The Goodbye Vitamin

She counted out his morning vitamins with the precision of a pharmacist sorting narcotics—one white calcium, two yellow omega-3s, the prescription vitamin D that made him taste like sunlight and old age. Three years of marriage dissolved into this ritual, this small mercy she performed each morning while he watched from bed, his eyes already checking out before breakfast.

"The cable guy's coming between two and four," she said, placing the pills in his palm. His hand was unfamiliar these days, the lines deeper than she remembered from their wedding photos.

"Right. For the internet."

"For the internet."

He didn't mention he'd already canceled the appointment. He didn't mention he'd also canceled their anniversary dinner reservation, the couples' therapy session she'd booked, and the life insurance policy he'd taken out last fall. What he said was: "I saw your sister's dog again. The one with the limp."

"Buster?"

"He was barking at something in the ravine behind our house."

She knew what lived in that ravine. She'd seen the fox herself—a copper-colored ghost that moved like spilled mercury through the backyard, cunning and beautiful and completely uninterested in their domestic disputes. The fox represented everything their marriage wasn't: wild, self-sufficient, gone before you could grab your camera.

"Maybe he saw the fox," she said, and her voice sounded thin in the kitchen's morning light.

"Maybe." He swallowed the vitamins without water, a grimace crossing his face like he was swallowing something much larger than pills. "Or maybe he was just barking at nothing. That's what dogs do when they've forgotten what they're chasing."

She watched his throat work, watched the way his jaw tightened around words he wouldn't say. The vitamins would do their work—strengthen his bones, improve his mood, buy him time. But she knew, with the sudden terrible clarity of someone who's been reading palm lines without realizing it, that some deficiencies can't be fixed with supplements.

The cable guy never came. The dog kept barking at nothing. And in the ravine behind their house, the fox moved through the undergrowth like a rumor, like a secret, like the very small and very wild possibility of starting over.