The Fox at Dusk

The cable guy's van still blocks the driveway, its logo peeling like sunburned skin. Sarah's suitcases stand like soldiers by the door—her presence compressed into wheeled rectangles. Inside, the living room feels cavernous without her books, her plants, the way she'd leave coffee rings on every surface like some secret language.

The cable's been dead for three days. In the silence, I've been thinking about baseball—specifically, the summer of '98, when my father took me to Fenway Park. The crowd roared like a single organism, thousands of strangers unified by a fly ball. He bought me a foam finger I wore until it disintegrated. He died two months later. I never thanked him.

"What's the story with this connection?" the cable guy asks, not really asking. His name tag says MARCUS, but his eyes say he's seen a hundred houses like mine.

"Bad wiring," I say. "Bad everything, honestly."

Marcus laughs like he thinks I'm joking.

A fox trots through the backyard. Orange-red against the dying grass, tail twitching like a metronome. It stops at Sarah's garden—now overgrown with weeds—and looks straight at me through the sliding glass door. Something about its gaze: ancient, knowing, utterly unimpressed by human sorrow.

My phone buzzes. David—my oldest friend, the one who warned me about Sarah three years ago, his words crystal clear in memory: "She's never going to forgive you for being you." Now he texts: "You okay?"

I watch Marcus splice cables with surgical precision. The fox vanishes into the woods. Outside, the sky's that bruised purple of October dusk, beautiful and terrible.

"Thought you'd want to know," Marcus says, coiling black wire like a snake, "your ex-wife called earlier. Asked me to make sure I set up the DVR for her shows."

Ex-wife. The word hits like a baseball bat to the chest. She's been planning this longer than I knew.

"I'll be sure to record them," I say.

Marcus nods, packs up, and leaves. The house is quieter than before. On the table, Sarah's key gleams under the lamp. I pick it up, heavy and warm, and call David back.

"She's gone," I say.

"I know," he says. "I'm coming over. We'll get drunk, watch the game."

"Baseball?"

"Baseball."

Outside, the fox returns. It sits in the driveway where Marcus's van just was, watching the house with calm, hungry eyes. Waiting for something to die so it can eat. I lock the door and wait for my friend to arrive.