Still, his presence bothered
me in a way I couldn’t explain.
Not because I disliked him.
Quite the opposite.
I had started looking for him every Sunday.
What unsettled me was how deliberate his behavior seemed.
The cemetery was enormous.
Hundreds of graves stretched across several sections.
Families came and went.
People brought flowers, balloons, photographs, and small decorations.
Yet this dog always chose Caleb.
One day, I asked the groundskeeper about him.
His name was Edwin, an older man who had worked at the cemetery for so long that he seemed to recognize nearly every regular visitor.
I nodded toward the dog.
“Does he belong to someone?”
Edwin glanced over.
He shrugged.
The dog had been showing up for a while, he said, but nobody seemed to know where he came from.
“Nobody feeds him?”
“Not that I know of.”
“He doesn’t stay here?”
Edwin shook his head.
