Taxidermy of the Heart

The fox had been dead three days when Elena found it on the shoulder of Route 9. She pulled over, her rental car still smelling of the cheap cologne her ex-husband used to wear, and wrapped the stiffening body in the beach towel she'd stolen from a Hampton Inn two mornings ago.

At the wildlife rehabilitation center where she volunteered, they'd taught her this: sometimes death is just death, not something you can fix. But she couldn't stop touching the fox's russet fur, thinking how her daughter would've turned seven this Saturday. The girl had loved foxes—had a fox backpack, fox socks, a fox stuffed animal she carried everywhere until the accident.

Elena drove west with the fox on the passenger seat, its glass eyes watching her through the plastic wrap. She'd quit her job as a hospital administrator three weeks ago after the patient died—the one who'd grabbed her hand and said, "You have kind eyes," before his heart monitor flatlined. She couldn't save anyone. Not her patients, not her marriage, not the little girl who'd stepped into the street chasing a butterfly.

Outside Butte, Montana, she stopped at a roadside bar where a taxidermy bear stood on its hind legs in the corner, its mouth frozen in a permanent roar, dusty under the amber glow of beer signs. The bartender, a man whose nametag read "Bear," poured her whiskey and asked what was wrong with her life.

"Everything," she said, and meant it.

She'd driven away from her therapist's office last month when the woman suggested she wasn't ready to return to work. She'd ghosted her grief support group after someone compared their loss to a dog dying. She couldn't explain how her grief was a house she'd built room by room, how she lived in it now, how she couldn't just pack up and leave.

The fox was beginning to smell. Elena parked at a state park and carried it to a creek, where she washed the plastic wrap and her trembling hands in water so cold it numbed her fingers. A golden retriever appeared on the opposite bank, watched her with mild interest, then loped away toward a family having a picnic.

She waded into the creek, shoes still on, and lowered the fox into the water. "Go on," she whispered, and let it go. The current caught it, tumbled it downstream, and around the bend where she couldn't see it anymore.

Elena stood there until her legs went numb, until the sun set behind the mountains and she couldn't feel the cold anymore. Then she walked back to her car, found her daughter's pink hat on the backseat, pressed it to her face, and finally—three years later—let herself scream.