“Follow me.” She took the movers into the backyard. It’d been a last minute decision but was appropriate.

A foot taller than her, they followed her out into the immaculate backyard. Winter had drained its color and autumn had jerked the leaves from the trees but a sense of comfort embraced her as she wrapped her sweater around her shoulders, glanced up at the milky sun, and limped across the grass.

A innocuous rock about a foot high and a foot wide rested in one corner in sunshine by a patch of dirt. She pointed at it. “This rock. I want this rock to go, too.”

The movers, without exchanging looks, said, “Yes, ma’am.” The three encircled the rock and studied it. She said, “I’ll leave you to it.”

Turning, she strode back into the house, casting eyes over the cottage. She and her husband had bought it twenty-one years before, ten years after they’d retired, coming up here for a more relaxed life. Then came the cat, a tiny tabby mewing on her porch as rain poured outside. The husband had died later that year. The cat, though, had lasted for twenty-one. The rock had been the cat’s favorite sitting place in the back. Sunshine always found the rock, and Pebble, named for her petite size, always found the rock.

She could leave the house – had to, really, because small as it was, it was too much for her  now – but she wouldn’t leave the rock. The cat was gone, but she’d always have the rock. And who knows? Maybe in the new place, she’d put the rock on the tiny balcony and perhaps find a new feline companion.

Or maybe it’d find her, as Pebble had.

It would be nice to have another rock in her life.

NOTE: Someone posted a photo of a mover carrying a large, unpretentious rock into an apartment. Others wondered why someone was moving a rock into an apartment.

So did I.