The Last Call

The iphone sat on the nightstand for three weeks after Sarah left, its screen lighting up with notifications I had no business reading — her friends asking if she was okay, her mother checking in, the grocery store reminding her about pickup orders she'd never collect. I should have factory-reset it and mailed it to her sister's address in Vermont, but I kept finding reasons to wait.

That night, the bear appeared in my dreams again — the same grizzly from our trip to Montana two years ago, standing on its hind legs at the edge of our campsite. Sarah had laughed at my fear, called it a magnificent creature while I fumbled for the bear spray. In the dream, the bear spoke in her voice.

I woke up at 3 AM, reached for the phone, and typed in her birthday. It still worked. The photos stopped making sense after September: empty rooms, half-packed boxes, a dog neither of us had ever seen — a golden retriever with soulful eyes, photographed in front of a house that wasn't ours. The dates were from November, December, January.

The text messages were worse. Someone named Marcus. "The dog misses you too." "I know you said you needed time, but" "Baseball season starts soon, I remembered how you loved the Cardinals."

The Cardinals. We'd gone to games together, sat in the cheap seats, drank overpriced beer while she explained the statistics her father had taught her. She'd said it was the only thing that made her feel connected to him after he died. Now she was sharing that with someone else.

I scrolled back further, to messages from August, when everything between us was still good. She'd sent me photos from a work conference: herself smiling against a hotel backdrop, holding up a menu at a restaurant I couldn't afford. But in the background of one photo, I saw something I'd missed before — Marcus's reflection in a mirror, his hand on her shoulder, intimate in a way that made my stomach drop.

She hadn't left because we'd grown apart. She'd left because she'd already left, months ago, in all the ways that mattered. The iphone was just a hollow shell, like the life we'd built together — looking perfect from the outside, empty within.

I factory-reset the phone. I'd mail it tomorrow. For now, I lay in the darkness and listened to the silence of an apartment that had never really been ours at all.