Dead Inside, Wild Outside

Sheila adjusted her hat, a felt wide-brimmed thing that had seemed sophisticated when she bought it for the wedding. Now it felt ridiculous, like costume jewelry for a funeral. She checked her iPhone again—no messages from David, whose text had been blunt and final: *I can't do this anymore. I feel like a zombie going through the motions.*

The reception hall buzzed with polite conversation. Sheila's phone burned in her palm, but she couldn't bring herself to text back. What was there to say? *I feel alive when we're together, dead when we're apart.* Too desperate. *Then wake up.* Too cruel.

She drifted toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, away from the laughter and champagne. Outside, autumn leaves skittered across the patio. Then movement—a fox, russet coat gleaming in the security lights, paused near the glass. It watched her with intelligent amber eyes, utterly present, utterly alive.

Sheila pressed her hand to the cold glass. The fox tilted its head, considering her. Then it turned and vanished into the darkness, a flash of wildness in a domesticated world.

Her phone buzzed. David again. *I miss you already.*

She typed back: *Come outside. There's something I need to show you.*

Minutes later, David emerged through the glass doors, tie loosened, hair disheveled. He looked nothing like a zombie now—he looked heartbreakingly human, uncertain and vulnerable in the way that had first made her love him three years ago.

'The fox is gone,' she said.

'Did you really see one?'

'It was beautiful,' she said. 'Alive in a way I haven't felt in months.'

David reached for her hand, his palm warm against hers. 'I'm sorry about earlier. I was projecting. You're the one who makes me feel alive.'

She tilted her hat back and studied him—really looked at him, perhaps for the first time since the promotions and the mortgage had started filling the spaces between them. 'Then let's stop going through the motions. Whatever that means.'

The fox was gone, but something else stood in its place: the possibility that neither of them had to be dead inside anymore.