When it was over, I drove home, and the moment I turned into my driveway and saw the front door open, I stopped and got out. The porch light was on. The living room lamp glowed. I had turned everything off before leaving.
I stepped inside and saw Angie's friends, all four of them, standing among the funeral flowers, framed photos, and casseroles I knew I would never touch.
"What are you doing here?" I yelled.
A dark-haired boy stepped forward. "It's not what you think, Miss Mabel."
I buried my only child.
"How did you get into my house?" I asked.
He swallowed. "Angie said you kept a spare key under the flowerpot on the windowsill outside."
I pointed toward the door. "Get out. You are not welcome. Haven't you done enough?"
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One girl started crying. The others looked wrecked, like they hadn't slept since the day Angie passed away. But none of them moved.
Then the blond girl stepped forward and said softly, "We're here to fulfill Angie's last request."
That stopped me. "Last request?"
Why had my daughter left strangers a wish she had never shared with me?
"We're here to fulfill Angie's last request."
"Please," the blond girl said. "Just come with us."
My feet moved on autopilot as the kids led me toward the living room. Then I saw what they had brought and froze.
A golden blur launched off the rug and collided with my knees, all soft fur, warm weight, and a tail beating wildly against my legs. Then he lifted his face, and I saw the tiny cleft in his right ear.
"Oh my God," I gasped. "Benji? Is that you? How is this possible?"
He climbed against me, whining and wriggling, licking at my hands as if he had been waiting months to do exactly that. I dropped to my knees and wrapped both arms around him so tightly he made that happy little grunt he used to make when Angie hugged him too hard.
I saw what they had brought and froze.
"Benji," I kept saying. "Benji, Benji..."
When I looked up, the teenagers were crying too.
A boy near the television held up a flash drive. "Angie told us about him." He inserted it and pressed play.
The screen filled with shaky phone video, first of Angie smiling from a passenger seat, then of her in a hoodie at a gas station. And when her voice came through, bright and painfully alive, it hit me harder than anything had since the cemetery.
"My mom misses Benji every day. And I know he matters because he was Dad's dog too. So I'm going to find him somehow. Even if it takes forever."
My hand flew to my mouth.
"Angie told us about him."
A girl beside me whispered, "Angie didn't want to tell you in case she couldn't bring him back."
There were more clips, each one opening another piece of the life my daughter had been carrying in secret. In one, she was laughing with her friends, open and full-throated in a way I hadn't seen at home in months.
In another, she knelt beside a handmade poster with Benji's old photo taped to the center. Then I heard her say, "He has a little split in his right ear. That's how we'll know it's really him."
When the screen went dark, the quiet boy with glasses said, "Angie talked about you all the time."
"How did you find him?" I asked.
The dark-haired boy leaned against the TV stand. "We've been looking for weeks. Longer than that. She told us about your old town, about Benji, and about how he disappeared on moving day. No collar. No tag. Nothing to trace him."
"Angie talked about you all the time."
"We'd ride out there when we could," the boy with glasses said. "Put up posters. Check shelters."
