“When is he coming back?” the child asks earnestly.  He looks up at his mother, his big blue eyes clear focused as he waits for her to reply.

She looks down at him and tucks a curl behind her ear.  There isn’t a delicate way to say what she has to say, but she’ll try regardless.

“He’s...not.”  She pulls her son into her lap.  He hasn’t yet begun to associate the smell of alcohol with pain and death.  Although the cheap chairs in the veterinarian's office poke her lower back uncomfortably and no matter how she sits something bothers her, the weight of her little boy on her legs always feels just right.

“What do you mean, Mama?  Oliver has run away lots of times, but he always comes back because he loves us.  That’s what you said.”  His tone is almost accusatory, but his face remains neutral and expectant.

“He didn’t run away, sweet heart,” she begins slowly.  She won’t look at him, but she can feel his gaze on her.  “You know how Oliver wasn’t feeling well these past few months?”

He nodded.  He remembered his mother and father explaining how the way he felt is how Oliver feels when he’s sick, which is why he didn’t want to play and he slept all day.  That’s why they had to take Oliver to the pet doctor all the time.  That’s why they’re there now.

“Well, sometimes when doggies get sick, especially when they’re old, medicine can’t help them anymore.”

A look of confusion crosses his face as he processes what his mother told him.  “But I thought medicine always makes us feel better.  That’s why the doctor gives it to us.  So we can get better.”

“I know it’s confusing, but for medicine to work, you have to help fight off what’s making you sick, and Oliver--” she choked as she felt the tears rise in her throat.  “Oliver was done fighting.”

“What do you mean?” he demands.  His eyes widen when he sees the tear fall down his mother’s face.  “Where is Oliver?  Where did he go?”

“He died, honey.  He was very sick and in a lot of pain, so the doctors gave him some medicine that made him fall asleep so he couldn’t feel it anymore.”

At this point, she’s sobbing, she knows that she should try and hide it, but the loss has just begun to hit her, and she can’t stop.

“Mama?” he asks, fear evident in his tone and tears starting to pool in his eyes.  “I don’t understand how he can be dead if the doctors just put him to sleep.”

“Oh, honey,” she breathes, pulling him in closer.  She doesn’t answer her question, but she also doesn’t have to.  He may be young, but he can tell by the way his mother cries that something has gone wrong.  It scares him to see her this way, but he also feels grown up.  They told him what really happened.  He gets to know what the adults know.

He knows the truth.