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The barn at High Park Farm wasn't meant for this. Cold stone floors, drafts that found every gap. Paul had brought blankets—too many of them—piling them around Martha as if warmth alone could keep her tethered to the world.
Fifteen years. Nearly half his life, Martha had been there.
Linda sat a few feet away, giving him space while staying close enough to reach. She knew when to speak and when silence mattered more. One of the countless reasons he loved her.
Martha's breathing came irregular now. Each inhale seemed deliberate, considered. Her white fur had thinned with age, revealing patches of pink skin beneath. Paul kept his hand on her side, feeling the slight rise and fall. He did not want to miss a single moment of it, even as each breath pushed them closer to the end.
"She won't eat," he said, breaking the quiet that had settled between them for the past hour. His voice sounded strange to his ears. Too loud. Too normal for what was happening.
Linda nodded. "I know."
Martha's eyes, clouded now but still alert, moved to Paul's face when he spoke. Recognition. Fifteen years of recognition. The eyes that had watched him write and fight and fall apart and somehow put himself back together again.
Paul had never been good at endings. The band had shown him that. He'd held on too tight, tried to stave off the inevitable until it nearly broke them all. And here he was again, holding on too tight.
"I remember when I got her. London was mad. Everyone wanting something. Photo, autograph, piece of me." He ran his hand along Martha's side, feeling each rib. "She just wanted to be fed and walked and to sleep at the foot of the bed."
"Simple demands," Linda said.
"The best kind."
Martha's tail moved slightly at the sound of his voice. A shadow of the enthusiastic greeting it once was. The effort of it made Paul's chest tighten.
"I'm not ready," he said.
Linda didn't offer platitudes. Didn't tell him it would be okay or that time would heal this wound. She just moved closer, her shoulder against his, sharing the vigil.
The farm had been their escape. From fans, from press, from everything that wanted to claim pieces of him. Martha had been part of that escape—running through tall grass, disappearing into fog-shrouded fields, always returning when he called. She'd outrun his fame. Outrun the madness. Now she couldn't outrun this.
Martha's breathing hitched. Paul felt it under his palm. A different rhythm. A struggle.
"She knows you're here," Linda said quietly.
"Do you think that's enough?"
The question hung between them. Enough for what? Enough to make dying easier? Enough to justify fifteen years of loyalty? Enough to balance what she'd given against what he could give in return?
Paul had spent his life finding the right words. Now there weren't any.
Martha's eyes found his face again. Something ancient passed between them. Recognition of a different kind—that things end. That even the best things end.
When the first tear fell, Paul didn't wipe it away. Let it drop onto the blanket beneath them. Then another. Then he couldn't count them anymore. His body bent forward, curling protectively around Martha as if he could shield her from what was happening.
He gathered her into his arms, her body lighter than he remembered, and held her against his chest. Martha's head rested against his shoulder. He felt her exhale, a warm breath against his neck.
Paul wasn't sure how long they sat like that. Time stretched and compressed. Martha's breaths came further apart. His tears soaked into her fur. At some point, Linda's hand found his back, steadying him.
When Martha's final breath came, Paul felt it leave her body. A slight relaxing. Then stillness.
He didn't move. Couldn't. As if holding her would somehow keep this moment from becoming the next one—the one where she was gone.
"Paul," Linda said gently.
He shook his head. Not yet.
The world had taken so much already. Taken his mother. Taken John. It would take more before it was done with him. He knew this. But not yet. Not Martha. Not yet.
His hands traced the shape of her head, her ears, committing to memory what he already knew by heart. The tears came harder now, his body shaking with them. Not the performative grief he'd learned to hide from cameras, but something primal and unguarded. This was Martha. His Martha.
Linda's own tears fell silently beside him, but she didn't try to pull him away. Didn't try to reason with grief.
Hours passed in the barn. The shadows lengthened, then merged into darkness. Still Paul held Martha, as if his arms could keep her from the final separation. As if she might still somehow wake, shake herself off, and look at him with those trusting eyes again.
The cold seeped into him, but he barely noticed. Grief had its own temperature—a burning and freezing all at once. A pain so complete it numbed everything else.
When he finally spoke, his voice was barely audible, broken into pieces.
"I don't know how to let her go."
Linda leaned her head against his shoulder, her hand covering his where it rested on Martha's fur.
"You don't have to yet," she whispered.
So they sat together in the darkening barn, Paul clutching what remained of fifteen years of unconditional love.