Hope

When Amon was sixteen his mother died along with his younger sister. Sorrow followed him long throughout adulthood, and almost ten years after the incident that sadness eventually provided an ocean of loneliness around Amon. 

Saoirse Kieran had been forty-three, Grace had been ten. Amon counted down the days to the date on which he will be forty-three. He walked with his soles seemingly scratching the ground, he talked to his coworkers out of necessity, and he wrote formal letters to his father. 

He worked at a legal office in Cork as a legal consultant, he walked to work regardless of the weather. Today, he sat in his office and drew a growing circle on a piece of paper, counting the seconds to seven. With the authority he had been given and never cared for he had the freedom to determine his hours, but he just kept working the same hours as the last employee in his position. He was offered the promotion to that position with managerial responsibilities and thought, “why not?” and accepted it, five years ago. 

Amon didn’t eat well, but every evening after dinner, even when he didn’t eat it, he wrote in his two notebooks. One was his dairy, of sorts, or his journal. There his thoughts burned through the pages, they leaked through his fingertips and spilled over the papers with no regard for order. No one could read it coherently even if they tried to. The other notebook was used for his letters. He writes to his father and to his grandparents, the letters he wrote for work were done at his office with a completely different set of paper and pencils.

Ten minutes to seven Amon left the office. He preferred to leave after everyone else, but today the office’s secretary had stayed later than he. The secretary always smiled at Amon in a way that could make him want to cry, today Amon just said goodbye. 

It was raining when he got out but he didn’t bother to bring an umbrella with him anywhere. His neighbour was always eager to comment on his odd behaviours or the like, but she was nice enough that Amon didn’t mind it. In some way Amon looked forward to speaking to her everyday, but he never articulated it to himself or to her. 

She stood inside the entrance to the apartment building when Amon approached, soaking wet and water dripping from his hair into his eyes. She opened the door for him.

“My God, Amon! What the hell is wrong with you? Get a raincoat, at least!”

He smiled at her. “Good evening, Mrs Connor.”

She didn’t ever humour his formalities. “How are you doing, either way?”

“I’m doing fine, Mrs. How are you today? How is Liam?”

“I’m alright, dear. Liam’s fine, too. He called me in a rush just now, he found two strays on his way home from work.”

Leaks in the brick of the foundation have caused the lobby to smell like an old cave whenever it rained. On some rainy nights Amon sat alone in the staircase and listened to the dripping water and the echoes of it. 

“Strays, yeah? Would you need help? Space or whatever?”

“Most likely, yeah. God sure knows we don’t have neither the time nor space for two mutts at ours.”

“Well, I’ll be happy to help you in any way, Mrs Connor.”

She touched his cheek and clicked her tongue. “You’re so sweet, Amon. I’ll bring you some extra food tomorrow.”

“No need, please. I can’t live with myself if you go out of your way for me.”

Liam soon came scrambling inside with the two, dripping wet, dogs and took them up to his and Cara’s flat. Amon dried them off, and let them inside his flat to explore while Cara and Liam went and bought food for the dogs, and most likely for Amon as well. 

Ever since they moved in, Cara and Liam had worried for Amon’s health in every way. While Amon appreciated it, it painfully reminded him of the parents that he would never have, and never had. 

The dogs, whom Liam determined were Cane Corsos or a mix with it, were meant to stay with Amon during the time it took for a shelter or a foster to take them. As of now, it had been three months, and Amon had not been trying to get someone to take the dogs off his hands for several weeks.

The dog he named Enya was determined by a vet to be six years old, and that the other dog, whom Amon named Ripper, was most likely her son and close to two years old. Both of them slept in Amon’s bed at night and woke him up by whining or licking his feet, especially at the odd hours when he had the opportunity to catch up on that week’s sleep. Now, Enya barked at a passing bird, at six in the morning, four hours after Amon had gone to sleep. 

Half an hour later Amon sat on the bench in the dog park and watched Enya and Ripper run along the fence and sniff intently at the ground. His eyelids of lead made him lean his head backward against the fence, and he lost sight of the dogs.

“Hi, sorry,” startled him awake from a sleep he wasn’t aware of, “would it be alright if my dog joined yours?”

Her dog was the size of Enya and was eagerly smelling Enya and Ripper through the fence. Amon rubbed his cheek and nodded. “Yeah, yeah, sorry.”

As soon as the woman unclips her dog from the leash all three began running around the enclosure. She sat next to Amon on the bench, her shoes were dirty all around.

“My name’s Amon Kieran,” he shook her hand.

“Nice to meet you, Mr Kieran, I’m Sofie Gildt. How old are your Corsos?”

Amon looked at the mud and scratched his neck, the smell of wet leaves overpowered the smell of wet dog on his clothes. “Not sure, really. Six,” he pointed at Enya, “and two, but those are estimates. They’re strays.”

“Well, not strays anymore, I suppose,” Sofie said. “My Lady is five, it’s nice to see her able to play with dogs her own size.”

“Is she a Cane Corso as well?”

“Yeah, but she’s mixed. Cane Corso and German Shepherd, most likely. She was a stray, too”

They sat together for an hour, the early hour on a Saturday and the fresh rain on the ground left them unbothered by any other people. 

Sofie worked at the bakery on the corner of Amon’s building, Gildt’s, a bakery which allows dogs inside. Her family owned it, and founded it, and on every weekend after their meeting Amon came to have coffee at that small bakery. Sometimes Cara and Liam joined him, but for the most part he went alone with Enya and Ripper. Lady was there very often, but rarely on the weekends, and so the three dogs mostly met in the dog park while Sofie and Amon sat together on the bench.

A few weeks after Sofie and Amon first met, Amon sat in the corner of Gildt’s next to a large window with Enya and Ripper snoring loudly at his feet underneath the table. Sofie had put a thick carpet on the floor there, to make a comfortable bed for the dogs at Amon’s favourite spot. At this point Amon had become familiar with Mrs and Mr Gildt as they worked at the bakery as frequently as Sofie, but had only heard stories about Sofie’s brother, William. He was taller than the doorframe, he ducked underneath the bell when he entered the bakery. Sofie walked around the counter to hug him, Mrs and Mr Gildt were out, she told him, and they will be so happy to see him. William never had interest in the family bakery and instead worked at the dog shelter from which Sofie got Lady. 

“Hello, Amon! I’ve heard so much about you,” William shook his hand and let Enya and Ripper smell and lick his other hand. “May I sit here with you?”

The café was empty apart from them, Amon usually came when the least amount of people were present, right when the café opened and right when it closed.

“Hello, yes of course. William is it?”

He nodded and rested his elbows on the table, Sofie brought him a cup of coffee and sat down opposite him. “Sofie told me you’re fond of dogs, too.”

With the table now crowded Enya and Ripper lay down further away, but with their heads near the edge of the table, ready to snatch any scrap that might fall down.

“Well, I’m fond of Enya and Ripper, here. Lady, too, of course.”

“They’re really extraordinary dogs, it’s a shame they didn’t come to the shelter, then I would’ve snatched them before you could,” William laughed and stroked Enya’s face.

After a while the first customer, other than Amon, entered the bakery, and Sofie returned to her work. For some reason Amon felt the air grow tighter when she left. 

“Do you enjoy your work?”

“Work is work, I guess, but it pays well,” Amon answered. William’s cup had a half moon of glistering from his lips.

“Yeah, mine pays pretty shit, but I love it. Parents aren’t exactly happy about it, but what can you do?”

“How come you don’t work with the family business, then? Just not your calling?”

“No, not at all. Serving people all the time… I’d rather be with the dogs, really. I worked here for a while after I graduated, but I couldn’t bear being with my entire family every single hour of every day.”

“Really? I’d think having that sort of relationship’d be pretty great.”

“What do you mean?”

Amon coughed. “Well, I don’t know, involved parents, I guess.”

William nodded as he readjusted in his seat and Amon could smell the coconut of his lip balm. “Right, well. I guess yours aren't then?”

Amon got dizzy when he shook his head, “No. Mother’s dead. Father might as well be dead, too.”

He hadn’t noticed that he was sweating, but when William put his hand on his shoulder he felt the sweat burn against his skin.

“I’m sorry to hear that, Amon.”

“No, no, sorry. It’s nothing, it just depresses everyone.”

William smiled at him, and Amon felt something crawling up his spine, his hand shook when he drank his coffee.

After that, William joined Amon and Sofie at the bakery more often than not, and eventually joined their visits to the dog park. Despite working with dogs every day William didn’t get enough of Amon’s dogs. William, Sofie, and Amon saw each other very regularly, but as time passed Amon and William were often on their own. 

“Amon, what happened to your mother, really?”

William was sitting on the carpet in Amon’s living room at his feet, looking up at him with eyes so dark brown that they seemed pitch black in the poor lighting in the room. Amon strained himself to look away from him.

“She was, uh, murdered, along with my little sister.”

“Fuck, Amon, that’s horrible.” William placed a hand on Amon’s knee. “What… By whom? What happened? Did they find out who did it?”

Amon nodded, and William quickly went to sit next to him on the couch. “Yeah, uh, my father did it.”

William wiped away the tears Amon was unaware of, and since then William and Amon were alone very often. They went to the dog park with Lady when Sofie was working, they sat in silence most of the time, but there was always a clear ongoing communication between them.

William came along to the doctor’s office when they told Amon what was causing his tremors and bursts of sweating, and William promised Amon that he would write to his father.

“I can’t remember whom I was before I met you,” Amon said to William.