They continue to walk down the path leading to a park across the street, and I can see them more clearly from where I am now cravenly hiding, behind a tree.

She wears a red sweater and her dark hair is tied at the nape of her neck. He is wearing a gray cardigan and both of them are smiling. A golden retriever bounds between them joyfully, barking whenever she laughs out loud.

Their voices grow fainter and I cock my ears to try and catch their disappearing words. I watch as the dog streaks across the street running after a squirrel and narrowing missing a gray station wagon that whizzes past, and Dave’s wife shrieks, “Junior, bad dog, come back!” And I start to laugh hysterically in large, wheezing fits, like a mad woman, not caring if they hear me. Not caring at all. And it is as if the world falls to splinters around me, as if everything suddenly uncoils itself and unravels to nothing.