In the back yard

Why hadn’t Agnes noticed anything? She’d been walking all over town with the Balmoral man on Saturday, and Racer had been playful the whole time. True, he’d been sleepy all day Sunday and hadn’t eaten much of his kibble, but she’d had no idea something like this would happen. With no warning whatsoever.

With Patrick gone, Mama volunteering at the hospital, and Granny knitting in her bedroom, she couldn’t believe the dead silence at home. She wandered from the kitchen to the parlor to the dining room to the back office and back to the parlor. In an attempt to break the silence, she sat at the piano. But all she could play was the Chopin funeral march, which brought Granny from her comfortable chair, asking her to play something less morose.

She dared not go outside on this terrible day. She thought of Racer covered with blankets in carriage house out back, lying on the workbench in front of their old Ford, the car no one liked. Patrick had locked the garage doors and taken the key, so she couldn’t even see Racer to cry over him.

Back to the piano she went. This time, she played Beethoven’s final E major piano sonata, Opus 109, the Brentano sonata. The last movement made her cry – the introspective main theme, six variations, and a melancholy return to the theme. But after she finished, dead silence.