lab mix, big brown eyes staring sadly up at her.
Then there’s a squeaky yip from the cage behind us, and we spin around to see a tiny silver Yorkie puppy, its little body the size of one of my hands. The dog barks again, straining to get through the links to her.
Marley gasps, and I witness what I can only define as an out-of-body experience, sheer cuteness overload.
She runs over, and the employee comes to unlock the door and get the small puppy out of its cage. “This one just got here last night. We found her abandoned by that pond over on Hickory Street.”
The dog launches herself into Marley’s hands, and she cuddles her sweetly, almost reverently. She grabs a tiny ball from the front of the cage, and the two of them begin to play with it, the puppy’s little paws attacking Marley’s fingers as she rolls the ball back and forth.
“This is exactly like the puppy I’ve always wanted,” she says, looking up at me, her eyes glistening.
“I think we found a winner,” I say, watching as Marley holds the pup up, staring at it lovingly.
After she fills out the application and pays the adoption fee, we run around on the grass by the parking lot, the puppy’s tiny silver head popping up in between the flower bushes while she crashes through them, petals clinging to her ears and nose.
Soon she collapses in front of Marley, huffing and puffing from all the exercise. “Someone’s sleepy,” Marley murmurs as she scoops her up, giving me a kiss on the cheek.
“Her name is Georgia,” she says, holding the puppy up to me. Georgia mimics Marley’s kiss, licking my cheek with her tiny tongue, her fluffy fur tickling my skin.
“Nice to meet you, Georgia,” I say, patting the pup’s little head as she yips a response.
Yep. Way better than a duck.
“We should take a picture,” Marley says, excited. She pulls her phone out of her pocket and holds it out to take a photo of us.
I smile as there’s a quick flash, and then another, and a surprising jolt of pain slices through my head. For a moment I see my mom standing in front of my eyes in the same white floral dress that she had on the night of the accident, her phone in her hand.
Fuck.
My first vision in well over a month. Every time I think they’re gone for good… something happens.
I collect myself, pulling Marley closer as she takes one more, the two of us peering at her phone to see the result.
It’s a cute picture. Marley looks beautiful. Happy. Her nose and cheeks are flushed from all the running, the green in her eyes standing out against the grass all around us. We both look so different than we did when we met all those months ago at the cemetery, the weight of our grief lifting slowly off our shoulders, pain no longer shadowing our faces. In her arms, there’s tiny Georgia, miraculously looking in the direction of the camera.
“Send that to me,” I say to her as we walk back to the car, the feeling of her hand in mine outweighing the pain in my head and the uneasy feeling in my chest.
24
I hold Marley’s hand as we walk down Main Street a month later, the sky above us dark and ominous. The humid summer air clings to my arms and legs as Georgia stops to sniff at a patch of grass next to the sidewalk, giving me time to turn and look up at the clouds, the wind tugging at my hair.
“I think it might—”
There’s a clap of thunder, and the sound drowns out the rest of my sentence as rain begins to fall all around us.
Marley squeals and grabs ahold of Georgia, pressing close to me as we duck under an overhang to keep dry.
I rest my chin against her head, tensing when I see a car whiz past us. A silver Toyota. Identical to the one I was driving the night of the accident.
The car that Kim died in.
Sometimes it feels like forever ago. Sometimes just a minute.