The asphalt was still wet from the night rain, the air burned my lungs, but stopping was impossible. Baxter raced ahead, turning back every few steps, as if checking that I was still there, that I hadn’t given up. There was a strange determination in the way he moved — as if he knew exactly where he was taking me.

We left our neighborhood behind and reached the road that ran along the edge of the woods. That place. That cursed curve. The very spot I had been trying to erase from my mind for two weeks, unsuccessfully. It lived inside me like an open wound.

When I saw the twisted guardrail and the dark marks on the road, my legs gave way. Baxter stopped. He gently dropped the yellow sweater onto the ground and began scratching at the soil near the roadside. He whimpered softly — the sound was almost human and tore straight through my chest.

“No… please… not here…” I whispered.

I knelt beside him. My hands were shaking, but I started digging too, not knowing why, only feeling that I had to. The ground was loose, as if it had been disturbed not long ago. My fingers ached, my nails broke — and then I touched something solid.

It was a small paint box. I recognized it instantly. Lily had glued a little gold star on the lid. Inside were her drawings. Crumpled, stained with dirt, but intact. A house. A bright sun. The three of us, with Baxter beside us — all smiling. On the last drawing, written in her uneven, childish handwriting, were the words:
“Mom, if you’re sad, look here.”

Something inside me shattered. I screamed — a scream I had been holding in since the day of the accident. I pressed the box to my chest and rocked back and forth on the side of the road like a lost child. Baxter sat next to me and rested his head on my knees.

That was when I understood. He had been there that day. After the crash, he had torn himself free and run off. We thought he had fled in fear. But he hadn’t. He came back. He found what remained of her. He hid it. He guarded it. For two long weeks.

I don’t know how long we stayed there. When I finally returned home, the sun was already setting. The house was still quiet, but the silence had changed. It no longer felt empty. It no longer felt dead.

That evening, I spread Lily’s drawings across the table, right where her colored pencils used to be. For the first time in a long while, I cried not only from pain, but from love — from the love that doesn’t disappear, even when everything else falls apart.

My husband stood behind me in silence. When I showed him the drawings, he turned away and broke down. It was the first time he had cried since the accident. We sat beside each other, holding hands, and the endless distance between us felt just a little smaller.

Lily is not coming back. Never. Nothing will change that. But that day, I realized she left us more than grief. She left us a sign. A reminder. And a loyal dog who was stronger than human despair.

Sometimes, in our darkest moments, we are saved by those we least expect. And love — even fragile, even cut short too soon — always finds a way back.