The Absence of Light

The cat appeared at dusk, skeletal and wheezing, as Marc sat on the balcony of room 427, staring at the pool below. His seventh prescription in three weeks—the doctor called them vitamins, a word that made the whole thing sound trivial, like a deficiency that could be corrected with sunshine and citrus.

She'd loved this place. The palm trees, the way their fronds cut the moon into fragments, the chlorine smell that always reminded her of the summer they met. Three years, two months, six days since the funeral, and he was still staying at their resort. Still ordering her drink. Still sleeping on her side of the bed.

"You're rotting," his sister had said over Christmas. "You're forty-two years old, Marc. You look like you've been dug up."

The cat jumped onto the railing, its ribs visible through matted fur. It watched him with amber eyes, patient as a judgment.

"Not today," Marc whispered.

The bottle of pills sat on the small table beside him. The new ones were supposed to help him sleep, help him eat, help him want to keep living. Their mother had died of the same cancer when she was forty-one. The genetic test had come back positive last week. He'd spent three hours vomiting in the hotel bathroom afterward.

The pool lights flickered on automatically, turning the water an artificial blue that made everything beneath the surface look distorted, like memories viewed through tears. They'd conceived their daughter in that pool, drunk on champagne and possibility, under a sky so full of stars it had felt like blessing. She'd been stillborn. The cancer had come two years later.

The cat made a sound like something breaking.

Marc opened the bottle. The pills rattled—twenty-four of them left, enough to ensure he'd never wake up, never miss her again, never face the future that had already killed the three people he'd loved most. His hands were shaking.

The cat butted its head against his ankle.

He looked down. Its collar was pink, studded with fake diamonds. Someone's pet, once. Someone who had loved it enough to make it ridiculous.

"I'm sorry," Marc said. "I'm so sorry."

The cat curled around his foot, purring like a small engine, insisting on presence, on warmth, on the absolute refusal of extinction.

Marc closed his eyes. The palm fronds whispered above them, moving in a wind he couldn't feel. Below, the pool waited, patient and deep.

He pushed the bottle away.

The cat began to eat the complementary tuna he'd placed on a saucer, a small and hungry thing, alive against all odds.