This short story is told in the narrator’s perspective but she seems to focus on telling the timeline of her sister from Jimmy’s death until her own death at the end of the story. It is clear that this story is written about the narrator’s sister. Throughout the short story, the readers can sense that the narrator was never close with her sister and that she always lived in her shadow. But the narrator felt like that was taken away when they were both with Jimmy; it was a time where the narrator could actually feel like she meant something and was not just her sister. I believe the conflict in the story is whether or not the sister was telling the truth in the end.
I wanted to say that she lied to us all, she’d faked it about the dog, as if it mattered whether the animal spoke, as if love were about truth, as if he would love her less–and not more–for pretending to talk to a dog. (512)
The narrator wants to tell Jimmy that the sister was lying, but she couldn’t. I think this is because she doesn’t know if the sister was lying or not. She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want to be wrong.