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The blonde girl sat next to me in silence.
“We found him this morning in a shelter in your old village,” he said. “Someone rescued him from the woods a few days ago. The wound on his ear was what made us realize.”
I laughed through my tears.
—I used to joke that it seemed as if I had been born in the middle of an argument.
Angie always laughed at that joke.
The memory hit me so hard that I had to keep quiet.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I finally whispered.
“Because I was afraid of failing,” the blonde girl replied in a low voice.
“And because I loved you,” added another boy.
I nodded slowly.
“I know he loved me,” I said softly. “I just didn’t know that.”
The next morning, I took Benji to the mountain.
But I wasn’t alone.
I called Angie’s friends and asked them to come too.
When they arrived, they stood uncomfortably at the door.
I opened the door wider.
“She wanted them all to be here too, right?”
The blonde girl immediately burst into tears.
The boy with glasses simply nodded
We drove with the windows slightly open as Benji breathed in the cool mountain air. At the viewpoint, the wind rustled through the pines under a bright blue sky. Benji ran ahead, spinning excitedly, constantly glancing back to make sure we were following.
I watched Angie’s friends throw sticks for the dog she had been searching for during her last few weeks.
Then, in a low voice, I said the words I should have said earlier.
“I’m sorry”.
The four teenagers turned towards me.
“I blamed them because I couldn’t bear to see the pain fall on someone else,” I admitted. “That wasn’t fair.”
The dark-haired boy shook his head gently.
—You lost your daughter.
—And you lost your friend —I replied.
The blonde girl hugged me first.
Uncomfortable.
Sudden.
Completely honest.
Then the others joined in until we were all standing there crying together for the same girl.
Benji barked once against the wind and ran towards us, wagging his tail enthusiastically.
And for the first time since the funeral, I laughed.
A real laugh.
I still miss my daughter in a way that words cannot explain.
But Benji goes back to sleeping outside my bedroom door.
And sometimes Angie’s friends come over for dinner, or to take him for a walk, or simply because the pain is more bearable when it is shared.
They tell me stories about her.
How she once forced them to return a lost shopping cart because “someone has to do it.”
How he spent almost an hour rescuing a scared kitten.
Under a car.
How he talked about me constantly.
That last part still tears me apart every time.
Angie never returned home.
But somehow, she found a way to leave behind something warm, alive, and full of love.
And some nights, when Benji rests his head on my lap while those children laugh in my kitchen like Angie used to, I almost feel like my daughter is still there by my side.
