Marco gave me a hug, and I hugged him back. We wrapped Sundance in a soft blue blanket, and he put him next to me in the truck. I would bury him tomorrow in a special place that he loved under the willow tree overlooking the bay with his stuffed friend, Lizard, and his pink blankie.

The next morning I told my aunts and mother, and they cried, too.

Marco showed up as he’d told me he would, and he dug the grave. I placed Sundance in the grave with the pink blankie and Lizard, and Marco put the dirt on top of him.

My mother and aunts sang “Amazing Grace” as I cried and Marco held my hand.

We each told a Sundance story.

Butch and Cassidy were unusually quiet next to me. The goats escaped and stood right beside us. When Mr. Bob started kicking his feet up, Trixie head butted him. The lambs were lined up behind the mom, and Shakespeare and Jane Austen peered over the white fencing. Ghost curled around my legs, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter nearby. Virginia Alpaca and Alpaca Joe also watched us. Joe didn’t even spit.

We each took turns putting dirt on Sundance’s grave.

Sundance had literally saved my life when he started pulling on my pant leg when I wanted to jump off that cliff. He had given my life light and love from the start.

I went to bed without Sundance that night and cried because he wasn’t on the pillow next to me with Lizard. He was not there in the morning for our check on the other animals, so I cried. I cried when I came home at lunch for a break and Sundance wasn’t there jumping up and down with excitement at my return. I cried when Sundance wasn’t there to walk over the bridge in my grandma’s garden or to sit next to the lily pond with me. I went to the secret garden and stared up at the fairy, no Sundance.

I decided to drown myself in work and went in early the next day. I helped customers and I welcomed the Book Babe ladies, who told me, “We want to read a sexy book this time. What do you recommend?”

I pulled out a famous sexy book, and at first they said, “We can’t read that.” And then they changed their minds after I showed them a scene from the middle of the book. “Well,” one huffed. “Maybe we could give it a shot.”

* * *

I couldn’t sleep the next night so I read a mystery until two in the morning. Then I stopped and told myself to face things. I thought about Sundance and became all upset again, I thought about Marco, too, and decided that I was a pathetic wretch of a self-pitying woman.