Ritual Supplements

The apartment had been too quiet since Marcus left. Elena found herself counting the pills in her vitamin organizer — the A for morning, the D for night — as if precision could compensate for the absence. Each little compartment clicked shut with the same hollow finality as the front door three weeks ago.

She'd started leaving food on the fire escape. Not for anyone specific, until the orange tom appeared. He was missing half an ear and had the wariness of something that had learned humans were unreliable. Elena watched him from behind the sheer curtains, this scrappy cat who knew exactly how to survive on his own.

"You're just like him," she whispered to the glass. "Better off alone."

Her phone buzzed. Sarah, asking if she wanted to grab dinner. We're worried about you, the text said. Elena hadn't replied to any of the messages from her friend circle. They wanted her to process, to feel, to move through the stages of grief like it was some linear progression toward healing. But she was stuck in the bargaining phase with herself, alone in the apartment that still smelled like Marcus's cologne.

The cat returned that evening, carrying something in his mouth. Not a mouse or a bird — a single bright gummy vitamin, someone's discarded supplement. He dropped it on the fire escape and looked directly at Elena through the window, yowling with an urgency that made her skin prickle.

She slid the window open. The cat didn't run. He stepped inside, circled her legs once, and jumped onto the counter where the pill organizer sat. He nudged it with his nose.

Elena laughed, the first genuine sound in her throat in weeks. "You think I need these? You think this is what keeps people whole?"

She thought about Marcus taking his vitamins religiously, the same ritual, how it hadn't been enough. How they'd both believed that if they did everything right — the supplements, the therapy date nights, the communication exercises — they'd be immune to falling apart. But maybe the cat knew something she didn't. Maybe survival wasn't about the supplements at all.

She texted Sarah back: Yes. Dinner sounds good.

The cat was already gone when she turned from the phone. But on the counter, he'd left the gummy vitamin beside her organizer. A trade. Elena popped it in her mouth — artificially sweet, useless, perfect — and called Sarah to confirm. Some things were ritual. Others were just practice for whatever came next.