I asked the groundskeeper about him once.
He was an older man named Edwin who had worked there long enough to recognize most regular visitors.
I nodded toward the dog.
“Does he belong to someone?”
Edwin glanced over.
He just shrugged and said the dog had been showing up for a while, and nobody seemed to know where he came from.
“Nobody feeds him?”
“Not that I know of.”
“He doesn’t stay here?”
Edwin shook his head.
That only made me more curious.
I began watching the dog whenever I visited.
He always seemed calm.
But every so often he would stare toward the cemetery entrance as if waiting for something.
Then, before I left, he would disappear.
I never saw where he went.
One Sunday I walked back to my car and found myself standing beside the driver’s door without opening it.
I looked toward the cemetery.
The dog was still there.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, that bothered me all week.
Last Sunday, instead of leaving when I usually did, I stayed back and watched from a distance as the dog finally stood up, stretched, and started trotting toward the cemetery gates.
I followed him.
I don’t fully know why.
Something in me just needed to know where he went.
I kept enough distance that he wouldn’t notice me.
At least, I hoped he wouldn’t.
He crossed the road outside the cemetery and continued down the sidewalk.
I expected him to wander.
He didn’t.
He moved with total purpose, never hesitating at a single turn, cutting through streets I didn’t recognize, past a shuttered gas station, down a narrow alley behind a row of houses I’d never had a reason to drive past before.
More than once I considered turning around.
“This is ridiculous,” I muttered.
I was a grown woman following a stray dog through unfamiliar streets on a Sunday afternoon.
But every time I slowed down, the dog kept moving.
And something about the certainty in his steps pulled me after him.
The neighborhood gradually changed.
The lawns became smaller.
Paint peeled from porch railings.
Several cars sat under faded covers.
A bicycle without a front wheel leaned against one fence.
The dog crossed another street without pausing.
I hurried after him.
“Where are you going?” I whispered.
Of course, he didn’t answer.
Nearly 20 minutes later he stopped in front of a small, run-down house at the very end of a dead-end street, scratched twice at the front door, and sat down and waited.
I stopped near the sidewalk.
My heartbeat had picked up.
The house was narrow and weathered.
One shutter hung slightly crooked.
The porch steps were cracked along the edges.
The dog looked completely at ease.
Like he had done this before.
I almost walked away.
Whatever mystery I had invented in my mind suddenly felt intrusive.
Maybe the dog belonged to an elderly person.
Maybe somebody simply let him roam.
Maybe there was nothing unusual about any of it.
Then I heard movement inside.
A floorboard creaked.
The dog stood.
My stomach tightened for reasons I couldn’t explain.
The door creaked open a few inches, and I stopped walking entirely.
Standing in the doorway was someone I never in a hundred years expected to see.
“Ms. Diane?”
I stared at her.
It took me several seconds to place the face.
“Sadie?”
Her eyes widened.
Sadie had dated Caleb during his last year of high school.
She had been 17 then. Caleb had been 18.
For almost a year she had been everywhere.
At our dinner table.
On the couch during movie nights.
Sitting beside Caleb on the back steps while they whispered about whatever teenagers believed adults could never understand.
Then they broke up.
