Chlorine and Iron

The pool at the Y was never empty at 6 AM, but Elena always claimed the same lane. Third from the left. Her hair — still that unnatural auburn she'd started dyeing after David left — was matted to her skull under the silicone cap. She surfaced after twenty laps, gasping, to find him standing at the edge.

"You forgot your vitamins," Marcus said, holding out the orange bottle like peace offering.

Elena pulled herself from the water, water streaming down her arms. "I'm thirty-eight, Marcus. I don't need supplements to feel alive."

"Your mother said you've been skipping them. Since the —"

"Since the miscarriage. You can say it." She grabbed her towel. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"I thought we could get breakfast. Maybe that spinach place you like."

The drive was silent. At the restaurant, picking at her salad, Elena watched him pop his own vitamin — a massive multivitamin that smelled like iron and factory farms. He'd started taking them after his diagnosis. Precautionary, the doctor said. Prevention, Marcus told himself.

"I saw her," Marcus said.

Elena's fork paused. "Who?"

"The fox. In the backyard. Last night. She was there again."

The fox had appeared three weeks after Elena lost the pregnancy. A vixen with a mangled coat and one ear that wouldn't stand up. She'd sit on their patio at dusk, watching them through the glass door with eyes that seemed almost sympathetic. Elena had started leaving out food. Marcus thought it was pathetic.

"She's just an animal, Marcus."

"She keeps coming back. Elena, we can't keep doing this."

"Doing what?"

"This." He gestured between them. "The pool at dawn. The spinach breakfast. The fox in the garden. It's like we're waiting for something to change, but nothing will unless we —"

"Unless we what? Pretend it didn't happen?" Her voice cracked. "I swam two miles this morning. I ate your damn vitamins. I'm trying here."

"You're trying to disappear."

Elena stood up, knocking over her chair. The restaurant went quiet. She looked at Marcus — really looked at him — and saw the same exhausted man who'd held her in the hospital bathroom, the same man who'd researched vitamins and fertility clinics and adoption agencies until 4 AM.

"I'm not disappearing," she said. "I'm just learning how to exist in a body that doesn't feel like mine anymore."

Outside, a vixen watched through the restaurant window. Then turned and loped away toward the woods, her bad ear flat against her skull.

Marcus paid the bill. Elena ordered another coffee to go. They would go home. They would feed the fox. They would try again tomorrow.