The rumbling of the train in motion vibrated beneath my seat. The clicking and clacking thundered throughout the entire segment. The broad window next to the cushioned benches rattled as I rested the side of my head against it, silent in the lengthy ride. Outside of the window, the world was pitch black at every corner, flashing here and there with a gleam of light. We had been here for about twenty minutes now, maybe even thirty.

"You know, I was thinking about something," Mom said, casually glancing between Dad and me as she spoke up. "Getting out of the house is a great way to restore your mental health. The air is so fresh and the day is so beautiful, you can't help but feel better. It's a proven fact, you know."

Mom and Dad sat together on the bench across from me, both rocking slightly by the influence of the train's rapid shuffling. Mom's nose was deep in a thin book, her eyes attentively tracing the lines under the dim glow overhead as if on the edge of her seat to see what happened next. Dad's arms were folded as he stared out the window beside him, his eyes glazed over in a sort of sleepy way.

"I was thinking about ways that we could do that," Mom went on. "Late last night, I jotted down a draft list of ideas. I hear it's meant to be a cloudless night and somewhat warm, at that. I'm thinking we should all go out once it gets dark and sit under the stars for a while. We could head out somewhere the house lights don't distract us from the sky and just sit out in this big field until we get tired."

I had lost track of what time it was ever since we had first boarded the train. It might have been about eleven at night back then, but with the uncertain stretch of time since, it was impossible to tell just when it was. It was a decision made completely on a whim, really. One moment, the three of us were gathered around the table after finishing up a dinner of creamy pea soup, flitting lighthearted conversation back and forth, and now we were sitting in a train, riding off into the night. My mind had reeled for the first several minutes, struggling to comprehend the glow of the ceiling lights, but it hardly fazed me now.

"Well, I'd say it's settled, then!" Dad replied eagerly, clapping his paws together once in his enthusiasm. "We'll all take the eleven o'clock train out. I know a field we could go to. Just this endless patch of grass under the infinite sky. I'll grab us a blanket to lie on."

Lottie would have delighted in an occasion quite like this. She would have been fully awake and alert somehow, even in the late hour. For the most part, she would have made as little noise as possible, not because her presence was little but out of respect for the night and those who ventured within it. If something crossed her mind that needed to be said, she would have leaned close to me and whispered it so softly that only I could hear. But when there was nothing to say, we would have just sat together in each other's company, side by side on the bench gazing out at the void that was the darkness, and she would wrap her paw gently around mine without any kind of verbal warning. Even though she wasn't actually there, I felt my paw slowly close in return as it lay limp on the cushion next to me.

Gradually, the train eased and screeched to a halt. We had reached one of the stops, the fourth or fifth after we had begun traveling, jerking into place before complete stillness. A muffled announcement crackled to life from the intercom, probably listing off the stop name, but I couldn't quite understand what was being said. Dad apparently had, though, since this seemed to beckon him back into reality as he tore his focus from the window to glance between me and Mom.

"That'll be us," Dad said, casually slapping his paws onto his lap to rise to his feet.

"It's so dark out. I hope we can find our way back all right," Mom replied, climbing up as well, and I balanced myself with a paw perched on the arm of the bench to do the same. "Digby, would you grab that blanket next to you, please?"

Shuffling sluggishly under the weight of the late hour, I tucked the rolled blanket from the cushion next to me under my arm and we sauntered across the lit aisle to leave the train. The sound of crickets whirring in the dense shadows greeted us as we emerged together onto the platform, a wide wooden slab decorated with scattered lanterns that glowed against the night and made a home for buzzing insects. In a blink, we had arrived out onto an extensive stretch of grass, crunching and swishing under our steady steps.

Mom and Dad walked side by side, engaged in a chat that I tuned out to instead follow them and pry my eyes through the darkness. The ground at my feet was still drowned in darkness but the sky had never once shimmered so vividly, embellished with stars sprinkled throughout the pitch black dome. The breeze that swept across the area was not cold nor warm, just a puff of air that tickled my face. I had my arms wound around the rolled blanket that I had been instructed to bring from the train, holding it against my chest and silently appreciating the velvety texture that my paws clamped onto. The idea of waiting for a train back home amidst the dead of night for several and several minutes on end was wriggling its way into my mind, slinking in with the contemplation of whether it was actually worth it to be here.

"I think this is far enough," Mom pointed out, jerking me back to reality and out of my own head. She slowed to a stop on the grass, causing Dad and me to copy, and she turned back to look at me. "We'll just have to go back the way we came to get back to the station once we're ready to go. Honey, can you help us put down that blanket?"

The three of us each took hold of an edge on the blanket, easing it down onto the grass as it fluttered in the subtle breeze. Once it was sprawled out across the ground, I discovered that it was even wider than I had expected—While I had been waiting for a covered surface where each of us would need to huddle close in order to lay fully on the blanket, the length of the resting place was generous and would leave plenty of wiggle room between us. We all claimed seats atop the blanket with Mom in the middle and Dad and me on either side of her, and we settled down under the infinity of stars.

"See, now, isn't this delightful?" Mom said after we had settled, turning her face to look at me beside her. The dimness of the night muted the features in her round face. "Just the three of us, far into the middle of nowhere where nothing holds any pressing matter, sitting under the stars. It really refreshes the soul and bathes your mind in the beautiful simplicity of life."

"I suppose so," I replied. I hadn't stayed quite long enough to experience any kind of surreal sensation washing over me like she seemed to expect me to, but I wasn't closed off to the possibility.

A rustling arrived from the other end of the blanket. Dad had raised his head to glance over at Mom in the break of our conversation.

"You know, I have to agree," Dad spoke up. "I'd do this more often if it wasn't such a hassle to get here. It's a pleasant result and most definitely worth it, but I'm pretty sure we were all thinking that."

The crickets continued to chirp within the shadows. Dad didn't lower himself from propping himself up on his elbow, but his focus had strayed from Mom as he quietly studied the stars above us.

"Say, Maisie," Dad went on after a lengthy silence, dropping his gaze back to Mom. "I'd love to hear some more of your ideas on what we can do as a family to create good memories. I think you said earlier that you were writing down a list."

"That's right, I was," Mom answered. The sense that I was intruding on a discussion that was not meant for me had begun to swell in the chatter directed between the two alone, but a tugging suspicion provoked the wonder if they had wanted me to hear. "Personally, I'm an immense fan of family games. We could establish a specific day of the week as a family game night and always have something to look forward to each week."

"Oh, yes! My competitive game skills can finally shine," Dad agreed enthusiastically in sort of a joking and humorous manner. "What else have you got?"

"Well, we should be getting out of the house more often. We could go for daily walks or get some kind of exercise," Mom added. Her face was turned from me but I recognized the beaming smile in her voice, flattered by the not-so-subtle affection of personal friendliness. It was an exchanged encounter I had taken notice of in my life more than I could have counted, as that was who he was and who she was. That was the way their connection fit together.

"That one's a little less easy to achieve," Dad joked in response. "You might not have realized, but my exercise ability faded away as quickly as my youth. Compared to you two, I'd be a wheezing mess."

A little cough of laughter escaped from Mom beside me. "The list is still a work in progress, dear," she told him.

"Fair enough." Dad settled back down onto the blanket, vanishing from my sight, to gaze up at the stars again.

"What do you think, Digby?" Mom inquired, turning her face back towards mine again. "Will you help me work on a list of things we can do as a family?"

"Yeah, I can do that," I said. It wasn't certain if my creativity extended far enough to come up with anything decent, but after the immense efforts that were done and still being done for me, it was the least I could do to try.

Silence descended on us once again. On my left, I caught the sound of Mom's soft, subtle breathing. I set my own head back down onto the blanket beneath my back. The rocky ground past the cover was almost just as defined, but I ignored it. The image above me, put together completely by the white dots of a thousand stars, the black void that sat behind it, and the wisps of gray clouds drifting flawlessly like smoke across the sky. Maybe this wasn't so bad. For the current moment, at least.

Dad was in the motion of sitting up again, pushing out a sigh at length as he eased up again and perching his paws on his crossed knees. Through the adjusting dimness, his outline was a bit more distinct to acknowledge. When he first began to move, Mom looked at him again.

"Well, Digby, star of the evening," Dad said, his figure shifting as he glanced across the blanket at me. Somewhere in the distance, a train whistle screeched. Or maybe it was just the far wind shrieking in the trees somewhere. "No pun intended, by the way. How do you feel about this little adventure that we've brought you on? You can be honest. In fact, please be honest. I'd appreciate it. You don't have to worry about hurting our feelings or anything like that."

I sent the question back and forth through my mind, contemplating the most genuine and honest response as I propped myself up on my elbows on the blanket again before I spoke up with an answer.

"I don't really have any strong feelings about it," I admitted. "I'm just going with the flow and doing what I'm told to do and going where I'm directed to. I don't really understand why we came here, though."

"Yeah, that's fair." Dad next turned his focus towards Mom, who was slowly sitting up in such a careful way that it seemed like the slightest wrong move would snap her back. "Maisie?"

I sat up the full way along with Mom. Once sitting up, she shuffled to adjust her seat, facing me instead. She was just about to speak, due to the way she closed her paws around one of mine, but before she could make a sound, a different thought struck me.

"Wait, is this some kind of an intervention?" I cut in immediately. "This really feels like an intervention to me and I don't know what I did."

"Oh, no, that's not what this is at all," Mom hurried to assure me, squeezing my paw in between her own two. A lukewarm breeze swept across the field, rustling the grass past the edges of the blanket. "Truth be told, that didn't even come to mind. You've done nothing wrong. I can promise you that. I brought you here because there's something I want to talk to you about."

I had relaxed again around the confirmation that I had avoided messing something up, but the last statement put a knot in my chest. Was it bad news? Was it good news? What news was so immense that it called for a special announcement? Mentally, I began to list off my closest friends, bracing myself for the breaking news that somebody was sick or hurt, but the next following sentence posing as a question threw me off the course of thought.

"How do you feel about being out here?" Mom asked me. Even in sitting, she was a couple of inches shorter than me. "I don't mean about the trip itself. Your father already asked you about that. I mean what it makes you feel to be sitting out here in this moment and on this day and at this time. What is this like for you?"

"To be completely honest, for the entire first half, I was just thinking about when we would get to go home," I expressed. "It just feels a little bit pointless. I mean that in the most genuine way. We all could be snuggled up into our own warm beds and having a nice sleep, but instead, we're sitting out in the middle of nowhere."

"In that case, thank you for your honesty," Mom said. "I prefer that over polite reassurance. Will you do me a favor, though, please? I want you to close your eyes for a moment. That's all. You don't need to worry about doing anything else right now."

I decided not to question it. Without complaint, I shut my eyes, submerging myself in utter, complete darkness. The ceaseless whirring of the crickets, the distant rustling breezes, and the rocky surface beneath my seat on the blanket instantly became more defined. It was almost like I'd just quite suddenly fallen asleep and yet the sounds of nature around me, approaching at every angle, reigned on in some listening subconsciousness.

Well, this is interesting, I thought.

"I appreciate you being honest with me, but I hope that you'll excuse me for using a bit of blunt honesty in return," Mom went on. Somewhere in the shadows, an insect screeched. "I think you're bound to a hasty mindset. You're always in a rush, trying to get from one moment to the next. I think you do that because you long for healing so deeply that you try to reach the moments you're looking forward to the most as quick as you can and cut every moment between right out of your life.

Oh. That was different. The surreality in having your own feelings read out to you plagued my mind, but there was a sort of certainty hanging in the air, an unspoken agreement. Somehow, she was completely right.

"I'm going to ask you to do something else," Mom told me. "I promise it won't be like that for the entire time that we're here. Just for a little while. Oh, keep your eyes closed for me, please. I'm sorry, I didn't clarify."

My eyes had flitted open, expecting with the change in request that it was time to open them. I hastily shut them again, putting myself back into that familiar darkness.

"What I want you to do is take a deep breath," Mom instructed once my eyes had closed. "As deep as you can manage. I even want you to clench your fists as you do that. Just tight, tight, tight until you feel it in your chest. When you do that, I want you to imagine that you're sucking in every single bit of positive energy in the world and it's going to come in and patch up your heart. It's silly and I know that, but I just want you to try it once."

The sense of both pairs of eyes fixed upon me was awkwardly apparent, even though my own eyes were closed, as Mom's grasp on my paw disappeared. I did as she said, clenching my fists as tightly as I could and inhaling slowly, picturing an energy like sunshine and pure joy spilling into my lungs until I physically struggled to take in any more air and my chest squeezed with strain. I didn't have to wait long at all for the next instructions, as they began as soon as the full breath was drawn, but I held that breath despite the squeeze to listen.

"Now I want you to release that breath, but don't just release the breath," Mom told me. "Release all of the negativity pent up in your system through that exhale and let yourself relax."

I pushed out the breath that I was holding, feeling my body droop as I relaxed again. A calmness had washed over me, almost a sleepy sort of contentment.

"You can open your eyes now," Mom said. So, I did. Both of my parents held a lingering focus on me, their patient gazes burning right through my face. "How do you feel this time?"

"Zen," I answered.

"Hmm." Mom gave a slight nod. I couldn't quite comprehend the subdued expression in her face. "Digby, we brought you here to show you how a moment can only be lived if it is accepted for anything and everything that it is. If you live life escaping pain and becoming addicted to seeking joy, then you're not truly living. To truly live, you have to embrace the moment, where you are right now. The past has already gone and the future is not yet here. The question is, where are you right in this moment? No matter whether it's a moment of pain, a moment of happiness, a moment of grief, or even a moment of love, a strong individual rises to it and faces it for what it truly is. Finding the moment is finding yourself, being honest with yourself in where you are and where you need to be. A single moment can define who you are. And that's what life is. Life is a moment, sculpted by your paws, and the only way to learn what you can make with it is to find it."

How could I find something that I couldn't see?

The words might not have given me healing, but it did shed a ton more light on the situation and the psychology of it all. Maybe if there was some universally certain answer for what I was going through, there was some universally certain way out of it. Somehow, learning more about my own self pointed me in the right direction. Happy Home had built up my rapid-fire problem solving skills, but I couldn't fix a problem that I couldn't see. Now that I had pinpointed the problem, it wouldn't have been much longer before a solution followed.

But like literally every other problem these days, it went on and on and on, hanging over me from when I climbed out of bed in the morning to when I returned to it at night. Additionally, that was something I had begun to hold myself to get better at—I decided on a firm deadline of ten o'clock at the latest to rise in the morning and begin my day, with either Mom or Dad waking me to help if I failed to do so myself. I had also decided to make an effort to be proud of myself and call it progress. Progress, which was so exact and yet so vague, holding no precise definition in life. Self-declared, maybe. I supposed this would have made it immensely easier to slap on the label and wear it around like a badge. But it certainly defined the relentless questions of if and when I would actually recognize it by myself or if it was there at all.

When Mom had put my entire period of suffering into perspective, I'd been hoping for at the very least something monumental in a turning point like the moment of awakening after the crucial plot of a story. The idea of making a complete recovery and utterly thriving overnight like some particularly cliché storylines was so improbable that it was laughable. Life could never have been that ideal. Life also didn't always work out well enough to have a proper turn-around that stuck. Two days after the conversation had passed through my life, it had slipped my mind that we'd even gone out to see the stars at all.

August receded into September. The days cooled, but not by much at all. As the last breath of summertime ever-so slowly gave way to autumn, the scenery outside of my house soon followed to prove it. I became aware of the changes with the first shift from the daily walks with Mom and Dad after breakfast, as established from Mom's list of things to do as a family. The leaves on the trees soaked in yellow and orange rather than green, but it wouldn't be until further on that they would fall and decorate the grass. The sweeping breeze chilled, but only just enough to be noticed. The change shifted drastically from the baking summer days and I was almost certain that I knew why.

It was the first autumn in years spent out of work. Before now, I was hardly present for the season, or any other, for that matter. The only times it actually found its way to my mind was when I was walking through it early in the morning or late in the evening. Now that I was here, it was like it was welcoming me back, a gentle embrace as I adjusted to the new days. It was going to be a bit different, but it would be fine.

September crept along in its usual steady manner. Sometime during the early days, Mom broke out the winter coats to be prepared once the temperature dropped. This became an incorporated feature in each of our morning walks. I came to expect and anticipate the leisurely shuffle under vibrant clusters of leaves, paws resting tucked away into the pockets of my gray puffy coat, the slinking breeze that fiddled with my bangs, and the dreamlike trance of thought I submerged into at the mindless action. Rarely did my thoughts wander from a single gripping course.

Not a day waned where Lottie didn't take up my mindspace at least once, considerably more frequently as her birthday neared. Being now two months after being struck with the Happy Home suspension, I would have assumed that it would work out in the opposite direction, thoughts of her gradually withdrawing until ignorance eventually brought healing. But I was on the path towards the complete other end of the spectrum, repeatedly drawn back to the mere memory of her even as I lay in bed at night trying to sleep. It was like she was permanently stuck there somehow, binding her to my conscious with every fleeting autumn day. I tossed this speculation through my mind often, raking for some kind of answer or reason or motive of change towards my general thought palates. Mom and Dad were efficient and diligent with their support and still my mind somehow circled back around to Lottie. What was that about? Was I subconsciously trying to put her in that position? To pretend that she was caring for me, just like she would have and did before everything? The more that I questioned myself of it, interrogating my own mind, usually during a morning walk, the clearer it became that trying to return to what I had before in any possible way was the very blockage to my healing.

"Does this look familiar to you, Digby?" Mom inquired.

I snapped back to reality. I was sauntering across a swishing patch of grass, having been utterly spellbound in my daydreams. Bordering the grass at a wide distance was a cluster of trees, collected in the beginning of a slim forest. It was ten o'clock in the morning on the particularly clear day of September ninth, if even that late, and we had departed from home after a breakfast of dense waffles maybe half an hour ago. Even now, the tingle of the sweetness of the lemon iced tea that had accompanied it still lingered faintly on my tongue. Dad had pointed out over breakfast that we were entering a warm stretch of days, warmer than usual for the beginning of September and even easing up the subtle chill that had tried to take over, and Mom requested to bring us somewhere new as she had a place in mind. Now, thirty minutes into our walk and almost five into the generic grassy region, she must have been trying to spark up a conversation with me. Admittedly, I hadn't been paying attention, as I had instead entertained the curiosity why Lottie had not yet left my mind.

"Hmm?" I prompted.

"I asked if this looks familiar to you," Mom echoed. "This gorgeous little place."

What? Had we been here before? I tore my gaze away from her, flitting it across the wooded horizon circling the short grass. As far as I could tell, it was nothing more than a generic park. I didn't quite understand what she was getting at. What separated this one from the rest?

"This was where we brought you right after you graduated high school," Mom explained, answering the question that had evidently leaked unknowingly from my mind onto my face. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Dad give a nod from my other side. "That was four years ago. Do you remember that? We met the otters here for sandwiches. Isabelle was at university then and brought a textbook all the way out here so that she could get some work done. She was such a hard worker, even then. And so were you, might I add, graduating at fifteen."

Four years. Had it really been that long? Then again, any memory of the day had either receded into void or flickered uncertainly like it wasn't clear if it had really happened or not. The ceremony itself hadn't exactly been ideal, at least the final bit, inching my way through a crowd of graduates for several minutes before breaking through to find my family. Evidently, we'd met with Lottie and Lyle at this very park just afterward. Silently, I continued to study the trees at the far end of the segment of grass. Recognition of the place was nothing more than a flicker, a twitch, a sudden and short gleam in the dark, but it did arrive. Somewhere, I sat with the two animals that would come to mean more to me than I could ever have realized, right at the beginning of it all before it all changed. Visiting with an older eye, it was easy to comprehend just how drastic it was between my last venture and today.

"I think we might have even invited Lyle's kids to join us for the little celebration, as well," Mom went on. "They're both all grown up now, so they're not really kids, are they? Oh, no, that's right. They hadn't come with us. I believe they were in the area, though. I remember they had flown in for the week or something around there."

I looked at her. She didn't return my gaze, however, and stared out into the trees with her dark eyes glazed over in thought. She, Dad, and I continued to shuffle through the ankle-high grass, sinking into the sensations of the scenery for the next few seconds while nobody spoke. My paws were hidden away in my sleek pockets, concealed from any sharp breeze that might have sliced through. After a pause at length, Mom finally joined my gaze as a soft smile rose to her face.

"I suppose you've really come back around where you started from, haven't you?" Mom said, outstretching a paw to run it across my back in a soothing motion. "Have you thought about that?"

"I have," I said truthfully. It hadn't been a recent consideration, but it had existed once or twice.

"You know, I think the universe is looking out for you," Mom told me. "I really do. It's taking care of you in its own mysterious ways. Think about where you were the first time this happened. You might have just left a big part of you behind, but it created room for so much possibility that could only thrive without it. Sometimes you need to let things go to bring better things into your life. I know it hurts to lose something that means so much to you, but I really do believe there's growth in that. Just imagine how you could transform your life before you go back."

"Oh, since you've mentioned it, that reminds me," Dad spoke up from my other side. "Digby, have you considered how you want to spend your time during the months you have here? School? A part-time job? You could even just stay at home for a while and come to a decision when you feel ready and willing to, but your mother's right. There's so many ways you can rebuild your life again. Countless ways. You don't have to really put yourself out there like you were before for a while, but I'll be expecting great things from you. Believe me, I know the animal you've grown to be. There's nothing you can't handle and I have never been more proud of you."

"What do you think, little star?" Mom asked me. Her eyes nearly sparkled now, spun to life by the idea of my potential. Both she and Dad just kept on surprising me on how far their devotion reached.

"I think you're both amazing," I said. "That's what I think."

Mom's smile instantly broadened into a beam at this response, grabbing ahold of my shoulder from her reach to my back and jolting me in close to hold near her as she walked. "Oh, you don't have to say that!" She gushed. "You're such a sweetheart, you know that?"

"Yep, she's right. You're a big softie," Dad joked. "Come here, you."

Dad flung an arm around my shoulders from my other side, joining what had become a family huddle, but only succeeded in swiftly proving that a moving trio link of animals was not a good idea. Almost instantly, in the blink of an eye, I'd misstepped and tripped over his foot, lurching as I struggled to sustain my balance. A sort of startled exclamation escaped from Mom as we all regained our footing once again, gasping in a spurt of laughter at the awkward stumble. Unspokenly recognizing our mistake, we separated once again, leaving our giggles to die out as we treaded side by side across the grass.

"Hey, does anyone know how to get back from here?" Dad asked after a moment.

. . .

"Hey, Digby?" A hushed voice breathed onto my ear. A paw shook my shoulder, rattling me from the depths of my sleep. "C'mon, let's get up, son. I got something I want you to see."

My eyelids, heavy like they hadn't cracked open for thousands of years, pried open at being woken up. My bedroom was no longer dark under nightfall but instead bathed in a fragile, dim light, letting me know that it had not yet reached the range of time when my rest would have usually been disrupted. Dad had crouched beside the side of my bed, his paw clamped over my shoulder, but the shaking had stopped the moment my eyes opened to the morning.

"What time is it?" I mumbled. Dad withdrew his paw from my shoulder as I slowly eased myself up to a seated position, but the thought of rolling over and going back to sleep had already lodged into my mind. Maybe I could do that once he left again.

"Just after six thirty," Dad whispered. "I know, it's pretty darn early."

"Is something wrong?" I muttered hoarsely. I had not yet processed the start of the morning fully enough to fuss over the possibility that something bad had happened while I was still sleeping, yet I was just awake enough to recognize the blessing of that.

"Oh, no. No, not at all. No, it's actually a good thing," Dad reassured me softly. A particularly unusual sensation had washed over me as I listened at the borders of unconsciousness, a surreality in the sleepy conversation as if it were nothing more than a dream. "I just want to show you something. It'll be quick. You won't regret it, I promise. I left you a cup of coffee on the table. I'll be outside, so just bring it out with you, if you want."

The next few minutes crept by as I sat in bed in the sudden solitude of my bedroom after Dad had silently shut the door behind him in his enthusiastic but soundless departure. I ran over the conversation several times in my mind, struggling to determine what and whether it had just happened, utterly frazzled and waiting to regain full consciousness. The unbroken silence as I poked my head out into the hallway, still inky with shadows, implied my rising even earlier than Mom. A pale pink mug of light coffee poured to an inch from the brim sat near the edge of the dining table, and a fresh one at that—Through the shy morning light, a cloud of steam wafted from the liquid. I lifted the mug by the handle, eyed the contents of the drink on my shuffle across the room to watch for sloshing, and drew back the front door towards me with my free paw to join my father outside.

Emerging into the outside world, the skies were painted with the breathtaking gradients of deep red, orange, and even strokes of pink. It was almost unreal how decorated it was, erupting into lively colors as the sun rose above the horizon. Dad was sitting on the front step, initially gazing out into the beautiful sights with his own white mug cupped in his paws and held close to his face, and he twisted in his seat to glance back at me when the front door latched behind me.

"Take a seat," Dad offered, withdrawing a paw from his mug to beckon me forward. A faint breeze swept across the area, fiddling with the leaves on the few trees next to the sidewalk. I walked forward to do as he asked, lowering myself into a seat beside him on the step with my paw still clenched to the handle of my mug.

Well, today was apparently meant to be a bit different from the rest. Firstly, I had just been awakened at six thirty in the morning, significantly sooner than I had made a habit of, and now, I sat with my father in the delicacy of the earliest break of morning to watch the sun rise. In my button-up pajamas, no less. I hastily glanced down at my unfitting attire, startled by the reminder of my current state, but decided that it wasn't important. Not even my own mother was up and about yet, and that was saying something. Nobody would stop by and witness me in such informality. It was only Dad and me, sitting together on the step in complete and absolute isolation as if we were the last two animals in the world, sharing the view of the sky that had inexplicably been given to us on the pleasant morning of September...

"What day is it?" I asked, tearing my gaze from the sky to instead look over at Dad beside me.

"Saturday," Dad replied, pausing to take a lengthy sip of his coffee and sighed contentedly at the taste before he went on. "It's the twelfth."

The twelfth of September. It was Lottie's birthday today. She would be turning the new age of twenty-two today, entering that short three-month period where she became three years older than me rather than two. If it was six thirty, she might have already been preparing for work right now. She might have even been on her way with Lyle, depending on when they left their house in the morning. Nevertheless, she would have rarely managed to squeeze in the time to celebrate her own birthday through her tight-fit schedule. I wasn't there to help her this time. Of course, Lyle would still be celebrating, but it was the very first year that I would fail to see Lottie on her birthday.

I allowed myself the first gulp of my coffee. It hadn't yet cooled, searing my tongue but spilling a definite warmth into my body starting at the throat. After gulping down the sip, I spoke up again.

"It's Lottie's birthday," I noted aloud.

Dad had been in the middle of a sip when I spoke, recollecting himself and lowering his coffee mug to turn back to me.

"Yes, it is," Dad agreed. "I hate to say it, but I think it's still a bit soon for you to see her or talk to her or anything like that. It's not your fault, but she's hurting right now."

"I know," I told him. "I realized that."

Dad had no verbal response to this, instead reaching up and absentmindedly scratching at his forehead. I took another sip of my drink, smaller this time so that it wouldn't nip my tongue with burns again. We hadn't spoken Lottie's name out loud for weeks, maybe even months, as far as I could recall, though it wasn't precisely intentional. It was more of dancing around the topic of what had happened and her name was one of the prominent sources of it all. Naming her casually without even a pause was my unspoken acceptance of my comfort levels, even though I hadn't had any hesitance towards her influence for longer than a month. With the way she'd been running through my mind in so many waking moments, it was as if words of her had actually been waiting to come to the light, unintentionally piecing together rehearsed responses to questions I had never been asked and statements that had never been exchanged.

I watched Dad as he removed his paw from his face, reaching it back to balance himself as he leaned back to study the sky. I was going to say something.

"Would you look at that?" Dad remarked before I could open my mouth, squinting observantly up at the colors that had already begun to melt away into the pale blue of morning. I had seen the peak of it, at least, but those weren't the words that waited to leap into sound. "Incredible. Nature at its finest, wouldn't you say? Your mother would have loved to see this. I would have grabbed her for the show, but she was up late last night working on that list for us and I wanted her to sleep in."

"Dad, I..." Suddenly, I choked on my words. A hollowness drilled into my chest with a pressure that nearly genuinely ached. I hadn't anticipated how such simple words could have caught in my throat as if every single one in the world had just been wiped clean from my head. "I really miss Lottie."

"Well, that's no surprise." Dad's tone softened by a sliver as his eyes dropped to meet mine again. "This is the longest you've ever been away from her. I understand how you'd want to end that streak of separation."

"No, it's... I think it's more than that," I confessed. Something in his dark eyes shriveled from joking to sincere at these words, curiously listening for my follow-up. "I miss her so much all the time. I just want to come back and make things right for her. I can't get that out of my head. All this time, I was terrified of losing her, and now that I have, my life has never been the same. I can't stand the fact that she's gone. The fact that I can't even stop thinking about her now is just torturing me for accidentally driving her away. I don't think my life could ever be fully complete if she's not here. I know that you and Mom are doing so much for me and I appreciate that so, so much, but Lottie is everything to me and I should have protected her. Once I can see her again, even if our friendship is done for, I need to do it right."

Dad's eyes lingered on me for a long pause, ten seconds at least. His first movement was slow, hesitant as if skirting the borders of discomfort, as he turned back to face front. He tipped his head back, washing down another prolonged sip of his coffee with spaced sips like he had all the time in the world to drink it. He lowered his mug at last, leaving hardly an inch of coffee left swishing inside. I snuck a glance at his face, expecting either a blank stare or something that could have been perceived as disappointment. He hadn't said anything, yet he had smiled.

"What?" I said.

"You know, Digby, love works in mysterious ways," Dad explained, finally turning his softly-smiling face, his knowingly-shimmering eyes, towards me again. My heart gave a violent jerk so aggressive and abrupt that it was a wonder how it didn't tear right out of my chest. What? "It shows up when you least expect it, and sometimes when it makes no sense at all. You let someone go and suddenly they're running back to you in your dreams and making you wish it was real when you never even considered it before. When I first fell in love with your mother, it took me forever to realize what it truly was. It's a completely normal yet euphoric sensation when you know someone so deeply that a part of them is still with you even while you're apart. Life-changing, really, when you find something so genuine and captivating."

If I had struggled to find the right words before, then the capability had just entered the impossible. It was like something in my brain had just snapped in half, or frozen in place, or caved in entirely. Something like that. For the first time, my mind had found pure silence, not by means of peace, but because there was not a thought to match the words that had just been said to my face. Completely dumbfounded, sitting like an empty-headed zombie, I stared my father in the face because I couldn't remember how to move, to exercise my vocal chords, or even how to shut my mouth that had apparently dropped open at some point.

Dad gave a sort of whisper of a chuckle, stealing a glimpse into his coffee mug to inspect the liquid inside before he returned his focus to me.

"So, it's true, then," he said at last. "I wonder sometimes."

"What's true?" I whispered numbly. The words had snapped out far quicker than I'd imagined, coming from a state of forgetting how to speak entirely.

"Absence makes the heart grow fonder."

These words rattled through my mind, deafening any other thoughts as I lay in bed that night after having dragged them through the remaining hours of the day like a shadow. The initial shock had faded out with the growing time since it had existed, but I still stumbled over myself trying to convince myself of them. Admittedly, I had surrendered to a tendency to lose days in my memory once they had already passed me by, but a tugging suspicion told me that I wouldn't be soon to forget the words that had been shared with me on the morning of Lottie's twenty-second birthday. And, with that matter, the self-illuminating acknowledgment that shortly followed after hefty consideration. Remembering it now, captured within the dead of night and the shadows that cradled my room, a genuine and even involuntary smile picked up the corners of my mouth and I nuzzled into the mattress and pillow to rest.

I have fallen in love with Lottie.