The Fox at the Table

The lightning struck just as Maya said she wanted a divorce, as if the universe itself was punctuating her declaration. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of their gentrified loft, the sky cracked open, illuminating Tom's stunned expression in brief, violent flashes.

They were sitting at the reclaimed oak table he'd spent three months sanding—back when they still did projects together. Tonight, he'd made her favorite: spinach and goat cheese salad, pan-seared salmon, the kind of meal that used to mean something between them. Now the spinach leaves sat wilting on her plate, untouched.

"You're like him," Maya said, her voice barely audible over the thunder. "You're just like your father."

Tom couldn't argue. He'd become a fox indeed—cunning, always working angles, his consulting firm's latest acquisition deal consuming every waking hour. He'd stopped noticing the gray streaking Maya's hair, stopped noticing how she'd started sleeping in the guest room three months ago.

The fox in the garden—the one they'd secretly fed last winter, back when they were still a team who did things like secretly feed foxes—appeared at the glass door. Its fur matted from rain, amber eyes watching them through the deluge. Maya turned toward it, and Tom saw the lightning flash across her face again, saw the tears finally spill.

"Remember when we named him Ferdinand?" she whispered.

Ferdinand the fox. Their little joke. God, they used to laugh.

Tom reached across the table, over the cooling spinach, over the wreckage of eight years. "I can change," he said, and immediately recognized it as the lie it was—a fox's promise, teeth hidden behind a smile.

"No," she said, standing up, her silhouette against the storm-drenched windows. "You can't. And I'm done waiting for lightning to strike twice."