Marcus shook his head. "I was just paying a debt."
Volunteering became a monthly rhythm. On the third Saturday they sorted donations. On the fifth they helped with an adoption event in the parking lot, folding chairs under a white tent, Shadow — on special permission from Linda — lying on a mat near Marcus's feet as a living argument for senior dogs. A woman in her sixties adopted a twelve-year-old spaniel that day and cried into the dog's neck. Jasmine, watching, reached for Marcus's hand. He gave it.
Shadow turned fourteen in late summer. They threw him a ridiculous party: a pupcake, a new orthopaedic bed, Denise and two neighbors and Jasmine's sister Keisha visiting from Atlanta. Keisha pulled Jasmine into the kitchen and said, "I still can't believe you did that," and Jasmine said, "I know," and Keisha said, "But I can believe you're undoing it the hard way," and hugged her until the timer for the pupcake went off. Shadow tolerated the singing. He ate the pupcake. He slept for four hours afterward in a patch of sun, twitching after rabbits that existed only in memory.
That evening Marcus sat on the porch steps with a beer and watched the sky go from gold to purple. Jasmine came out and sat beside him. For a while neither spoke.
"Do you ever think about that day?" she asked. "The day you came home."
"Every day," he said. "Not always the anger part. Sometimes just the part where I walked into kennel twelve and he made that sound."
She leaned her head on his shoulder. "I think about the door slamming. The way the apartment felt after. Like I'd hollowed it out with my own hands."