Emotional Support Dish Towel
Sadie
It was late. The hospital’s hallways were sapped of energy, and every fluorescent bulb had begun to hum in exhaustion, their light buzzing faintly beneath the soft snores and coughs of the sleeping patients.
Visiting hours had ended an hour ago, but no nurse in this town would chase me out while Buddy was still restless and putting up a fuss, drifting in and out of consciousness with his medication. I was a buffer to curb his orneriness.
He looked so small in that wide bed, the loose hospital gown bunching around his ribs, the old tattoos on his forearms faded to blue-grey smudges.
I waited until the night nurse changed his IV and he finally dozed, the gruff lines around his mouth softening, before I leaned over, kissed his forehead and made my way out of the room.
The world outside the hospital doors was flat and black, the lights in the parking lot painting everything sickly orange.
The sky was already bruising purple, and the wind had that unsettled, high-pitched edge that meant a storm was rolling in off the ocean.
I sat in Herbie for a minute, watching the trees in the median sway and shiver, and wondered if it would be a big one or just a quick burst to rattle the windows and clear the air.
The bay always seemed to save its most dramatic weather for the moments when I needed clarity least.
On the drive home, past the industrial stretch of town and the old marina, I felt the first drops tap the windshield.
Each one made a sound like a tiny pebble, and the wipers stuttered against the glass as if in protest. The Lockhart Ranch turnoff glinted in my headlights, and I was so exhausted, I was tempted to take it.
But I needed to have a plan for Buddy’s future, and the only way to get that was to have a better handle on what was going on with the farm.
The records I’d collected had given me somewhat of a financial overview, but I needed to figure out what the projections were for viable crops and harvest. So I kept going, the tires hissing over wet pavement, until I pulled up in front of the farm.
The house looked exactly as it had every night of my childhood, weathervane perched on top of the roof, porch swing swaying in the breeze, the front door’s chipped paint catching the beam of the headlights.
I got out and shivered as I rushed to the door, which I noticed opened smoothly without resistance.
When I stepped inside, I froze in shock at what I saw.
Everything was wrong. Not in the catastrophic way I’d found it after Buddy’s fall—no shattered picture frames, no crusted-over dishes and weeks-old takeout containers, no coffee stains bleeding into the floorboards.
It was the opposite. Instead, it was as if someone had pressed rewind and restored the old place to a snapshot of how it used to be: neat, lived-in, the evidence of a gentle hand in every detail.
The living room was organized and deep cleaned.
The hardwood floors appeared shiny and refinished.
The stack of old magazines by Buddy’s chair was re-squared and anchored with a fresh empty mug.
The credenza’s knobs, which had always been loose and prone to falling off when you tried to open the drawers, were now tight and perfectly lined up.
The air even smelled different, not the sour old-man blend of sweat and liniment, but clean, almost floral, the faint undercurrent of lemon oil and soap.
I wandered into the kitchen, my shoes barely making a sound on the newly mopped linoleum and stopped dead.
The faucet—chronically leaky and always a subject of Buddy’s bitter complaints—was silent.
A new O-ring sat on the counter, a proper one, and every chrome surface shone.
There were no dishes in the sink. No trash in sight.
The fridge was humming at a low, healthy pitch.
And there, on the counter, was a new coffee maker, toaster, and paper towel holder.
My chest hurt. There was no other word for it.
The ache was raw and physical, like someone had reached in and wrung my heart out like a wet rag.
I ran my fingers along the glistening clean countertops before lowering down in Buddy’s chair, staring at the tidy little kingdom that had been built up around him in my absence.
This was Dawson. It had to be. He loved Buddy, and this was how Dawson showed his love, with acts of service. He’d shown up and filled the empty spaces with his own kind of care. It was infuriating. It was unforgivable. It was all I’d wanted.
I let my head fall back against the ugly plaid cushion and thought about what it would mean to stay here.
To stay, to call this place home again, to let myself fall back into the world of a man who would pour himself into acts of devotion and pretend it hadn’t cost him a thing.
I could almost see it, the version of my life where I gave up the fight and let myself slip quietly back into Dawson’s dominion.
But then I thought about Buddy. The look in his eyes every time he saw me.
The wince of pain whenever people compared me to my mom, his Rosie, or my grandma, his Rosebud.
Coming back here would be a constant reminder of the women he’d lost. I was his constant reminder. But on the flipside, Buddy couldn’t be alone anymore, that much was true. I needed to figure out what I was going to do. If me coming home wasn’t an option, how would I care for him?
The rain picked up, drumming sharper on the roof. The windows rattled, and the lights flickered three times before settling into a dim, glow. A gust of wind knocked the screen door open causing it to bang against the frame.
It startled me, but I ignored it and walked to the desk in the corner, the one that always smelled faintly of pencil shavings and whiskey.
Buddy had kept all of his important papers in the top left drawer, mixed in with grocery receipts and old birthday cards.
Maybe there was something in there that would explain what was happening with the farm, why he’d let all of his employees go.
I tugged open the drawer, then another. I found grocery, medicine, and feed receipts.
I found birthday cards and bills. Nothing of note.
Then in the bottom drawer, beneath stacks of paper, was a bundle of envelopes all addressed to “Sadie Rose Shepard,” each one in Dawson’s handwriting.
There were dozens of them, the envelopes a hodgepodge of colors and shapes, blue or black ink, all with stamps in the corner.
All addressed in Dawson’s quick, forceful hand—Sadie Rose Shepard—penned across each one.
I hesitated, thumbed the edge of the top one.
The oldest was dated the week after I left, the next a week later, and then more and more, sometimes three in a seven day period.
Some fat and crammed to bursting, others thin and light as a single page.
I sat there, the storm outside thrashing the branches against the window, and slit open the first. The words inside were exactly as I remembered Dawson’s voice: abrupt, unpracticed, but so naked that it hurt.
He apologized for everything—grad night, the drinking, his own stupidity.
He told me that he’d never stop loving me, and that he could never forgive himself for what had happened, what he’d done.
And then he pivoted, like he always did, to talking about the animals on the ranch, about his family, about the weather and the way the bay always looked different depending on the season.
Every letter was like that: a raw, bleeding wound of regret and longing, covered over with a bandage of daily life.
I read through them hungrily, one after the other, barely stopping to breathe.
Each one was worse than the last, as if he’d been pouring everything out onto paper and then sealing it up before it could even begin to heal.
The letters themselves were time capsules: twelve, eleven, ten, nine years ago.
All the years I’d spent running from the past, and here it was, lined up in chronological order, stuffed in Buddy’s desk drawer.
None of them had ever been mailed. Buddy always knew where I was. He could have easily sent them to me.
My imagination ran wild, Buddy accepting Dawson’s letters, promising he’d send them my way and then quietly pocketing them, unopened, unread.
I could see him weighing them in his palm, deciding not to throw them out, but not to read them either.
Maybe he was afraid I’d come back if I read them.
And maybe that would have been just too painful for him.
Maybe it was better with me across the country.
I wasn’t a daily reminder of the two women he’d loved the most in this world that he’d lost.
The more I read, the more I felt myself coming apart at the seams. The rain was loud enough now that I could barely hear my own sniffles.
My chest felt hollow and heavy at the same time, like the entire cavity had been scooped out and left to fill with dirty rainwater.
I kept going, page after page, until I finally reached the last, written eight years ago.
This one was short and simple, just a few succinct sentences.
I’m so sorry, Sadie. I love you. I’d do anything to have you back.
By then my hands were shaking, and I had to put the letter down.
The room seemed to tilt, the furniture sliding in and out of focus.
I stood up, bracing myself on the edge of the desk, and tried to breathe.
The storm outside was biblical now, thunder rattling the windowpanes, lightning so close it turned the room white for a heartbeat, then plunged it back into coughing darkness.
I heard the unmistakable sound of hail, stones the size of marbles pinging against the metal roof and rolling down the gutters.