Papaya Season

Marie ordered the papaya every morning, though she hated its musky sweetness. It was Richard's favorite, and some part of her thought that if she kept eating what he loved, he might somehow reappear. Three months since the funeral, and she was still staying at their favorite resort in St. Lucia, the one with the papaya trees and swaying palms that framed every photo they'd ever taken here.

She wore the wide-brimmed hat he'd bought her—a ridiculous white thing with a silk ribbon—and pulled it low over her eyes. It was armor against the pitying glances of the staff who remembered her as half of a pair. The hat smelled of him: coconut sunscreen and expensive whiskey and that particular Richard scent of confidence and entitlement.

A dog—a stray, really, though the staff claimed it belonged to no one and everyone—had taken to following her. Golden-brown with one ear that stood at attention while the other flopped over its eye, it limped slightly on its left hind leg. Richard would have hated it. He'd have complained about the dirt, the fleas, the way it stared at him with those intelligent, judging eyes.

"He knows," Marie said aloud to the dog on their fifth morning together. They were sitting beneath the largest palm on the beach, its fronds creating a speckled umbrella against the sun. "He knows you're better company than I ever was."

The dog rested its head on her knee, and Marie found herself stroking its silky ear. The first time she'd touched anyone with tenderness since the phone call. Since the coroner. Since she'd learned that Richard hadn't died of a heart attack in his hotel room but of something more complicated involving someone else's room and someone else's husband.

She reached for the papaya on her plate, the fruit's sunset colors blurring through sudden tears. "I should have left years ago," she whispered to the dog, to the palm, to the ghost of the man who'd never really been hers. "I should have ordered what I wanted."

The dog whimpered, as if agreeing, and Marie took off the hat for the first time since arriving. Let them look. Let them see a woman who was finally, finally ready to be seen.