Signal Lost

The screen lit up again—*David*—for the fourth time in twenty minutes. Maya powered off the iPhone, tossing it onto the passenger seat beside her hiking boots. It landed next to the leash she'd forgotten to remove. Bear's leash. The golden retriever she and David had adopted three years ago, back when they still chose each other, day after day. The dog was waiting at David's sister's place, along with the last shreds of Maya's patience.

She'd come to these mountains to decide. The marriage counselor had called it a "trial separation," a phrase that made it sound like a cosmetic product rather than a slow-motion demolition of a life.

The trailhead was empty, unusual for a Saturday in October. Maya shouldered her pack and started upward, the rhythm of her boots on gravel the only sound she allowed herself to hear. Not David's voice asking her to think about the counseling. Not her own voice saying she wasn't sure she wanted to try anymore.

Two miles in, the woods went quiet. That specific kind of quiet that makes you realize how much noise you've been tuning out.

Then she saw it.

Thirty yards upslope, a black bear emerged from the ferns, massive and fluid and utterly uninterested in her existential crisis. It paused, testing the air, and Maya's breath caught in her throat. This was what she'd come for, wasn't it? Something real. Something that didn't negotiate or compromise or ask for more time.

The bear looked at her for what could have been seconds or hours, then turned and melted back into the shadows.

Maya stood shaking in the aftermath, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped thing. Alive. She felt terrified and small and completely, wonderfully awake.

Back in her car, she powered on the iPhone. Five missed calls. Three texts: *We need to talk.* *Please come home.* *Bear stopped eating, I'm worried.*

The dog's name was the thing that broke her. Not the pleas, not the reminder of a home she wasn't sure was still hers, but the simple fact that David had noticed something wrong with their dog.

Maya started the engine. She wasn't going back to everything being fixed—that would take time, if it happened at all. But she was going back. Some things were still worth fighting for, even in the wreckage.