Seven Seconds

The fox had been coming to her garden for three weeks before Elena realized it wasn't a fox at all. It was David, standing motionless at the edge of her property at 2 AM, wearing that fox costume from the Halloween party five years ago—their last good night before the miscarriage, before the silence grew too thick to breathe through.

She watched from the window, baseball bat in hand, remembering how he'd played that stupid game in the yard every Sunday, pretending he was still a boy who believed in happy endings. The bat felt heavy, like her heart.

Inside, Buster—his dog, the golden retriever who'd chosen her over him in the divorce—slept on the sofa. The goldfish in the bowl on the counter swam in endless circles, three years old now, defying the myth that they forget everything every seven seconds. Sometimes Elena envied that fish. What a gift, to wake up clean.

The fox-costume figure shifted. Elena gripped the bat tighter. In the divorce settlement, she'd gotten the house, the dog, the goldfish. He'd gotten the right to show up at her edge of property wearing polyester fur and plastic whiskers.

"Seven seconds," he'd told her once, drunk and crying at that Halloween party. "That's all they get. Seven seconds of memory, then clean slate. No pain. No regret." She'd laughed then, tangled in him, neither of them knowing what was coming.

Now Buster lifted his head, ears perked. The goldfish continued its circles, oblivious to the thinning barrier between then and now, between the woman she was and the one grief had made her. Elena lowered the bat, walked to the door, and wondered what it would be like to start again fresh, to have only seven seconds of memory at a time. But she stepped onto the porch anyway, knowing some things you don't get to forget.