Miracles Retold Read Free

practical
reasons for living with her son’s family, but Grace knew without a
doubt that being around her grandkids had helped her heal. Their
love and attention had buoyed her spirits, and, well, you can’t
improve your health by being negative, can you?
     
    There was someone else who
had helped raise her spirits, and she hadn’t told anyone about
him.
     
    For the past four weeks,
since before Thanksgiving, a dog had accompanied Grace on her
morning walk. She first started seeing him at the end of the
street, or after she turned the corner. He would walk with her
around the block and back home, and then Grace would say goodbye
and go inside. After a while, the dog started meeting her closer
and closer to home. When Grace started carrying treats on her walk,
the dog began waiting for her at the front door.
     
    Today, it was a few slices
of bacon that Grace took outside with her.
     
    “Benji!” Grace greeted him
with the name she had given him. Benji gently took the bacon from
her hand, then gulped down each slice.
     
    “Did you even taste it?!”
Grace said and laughed. The corners of her hazel eyes
crinkled.
     
    The mixed-breed dog
definitely had some terrier in him. The dog reminded her a little
of the one in the Benji movies that were popular before Lon was
born. They featured a mutt down on his luck who turned into a hero.
Back then, she had been the “cool aunt” who had taken her older
sister’s children to the movies, the beach, and the ice cream shop.
But her sister had passed on, and those children who once loved her
were strangers to her now. Her nieces and nephew probably had their
own children now — maybe even children in college. Grace’s chest felt heavy just
thinking about how her sister wasn’t around to see how they had
grown, and how Grace herself had no ties to the children
anymore.
     
    “Can’t go around being sad,
can we?” Grace asked Benji. She smoothed her bob, which over the
years had faded to a grayish beige. “We’ve got some living to do …
as long as we are around to live it. Let’s walk!”
     
    Benji looked at Grace as if
he understood every word.
     
    Grace had thought about
making “Dog Found” signs to put up in the neighborhood and at local
stores, but it was something she remembered to do only when she was
walking with Benji and not after she got home. He didn’t have a
collar but was probably a neighbor’s dog, anyway, because he seemed
to stay in the neighborhood.
     
    “It’s too bad you’re
someone else’s doggy,” Grace said as they ambled up the street.
“I’d love to have you.” Grace sighed. “Then again, Lon and Annie
would probably say no. They already have Angel. I hate that cat!
Her name should be Devil.” Angel had hissed at Grace every time she
had come for a visit to the house, and for about a week after she
moved in. “She just … looks at me funny. And she’s always dashing
outside when she knows she doesn’t have any front claws to protect
herself, and someone has to go hunt her down.” She took in a deep
breath. “Terrible thing to do to a creature — remove its claws. That’s how she
was when they got her, though.” Grace laughed. “Yep, here I am,
complaining about a cat I live with, to a dog that I
don’t.”
     
    Grace had lived in Florida
all of her life, and she loved the cooler months of December,
January, and February. The relief from the heat was refreshing. She
had spent 60-odd Christmases on Earth right in the same beautiful
place. “Nothing but blessed,” she told Benji, as though the dog
could read her thoughts. And to Grace, looking at those melty brown
eyes of his, it almost seemed like he could.
     
    One Christmas as a girl,
her parents had given her a beagle puppy. Of course, she just had
to name her Snoopy, even though the dog was a female. Since then,
Grace had had a dog (or two) in her life until a couple years ago.
Her dachshund Rufus had passed away, and she just hadn’t gotten
around to finding