The Company We Keep

Maya stood in Elena's apartment, surrounded by boxes. The cat—a haughty Siamese named Vladimir—watched from atop the refrigerator with judgment in his blue eyes. The dog, an ancient golden retriever mix with cloudy eyes, rested his chin on Maya's knee.

"I can't take both," the sister had said over the phone. "You know how Tom is about pets."

Maya didn't know. She'd stopped knowing things about her friend's life somewhere in the third year of Elena's marriage to Tom, when their weekly dinners became monthly texts, then holiday cards. She'd been Elena's maid of honor. Now she was learning about the divorce through a Craigslist ad for subletting a furnished apartment.

Vladimir leaped down and wound through her legs, purring. Elena had always been a cat person. The dog—Barnaby—had been Tom's idea. A compromise. Or maybe a proxy for the child they never had. Maya picked up his collar tags and let the metal warm in her palm.

They'd met in graduate school, two poor students splitting a bottle of wine while complaining about advisors. Elena, brilliant and chaotic, had drawn Maya out of her careful routines. Together they'd climbed corporate ladders, dated wrong men, talked endlessly about the futures they'd build side by side.

Then came Tom. And the promotions. And the slow drift toward separate orbits.

Maya found the letter in the bedside table—a will, drafted six months ago. "To Maya," it read, "my oldest friend. If anything happens to me, please look after the creatures who kept me company when I couldn't reach you."

The creatures. As if Vladimir and Barnaby had been the ones holding space for the Elena she used to be.

She texted Tom: I'm taking them both.

His response came immediately: You? But you don't even like animals.

Maya looked at the cat watching her with ancient knowing, at the dog who had chosen her leg as his pillow. She didn't like animals. She liked what they represented: the part of Elena that had refused to be completely subsumed by a life that had no room for friendship.

She sent back a photo of Vladimir, mid-stretch, and Barnaby, smiling in his sleep.

I do now, she wrote. And for the first time in years, she felt something like hope.