Coaxial

The coaxial cable lay coiled like a dead snake behind the television, its copper core exposed where something had chewed through the insulation. Sarah stepped over it carefully, not wanting to disturb the dust that had settled like snow across her father's living room.

"He's in the backyard," her father called from his recliner, not turning from the baseball game flickering on screen. "The dog. He's out there."

Sarah found Buster stretched in a patch of sunlight that filtered through the palm fronds above. The old golden retriever's muzzle had gone white, his hips clicking audibly as he struggled to stand. She knelt beside him, running her hand along his spine, feeling each vertebra like a row of pearls beneath his thinning coat. "Hey, buddy," she whispered. "Still holding on?"

Buster licked her palm, his sandpaper tongue scraping against skin that felt paper-thin these days. At thirty-five, Sarah had expected to feel more solid, more permanent. Instead she felt like something being worn away.

"He's got cancer," her father said from the screen door. She hadn't heard him approach. " Vet gave him two weeks, maybe three. Said I should... you know."

"You couldn't."

"No. Couldn't bear it." His voice cracked. "Your mother died in this house, Sarah. Buster's the last thing that remembers her. The last thing that remembers us."

The baseball game continued its rhythmic commentary behind them—swing and a miss, strike three, the crowd's collective groan. Her father had coached her team in fourth grade until she'd quit, preferring to read in the dugout rather than sweat in the outfield. He'd never forgiven her exactly, though he'd loved her enough.

She followed him back inside, the smell of his house hitting her like a physical thing: onion skins and mail-order catalogs and the particular sweetness of slow decay. The cable still snaked across the floor, connecting a television that broadcast games he barely watched to a service that had sent increasingly desperate bills for three years.

"Dad," she said. "We can cancel the cable. We can... we can get hospice for Buster. We can get you some help in here."

He didn't respond, his attention fixed on the pitcher winding up, releasing, the ball's perfect arc toward home plate. Sarah sat beside him, took his hand—his palm warm and dry, the tremor constant now, a bird trapped in bone—and watched the game she didn't care about, holding the only things she'd ever truly loved as they both, slowly, prepared to let go.