Human Sister

before we set off for our morning walk, which, if she felt up to it, would turn into a slow run down the length of the drive and back four times.
    As we headed toward the security gate, Lily tugged forward on the leash, hurrying me along. She was obviously feeling better. It was then I glanced up at the southeast corner of the winery roof where First Brother had told me to look for the pigeonoid. After nearly eleven months of daily disappointment, I’d become resigned to believing I would never receive a message via the feathered robot. But this time, I saw a bird, gray on gray with some white adorning its neck and wings, perched near the prescribed corner of the roof—a bird appearing to closely resemble the pigeonoid.
    I quickly looked away, back to Lily. “Sit. That’s a good girl.” I knelt in front of her with my back to the winery and listened. I couldn’t detect any work going on in the vineyard. First Brother had instructed me to go to the plum tree nearest the security gate, inspect and touch the tree’s bark, then go up to the study table on the deck. But if someone had been following my activities lately, that someone surely would be expecting me to get up now and proceed with Lily’s exercise. Like Grandpa, I generally followed my routines precisely.
    I stood up and walked with Lily toward and through the security gate. It was a clear morning after a night of light rain. The low November sun glistened in water beading up on the grass and on a few russet leaves still clinging to the vines; and where sunlight warmed the damp drive, mullioned then with shadows of nearly naked locust trees, curlicues of steam rose in the cool, still air. Soon, I thought, the rains will come in earnest, and the winter mist, the hills a furrowed mizzle of gray.
    We made it to the checkpoint at the end of the drive, waved at the guards—I with my free hand, Lily with her tail—and walked back toward the winery. The bird was no longer there. Maybe it was a natural pigeon, I thought. I looked up again as we neared the yard gate—it wasn’t there. Instantly, my grief over Mom and Dad returned: I would never see them again, would never have another chance to be their human daughter.
    Archipelagoes of little yellow locust leaves were steeping in a shallow puddle beside the drive. Lily disliked getting wet and treaded carefully around the puddle with her large white paws. What does First Brother want to tell me? What’s taken him so long?
    Lily and I turned back down the drive for our second pass. “Can we run today, Lily?” I asked, increasing my speed as the world took on an aqueous appearance through my watery eyes. Lily broke into a trot. Would the bird come back? Sparrows skittered playfully across the drive in front of us. Lily chased them off with a bark.
    At the end of our second and third passes, the bird was still absent. Lily tugged back on the leash as we jogged down the drive the fourth time, I slowed to a walk, and we completed our exercise at a leisurely pace.
    I prepared her food and filled her water bowl with fresh water. “Maybe you’ll catch one today,” I said, remembering how pleasurable it had been lately to see Lily again defending her water bowl from birds that had attempted to turn it into a bath during her infirmity. Michael had first brought this sign of Lily’s improvement to my attention by pointing one evening at our scenescreen. Lily was stalking on her belly through the grass, eyes and nose intent on the splashing little intruders. Then, in a flurry of hair, teeth, growls, and flapping of wings, she pounced. Michael clapped, happy that the birds had escaped and also that Lily was feeling better. For years he’d told me he loved petting Lily in my memories, loved feeling her some-places-soft, some-places-bristly, thick white coat, and the cool wetness of her tongue, the hardness of her teeth, the gentle touch of her paws.
    I stroked Lily’s back and told her we’d go on another walk before dark. Her tail wagged ever so slightly; she’d never been very sociable while engaged in the serious matter of eating.

    When I came back outside later that afternoon, Lily was waiting for me at the door. She trotted ahead of me through the arborway, past the garage, and toward the toolshed where her leash was stored.
    I glanced toward the winery roof. No bird perched there. Lily and I exercised. She ate her dinner.
    We were playing catch with an old tennis ball, and the hour was nearing