Mikhail glanced at his watch for the hundredth time and exhaled irritably. Ten minutes. The damn commuter train was already ten minutes late! And the day had already been—well, about as bad as it gets.
First, there was that pompous turkey of a client who bailed on the order at the last minute. «You know, we’ve had a meeting and decided to go a different route…» Yeah, right. To the competitors, no doubt. He’d spent so much time getting to their suburban town.
Then the boss called. Good Lord, had he completely lost it? Screaming his head off over some typo in the report…
And at home… At home, another round of boxing with reality awaited. The unpaid mortgage hung over him like the sword of Damocles, and Lena, his Lena… She was right, of course. But how to explain that he was already stretched too thin?
— Attention! The electric train is arriving on track one. Please be careful…
— Finally! — Mikhail grumbled as he pushed through the crowd to the train car.
Plopping down in a free seat by the window, he automatically reached for his phone. He needed to call Lena, apologize for the morning… What was it this morning? A fight? A scandal? Who knows. It just built up.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed some movement. He turned his head and… froze.
Climbing onto the seat next to him, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, was a huge German Shepherd. Not just climbing—doing so with such dignity, as if it rode the train every day. The dog sat down, straightened its back, and… stared out the window.
Mikhail blinked. Then again.
— Hey, whose are you?
He looked around, searching for the dog’s owner, but… no one even glanced in their direction. As if it were normal for a huge shepherd to ride in the commuter train like a regular passenger.
— Ah, you mean Brait? — a friendly voice chimed in.
Mikhail turned around. An elderly man from the next row was looking at him. Wrinkles around his eyes, a worn leather jacket, grey mustaches. And a knowing, somewhat sad smile.
— He rides like this every day. Back and forth. Has been for the second month now.
— You mean… alone? — Mikhail felt his eyebrows involuntarily rising. — Without an owner?
The old man sighed heavily, and his smile turned completely somber.
— There’s no owner anymore.
He paused, staring through the dirty train window, then continued:
— Sergey, my neighbor… He was a good man. Found this one (he nodded at the dog) as a month-old puppy. Right at the railroad crossing. Can you imagine? Someone had thrown him out… — There was a hint of bitterness in the old man’s voice. — But Sergey took him in. Raised him. And then every day took him to work — he worked in a workshop at the station. Brait knew everyone there, was a favorite…
The dog, as if hearing its name, turned its head and looked at the old man. Then it stared out the window again.
— And two months ago… — the old man hesitated. — Heart. Right here, on the train. The doctors said it was instant. He didn’t suffer…
Mikhail felt a lump rising in his throat. He looked at the dog—its straight back, its profile as sharp as on an old coin, its intelligent eyes looking into the distance. Where…
— And now Brait rides the same route every day. — The old man shook his head. — I feed him, and others do too. Everyone here knows him. Even the conductors don’t ask for a ticket anymore.
Silence hung in the carriage. Only the wheels clacked: clack-clack, clack-clack…
— You know… — the old man’s voice trembled, — sometimes I think he just can’t believe it. That Sergey is no more. Every day he gets on this train and… waits. Hopes that his owner will return.
Mikhail looked at the dog, and something turned inside him. Something big, important, that he seemed to have completely forgotten in the whirlwind of deadlines, mortgages, and office wars.
He pulled out his phone. Found his wife’s number. His finger hovered over the green call button…
«Lena?» His voice was hoarse, so he had to clear his throat. «Lena, I’m sorry. For the morning. For everything… I love you, you hear? And you know…» he looked at Brait, «it looks like we’ll soon have a dog.»
Brait slowly turned his head and met his gaze. Something… Wisdom? Understanding? Or perhaps, hope, was readable in his brown eyes.
Outside the window, stations passed by, people hurried somewhere, the landscape changed. And time, it seemed, slowed its pace, giving a chance to realize something very simple and very important—about loyalty, about love, about the need to just stop and look into the eyes of the one next to you.
Lena received the news about the dog unexpectedly calmly. She just looked strangely and asked:
«Mish, are you sure?»
And he suddenly understood—he was sure. For the first time in a long time, he was absolutely, crystal clear sure.
The next day, they went to the station together. Brait, as usual, sat in the train by the window. When Mikhail approached, the dog didn’t even turn his head—just squinted his eyes and wagged his tail slightly.
«Hello, buddy,» Mikhail sat down next to him. «Meet Lena.»
And then something amazing happened. Brait slowly turned around, looked carefully at the woman, and… laid his head on her lap. Just like that, without any preamble. Lena gasped and gently stroked his soft ears.
«Can you believe it…» she whispered. «He feels… like family.»
The old man with gray mustaches—his name was Pyotr Ilyich—helped with the paperwork. It turned out Brait even had a passport; Sergey had arranged everything properly.
The first days were… challenging. Brait seemed to be testing them—for strength, for loyalty, for their readiness to accept his story. He could sit by the window for hours. Sometimes, he would get up in the middle of the night and walk around the apartment, sniffing at something only he knew.
One morning Mikhail woke up to a strange sound. Someone was… crying in the hallway? He jumped out of bed and froze.
The dog turned around and, for the first time, licked his cheek. Then he went to the kitchen where Lena was clanging dishes, preparing breakfast. His walk lacked the mournful alertness—it was confident, the way those who know they are home walk.
Now, Mikhail purposely wakes up an hour earlier to walk the dog. Brait still often looks out the window, but differently—calmly, serenely.
Recently, Mikhail noticed that Brait often looks not at the window, but at them, at Lena and him. And in his brown eyes splashes something new—not memories of the past, but the quiet joy of the present.
Spring burst into their lives unexpectedly—with bunches of lilacs on the windowsill, sunbeams on the walls, and… news of an upcoming baby. Lena announced it at breakfast, as if in passing.
«Can you believe it,» Lena laughed, «he seems to understand everything! Since that day, he follows me everywhere. Even escorts me to the bathroom.»
Mikhail just shook his head, watching as the dog settled at his wife’s feet, whenever she sat down even for a minute. Brait, their wise Brait, seemed to have taken on the role of guardian again—now not only of their love but also of the new, emerging life.
Last week, Pyotr Ilyich brought amazing news. In that very workshop where Sergey had worked, they found an old album with photographs. And on one of them—yellowed, with bent corners—a young man was holding a puppy. Brait was just a little one then.
Now… Brait sleeps by the baby’s crib. And sometimes, in the predawn silence, you can hear him softly sigh in his sleep—as if telling someone there, beyond the veil, how well everything turned out. How right it was.
