Now he finally did.
The dog watched from the grass.
Walter set the tree, filled the hole, pressed the soil with his boots, and watered it slowly.
When he finished, he sat beside it.
The dog walked over and lowered itself against his leg.
Walter rested one hand on its back.
He thought of the refrigerator lying in weeds beneath the sun.
He thought of the padlock.
He thought of the thin scratching sound he had nearly dismissed as rats.
He would never know every detail of what happened before he arrived at that property.
He would never understand the kind of thinking that allowed someone to close a metal door on a living creature and lock it.
But he knew what happened afterward.
A gardener heard a sound.
He stopped working.
He opened a door.
And two lives that had both become too quiet found a reason not to be alone.
