The Fox at the End of the Driveway

The cable bill lay unpaid on the kitchen counter for three weeks before Meredith finally noticed it. That was the thing about grief—it made you administrative blind. She'd been floating through her days since David left, operating on some grim automatic pilot that kept her fed and dressed and nothing more.

Outside the kitchen window, a fox appeared at the edge of the driveway. Lean and russet-coated, it moved with that peculiar stillness wild things have. Meredith watched it over the rim of her coffee mug, thinking how David used to call her clever fox whenever she beat him at chess. He'd meant it affectionately then, not like the final time he'd said it—spat across the kitchen table like curse, accusation, thing you couldn't take back.

Her hair had started coming out in clumps after he left. Stress, the doctor said. Meredith ran her fingers through the thinning strands now, watching the fox watching her. The animal's eyes were yellow and knowing, unreadable as David's had become that last year.

Barnaby, their elderly golden retriever, lifted his head from his bed and thumped his tail once against the floorboards. Poor old bastard, she thought. He'd stopped waiting by the door months ago.

On the television someone hit a home run. The baseball game had been playing on mute since dawn; Meredith couldn't remember having turned it on. David had loved baseball—its rituals, its statistics, its cleanly ordered universe where every action had a measurable outcome. Where you could count runs and determine a winner.

She thought about calling him. It had been seven months. Nearly two hundred and twelve days of silence, of learning to sleep alone, of accepting that some things didn't get fixed, only survived.

The fox turned then, melting back into the woods beyond the property line. Meredith found herself at the screen door before she could think better of it, stepping out into the crisp October afternoon.

"Hey," she called. The fox paused, looking back over its shoulder. "You come back tomorrow."

She went back inside and paid the cable bill online. Then she called David. It rang five times before going to voicemail. That was fine. She'd call tomorrow too. Some things you kept showing up for.