The Fox at the Fence Line

Elena's hair was the color of autumn leaves—copper waves that spilled across the pillow, that caught the morning light in ways that made my chest ache. I loved watching her brush it, eighty strokes every night, counting like a rosary of devotion. In the mornings, I'd find strands wrapped around the shower drain, dark tendrils that knotted around my fingers like small, desperate prayers.

We'd been separated three months when I started running. Not away from anything—at least that's what I told myself. Just six miles every morning through the sleeping suburbs, my breath fogging in the predawn dark. The rhythm became a kind of prayer: footstrike, breathe, footstrike, breathe. Other things you can count when you're forty-three and your marriage has dissolved like sugar in cold water.

The fox appeared at the edge of the old baseball field behind our subdivision—a sleek russet shadow that watched me from the outfield fence. At first just flashes of movement, then something steadier. She'd sit on her haunches, head cocked, amber eyes following my progress along the perimeter path. Baseball had been Elena's sport—softball leagues on Tuesday nights, the dusty cleats by the back door, her uniform jersey smelling of beer and infield dirt. I'd never understood the appeal until I found myself running past that empty diamond, past the ghost of a backstop where she'd once caught a line drive that left a bruise shaped like a galaxy across her forearm.

This morning, the fox was waiting at the usual spot, tail wrapped neatly around her paws. Something about the stillness of her stopped me. I slowed to a walk, breathing hard in the cold air. She didn't flinch as I approached the fence, just watched with that alien intelligence that wild things have. Beyond the diamond, the sun was beginning to bleed into the sky, painting everything the color of Elena's hair, of the fox's coat, of all the things that slip through your fingers when you reach too fast.

"She's not coming back," I said aloud, not sure which "she" I meant.

The fox stood, stretched, and vanished into the tall grass beyond the outfield. I ran the rest of the way home, but I was already miles behind.