The Fox at the Edge of the Pool

The screen of Miranda's iphone glowed at 2:17 AM, another silent notification from him that she wouldn't answer. She lay in bed beside her husband of seven years, David, who breathed deeply in the rhythm of genuine sleep. The blue light illuminated her guilt like a examination room.

She rose and walked to the backyard. The pool, unused since last summer's incident, collected leaves and reflected the moon in fractured pieces. This was where everything had shifted — where David had found her crying over nothing, or rather, over everything.

A movement caught her eye. A fox — sleek, russet, impossibly alive — stood at the edge of the pool, drinking from the stagnant water. It met her gaze with unsettling intelligence, something almost human in its stillness. Miranda felt exposed, as if the creature knew about the messages, about the vitamin D supplements she'd started taking because she hadn't felt like herself in months, about the way she'd been performing happiness while something inside her hollowed out.

The fox finished drinking and looked back at her once more, unconcerned, before slipping into the darkness. Miranda realized she was weeping, not silently but in great gasping sobs that frightened her. The phone in her hand vibrated again.

She knew what she had to do. Not tomorrow, not eventually, but now. She walked back inside, placed the phone on the kitchen counter, and woke David.

"We need to talk," she said. And for the first time in a year, she meant it.