The Half-Orange

The orange sat on the counter between them, already quartered, its flesh weeping onto the cutting board. Neither reached for it.

"You're taking the cat," David said, not a question. He stood in their bedroom doorway, suitcase already by the door.

"Barnaby likes me better."

"He likes whoever feeds him. That's the thing about cats—they're mercenaries."

She thought about saying that the same could be said about husbands, but didn't. Instead: "What about the dog?"

"Bella's old. She's used to this house. You keep her."

"You got her for me. After the miscarriage."

"I know what I did."

They'd stopped speaking about it years ago—that third year of marriage, when they were still trying, when they believed desire and effort could compel the universe to give them what they wanted. The dog had been his apology for a body that failed, for tears he couldn't fix, for a woman's sadness he found exhausting.

She reached for the orange. A segment burst between her teeth, sharp and sweet, the way fresh fruit shouldn't taste in December. Wrong season. Wrong everything.

"You always eat them when you're upset," he said. "Like an old woman."

"My grandmother did too."

"I know. You told me."

He'd forgotten her birthday last month. She'd remembered his dead mother's favorite flower. This was how it happened—small erasures accumulating until the person looking back was a stranger.

"The house," she said. "We need to decide."

"Sell it. Neither of us can afford it alone."

"You really want that?"

"What I want stopped mattering a long time ago."

The dog padded into the kitchen, nails clicking on hardwood, and pressed her warm side against Sarah's leg. The cat appeared on the counter, tail twitching, considering the orange's remaining rinds.

"Mercenaries," David said again, softer this time.

"Maybe," she said. "But at least they're honest about it."

He nodded once, picked up his suitcase, and walked out. The cat jumped down and followed him to the door, then stopped, turned, and came back. From the window, she watched his car shrink down the street, a dark seed against the snow.

The dog sighed and settled at her feet. She finished the orange, tasting salt. In the mirror above the sink, a woman she almost recognized watched herself cry for the first time in three years.