Animals We Keep Inside

The ultrasound technician didn't need to speak. Elena saw it in her eyes—the careful professional distance, the way she stopped making small talk about the weather. Another failure. Another cycle of hormones and hope and the same silent result.

Driving home, she felt like she was swimming through water, everything muffled and distant. James would want to talk about it. James always wanted to process feelings, as if talking could fix broken biology.

Their cat, Scout, waited by the door when she arrived—scrawny and opinionated, with one ear that refused to stand up. James had found him as a stray behind his office building three years ago. "He's a fighter," James had said, and they'd kept him, one of the small creatures they'd collected over seven years of marriage because they couldn't seem to make anything human.

James was in the garden when she walked in. He looked like a bear—broad shoulders, gentle movements, the kind of man who cried at commercials and held doors for strangers. He saw her face and didn't ask.

"I saw her today," he said instead. "Your sister. At the grocery store. She's pregnant again."

The fox in Elena—the part of her that was sharp and angry and tired of being the bigger person—wanted to say something cruel. Instead, she sat on the porch steps and Scout jumped into her lap. The cat purred, a motor of comfort that cost nothing.

"It's okay," she lied. "We can try again next month."

James nodded. He believed in trying. He believed that if you just kept swimming, eventually you'd reach shore. But Elena wasn't sure there was a shore anymore. She wasn't sure she wasn't just drowning in slow motion, while everyone around her acted like the water was fine.

"Maybe," she said, testing the weight of words she'd never allowed herself to speak. "Maybe we stop trying. Maybe we're done."

James's face cracked open. That was the terrible thing about hope—it could break you as easily as it could save you.

The cat purred louder, as if he knew that some animals were better at holding things together than others.