I hadn’t planned on talking. I was used to passing through towns like a shadow: deliver, refuel, move on. But there was something unshakeable in the way he said my friend’s name, in the way his hand rested on Mooney’s back like he’d done it a thousand times in his mind. We stood there in the cold, two men connected by someone who no longer existed anywhere except in our memories and in this limping, loyal dog.
What began as small talk stretched into shared stories—details only someone who loved Bennett could know. We started meeting on purpose after that: a breakfast here, a Sunday dinner there, favors traded without keeping score. The grief that had once felt like a locked room slowly opened into something softer. Through Mooney, through that frozen night, I learned that some goodbyes bend, but don’t fully break. Sometimes, the people we lose leave us maps to each other.
