“I needed to know,” he said. “He left a note. It just had your address on it. I had to see if it was real.”

I felt the tears finally come, not like a flood, but like something that had been stuck in a pipe and finally broke loose.

I didn’t care about the dog anymore. I cared about the man behind the hedge.

“I was waiting for my husband to come back from a place he couldn’t return from,” I said. “I guess I was the one who was lost.”

The man didn’t say anything. He just nodded, like he understood everything that didn’t need to be said.

“He’s gone now,” he said. “The dog followed him out. He didn’t make it two days after.”

I reached out and touched the rail where the dog used to lean. It was smooth and worn.

“He did his job,” I said.

The man turned to go back to his truck. He didn’t look back. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess he did.”

I stayed on the porch until the streetlights hummed to life. I felt empty, but it was a quiet kind of empty. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel like I was waiting for anything.

I walked into the house and closed the door. I didn’t need the bacon anymore.