The People Puppets have not left yet. It seemed unnecessary to make them clear out now that Mr. Noah’s medical condition is finally public and Nick and Grace have started the painful process of finding an assisted living facility for him. And besides, it’s nice to have the house full of people and dogs, full of talking and laughing and barking, full of life, after so much loss. So for now they’re staying in the basement, and Gary and I are staying upstairs.

Instead of giving up my sling for a therapy vest for Charlotte and putting both dogs on leashes, Gary has started wearing Lucy instead. He says it’s reduced his anxiety more than any drug he’s ever taken—even pot, which he has markedly cut back on out of respect and caution for Teddy. The sling seems to be good for Lucy, helping her process the loss of Glenn and the move to a new home. Nick now wears Moochie, a rat-terrier rescue that I helped him pick out a few days after Spotlight. For what he’ll be going through, I knew he’d need a dog to wear, too.

At night, in bed, Gary and I watch the dogs play before they fall asleep on their chew toys, and if we’re not too tired we ask each other couple-versions of Sari Epstein’s Noble Journey prompts. (“Describe your earliest memory of our relationship.” “Tell me three things you miss about who you used to be, and three things you don’t miss.” “What happened today that you’re grateful for?”) We are trying to start somewhere. When Teddy comes in to say good night we sometimes manage, while pretending to ignore him, to trick him into telling us something, anything, about his day. We are always shocked and secretly ecstatic when the trick works and he shares a moment, a thought, a snippet of conversation from his life. Maybe he wants it to work. Maybe, like us, he’s just a tiny bit happier now, and connecting is starting to feel good again.

I keep a notebook in my sling now. I pretend it’s to jot down article ideas for Well/er, but really it’s for me. A way to bring myself back from the dead. In the mornings after drop-off, I go to Shepherd for coffee and sit at a table by the window. When I think about Glenn and my parents, gone and missed; about Gary, still struggling but now giving Nick and Teddy bass lessons and practicing for a local club’s open mic night; and about Teddy and Nick and Phoebe making dinner from the meal-box delivery service that Gary agreed to order, I open my notebook to a clean page. Sometimes I write or draw something in it and sometimes I don’t. But I think There’s a Dog in Your Sling is a working title that Glenn would like if she were still here. Which of course she kind of still is.

It is almost winter. The days are short and cold and the light is sharp. In the afternoons, and on the weekends, before dark, in a pack of people and dog slings, and with all the birds on our heads, too, we walk the reservoir. We don’t know the future. We have no answers about where we will be in a month, or in a year, or in a decade; where the money will come from and how it will all play out; when and if, someday, one of us, Gary or I, will decide to take off the sling of our marriage and leave early. But for now there is safety in numbers. We are holding each other together with love. And for now that is not just enough. It is everything.