Chapter 3

Finch

Jake hadn’t meant to come back.

He told himself it was a supply run—donate some canned goods to the church pantry, maybe check on a guy from group. But his body betrayed him. It always did when he got too quiet. So instead of downtown, he found himself standing at the edge of the block he’d avoided for almost four years.

Same cracked sidewalks. Same rust-colored brick and crooked porch rails. It smelled like last night’s rain and rotting leaves and fried onions from the corner store. The same ghost-town warmth that made the cold worse.

Finch had lived longer than expected.

Mrs. Eldridge had kept him alive. A neighbor. Not a friend. She never offered forgiveness, just water bowls and unspoken understanding. Jake had overdosed two rooms away from where Finch used to sleep. The paramedics saved Jake, but left the dog pacing in circles around a pile of vomit and needle caps. Mrs. Eldridge took him in after that. No speech. No fanfare.

Now, Finch lay curled in a fleece blanket on her enclosed porch, his gray snout twitching in sleep, ribs pressing against skin like old bones trying to escape.

Jake crouched in the doorway.

“Hey, boy.”

Finch opened his eyes slowly. The gaze wasn’t surprised. It was tired. Familiar. He blinked once, let out a rattling sigh, and put his chin back down like, Oh. It’s you.

---

The porch smelled like cedar planks, sour dog breath, and dust. A cracked radio whispered gospel from another room. Jake sat with his knees pulled up, feeling the wood grain bite into his back.

He had spent so many nights talking to this dog, when words failed around people, when dope blurred the edges of memory. Finch never barked. Just stared at him like he understood too much.

Jake rubbed his temples. His fingertips felt greasy with sweat and guilt.

“I thought you’d be gone by now,” he said quietly. “Guess we’re both too stubborn.”

Finch let out a half-sigh, half-snore. The kind of sound that made you ache behind the ribs.

Jake remembered the last night. The screaming. Dani in the hallway, crying, holding her son with one arm and blocking the door with the other. Jake had tried to push past her. Not with violence, just desperation. That’s the problem—desperation doesn’t always care about the difference.

Micah, barely seven, had clutched Finch’s leash and screamed, “Don’t hurt Mommy!”

Jake hadn’t. Not really. But the way he grabbed the leash—hard, clumsy—made the boy scream louder. Jake saw his own reflection in a hallway mirror in that moment, and it scared him more than anything. The wildness in his face. The failure.

He ran. It didn’t feel brave. It felt like a retreat. Like every other time, he’d chosen the exit over the consequence.

---

The air smelled of impending rain—ozone and something metallic. A low rumble rolled across the sky. Jake reached down and brushed his knuckles against Finch’s paw. The pads were rougher now. Cracked. Familiar.

He’d read once in a recovery forum about how animals mourn. How they carry memory in ways we don’t understand. He believed it. Finch had always known things Jake never said.

“I’m sorry,” Jake whispered.

It wasn’t just for the dog.

---

Mrs. Eldridge came out with a bowl of water and a towel. She looked like she hadn’t aged, just weathered down into something harder. Not brittle—stone.

“He’s not eating,” she said. “Won’t last the night.”

Jake nodded.

“Can I stay?”

“You should’ve never had to ask.”

---

He stayed.

All night. The porch grew colder. The rain finally came, misty at first, then steady, like it meant something. Jake didn’t talk much. Just sat with Finch under the dim porch light, watching shadows shift and windows glow in the distance.

He thought about all the ways he’d tried to escape himself. Pills, powders, rage, silence. But Finch had always brought him back—anchored him when he floated too close to the edge.

Finch died an hour before dawn. No drama. No sound. Just one last slow breath, and stillness.

Jake buried him in the alley garden, near the back fence where Finch used to bark at raccoons. He dug with his hands. Let the mud ruin his jeans. Let the wet earth crawl under his nails and the blisters stab open without complaint.

He didn’t want gloves. He wanted it to hurt.

He wrapped Finch in the towel and laid him down gently, like the way you close a book you’re not ready to finish. On impulse, he cut a strip from the leash and buried it with him.

No stone. No cross. Just the dirt and the sky and the silence.

---

Before leaving, Jake walked to Dani’s building. Same rusted mailbox. Same flickering porch bulb. He paused at the door, soaked and shivering. Thought about knocking.

Didn’t.

Instead, he slid a letter under the door. It wasn’t long. Just honest.

I buried him. He waited longer than I deserved.

He stood there a moment, listening.

Nothing.

Jake turned and walked into the soft gray morning, the rain trailing behind him like a prayer left unfinished.

---

Author’s Note:

This piece was written for today’s FOWC, RDP, and Word of the Day prompts.

Stories from the Edge of Change is a quiet fiction series about reckoning, recovery, and the long, uneven road back to ourselves. This one is for the ghosts we leave behind—and the ones who wait anyway.