With every strike of the shovel, I clench my teeth. My hands are blistered, and my shoulders ache, but at least this kind of hurt I understand. The hole I am digging gets deeper; the pile of earth grows. I don’t look behind me. I can’t, because I know what I’ll see.
Delilah sits on the back porch cradling her phone, trying not to cry as she explains to her mother what happened. I catch snippets of the one-sided conversation:
“. . . car came out of nowhere . . . driver offered to bring us to the vet . . . too late . . .”
My hair falls into my eyes as I stab the shovel even harder into the ground.
Delilah was the one who made me realize that we couldn’t wait for Mrs. McPhee to come home from work before we buried him. As far as she was concerned, Frump was and always had been Humphrey. It would be too hard to explain why her dog’s shroud was spotted with ink, why I was so broken up with grief over a dog that didn’t belong to me. After getting Seraphima a cup of tea and settling her in a chair with a blanket around her shoulders and a box of tissues in her lap, Delilah and I carried Frump into the yard to find him a final resting place.
I picked a spot beneath a willow tree, because we had willows back at home too and I think he would have liked that. Then, without saying another word to Delilah, I began to dig.
I feel a drop of water on my hand, and then another. It would be fitting for the sky to weep. But when I look up, I see sunshine, and I realize that I am the one who’s crying.
Delilah approaches, her hands tucked in her back pockets. “That’s perfect. Let me get Seraphima and—”
“Not yet,” I interrupt. “I think maybe just a little deeper.”
The hole, I know, is plenty big. It’s just that I am not ready for what has to come next. I fear I may never be.
“Oliver,” Delilah says. “Wehaveto. My mom’ll be home soon.”
I nod and set the shovel down. I kneel in front of Frump while Delilah goes to fetch Seraphima.
I lean over and whisper. “Remember when we convinced Socks that if he kept eating carrots, he’d turn orange? And when you gave me fleas and Queen Maureen quarantined us both in the tower?” I am quiet for a moment, lost in the past. “All those times we walked through the forest and the unicorn meadow, you’d run ahead, and then you’d always circle back,just to make sure I was still there.” I rest my hand on Frump’s head. “Don’t forget to circle back, my friend.”
Delilah returns, her arm around Seraphima. I can tell that without Delilah’s support, she would have collapsed by now. She stands stiffly in front of the open grave, her eyes swollen and her cheeks red, as I lift Frump into my arms and gently lower him.
Seraphima starts to cry again and presses a tissue to her nose. “Sometimes at a funeral,” Delilah says, “people say a few words.”
Seraphima nods. “A few words,” she repeats solemnly.
“Frump,” Delilah continues, “I didn’t know you very well. But I’ve never seen someone love as hard, or as loyally, as you did.”
She looks up at me, and I realize it is my turn to speak. I clear my throat. “I hope that wherever you are, you’re finally who you want to be.”
Seraphima falls to her knees, sobbing, and Delilah glances at me, communicating silently. I lift Seraphima into my arms and carry her back inside, settling her on the living room couch. By the time I come back out, Delilah has already filled the pit halfway with dirt.
For a moment, I am frozen with agony watching her. Then I grab the shovel from her hands and begin to viciously toss heaps of earth into the grave. My whole body trembles with the effort, and sweat pours down my back. It takes Delilah three tries to wrench the shovel from my hands.
“Stop!” she pleads. “That’s enough!”
My face twists with sorrow. “This is my punishment,” I say. “He wouldn’t have been here if it weren’t for me.”
“Oh, Oliver,” she murmurs, and I fall into her arms, giving in to the grief.
When you love someone, silence isn’t awkward. Delilah sits next to me, her arms wrapped tightly around me, and neither of us speaks. I was born in a sea of words, I lived and breathed language, but right now, this quiet is the most comfortable place in the world.
When Delilah’s mother comes home, she spends an hour outside at Frump’s grave with Dr. Ducharme’s arm around her. Seraphima retires just after supper, saying she has a headache, although I know it is just the day’s events that have overwhelmed her. For the first time since I came to the house this morning, I find myself alone with Delilah in her room, with a Herculean task ahead of me.
“Are you ready?” Delilah asks as she pulls the fairy tale from her shelf.
I take a deep breath and open the book to the final page.
The entire cast of characters stands in position on Everafter Beach, in an odd mash-up of fairy tale and science fiction. The mermaids swim in the shallows; Captain Crabbe steers aspacecraft; the trolls are shooting lasers from behind a barricade. Edgar stands with his sword raised high in victory. Beside him, Jules is pulling at the chafing neck of her princess gown. As soon as she sees our faces, she relaxes. “Itoldyou guys it would be Delilah and Oliver,” she says. “Nowcan I get out of this corset?”
But I’m not focusing on her words. My eyes fall to the spot where Frump would have stood and where, instead, Humphrey now holds a laser gun in his jaw.
“Whoa, boy,” Edgar says, grabbing the gun as the dog swings it wildly back and forth. “That’s not a toy.” He glances up at me. “And before you ask, no, we haven’t found another portal yet. But maybe if you stopped interrupting us by opening the book, we could actually get some work—”
