Dividing the Silence

The sun was sinking behind the skyline, that bruised orange light filtering through the blinds of what used to be our dining room. Mara stood by the cardboard boxes, arms crossed, watching me like I was something she'd already decided to throw away.

"The cat goes with you," she said. "You loved him more anyway."

Barnaby — our orange tabby, though we'd never managed to agree on whose cat he actually was — wound through my legs, purring like a motor that wouldn't quit. He was the only thing in this apartment that still touched me without hesitation.

"Fine. But I want the goldfish."

Mara laughed, this sharp exhale that meant I'd said something ridiculous. "Really? That's what you're fighting for? The fish you won at that carnival three years ago, the one neither of us remembered to feed half the time?"

"I kept him alive, Mara. That counts for something."

She didn't answer. The silence between us had grown so thick you could practically carve it. We'd been running from this conversation for six months, since the night she came home smelling like someone else's cologne and I pretended not to notice. Since the night I stopped asking where she'd been.

"You know what's funny?" she said, finally looking at me. "I thought you'd fight for us. For the apartment. For something that actually matters."

"I did fight," I said quietly. "I fought for three years while you were already gone."

The goldfish bobbed in its bowl on the windowsill, orange scales catching the last light, mouth opening and closing in that perpetual silent gasp. Sometimes I envied it — the way it could circle the same small space forever and never seem to realize it was going nowhere.

Mara's eyes filled, sudden and overwhelming. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I never wanted—"

"I know," I said. "Neither did I."

I packed the fish bowl into the passenger seat of my moving truck. Barnaby yowled from his carrier. In the rearview mirror, I watched Mara standing in the doorway, one hand raised, then lowering it as I drove away. Some things you carry forward. Some things you leave behind. The trick is knowing which is which.