In a small town where the mountains cast long shadows and the echoes of more prosperous days linger in the air, Brooke worked double shifts at Millie’s Diner. It was a place of chipped ceramic mugs and a jukebox that stubbornly favored Patsy Cline, where the floorboards groaned under the weight of history and the tips were barely enough to keep the lights on. Brooke was raising her ten-year-old son, Eli, on her own—a task she had managed since Eli was just three and his father decided that the responsibilities of parenthood were too heavy to carry. Eli, however, was not like other children. Brooke often remarked that he possessed an “old soul,” a quiet, observant spirit that moved through the world with a gentleness that was increasingly rare. He was the kind of boy who thanked bus drivers, flipped beetles upright on the sidewalk, and treated every living thing as if it held a spark of the divine.
The mystery began in late spring, just as the frost was finally retreating from the valley. Brooke noticed that their pantry was being raided with surgical precision. Peanut butter was vanishing, and loaves of sandwich bread were disappearing at an impossible rate. Initially, Brooke attributed this to a pre-teen growth spurt, but the pattern grew curiouser. Every day, Eli’s lunchbox came home not just empty, but polished clean. Concerned that her son wasn’t eating enough, or perhaps that someone was taking his food, Brooke decided to take the long way home from the diner one Tuesday afternoon.
She followed him at a distance, watching as he deviated from his usual route. Instead of heading toward their modest apartment, Eli cut behind an abandoned hardware store, a skeletal building with peeling red paint and a leaning fence. Crouching behind a rusted dumpster, Eli unzipped his backpack and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. He didn’t eat it. Instead, he carefully tore it in half and placed a portion on the concrete. From beneath the shadows of the dumpster, a creature emerged that broke Brooke’s heart. It was a scrappy, matted stray dog, its ribs tracing sharp lines beneath its skin, its eyes wide with a mixture of fear and desperate hope. Eli sat cross-legged in the dirt, talking softly to the animal as they shared a meal in the quiet of the alley. “Don’t forget to hydrate,” Eli whispered, sliding a makeshift water bowl made of wax paper toward the dog.
SEE CONTINUES ON THE NEXT PAGE
