Benny retired the following year. His photo hung by the volunteer desk, framed in simple oak, a red and blue scarf draped across the corner.
Sometimes, the automatic doors at the entrance still swish open when no one’s there, and the janitor jokes, “Must be Benny doing rounds again.” No one laughs too loud, just in case.
Maya still visits once a year. She brings daisies—the cheap kind from the gas station, the kind that last longer than they should—and sits on the garden bench near the fountain.
She talks quietly, updates him on school, on friends, on how she finally learned to sleep without the hospital machines singing her to rest.
And every time, when the wind moves through the leaves just right, she swears she hears it: the faint, rhythmic thump of a tail that never really stopped wagging.
Elena says maybe it’s the breeze. Maya smiles and shakes her head. “No,” she says. “It’s Benny. He’s still doing his job.”
Because love, once it finds its way home, never truly leaves the room.
