The Last Goodbye

The vitamin bottle sat on the counter where she'd left it three months ago. D3, 5000 IU, prescribed for the winter darkness that had settled in both of them. Marcus picked it up, the plastic still warm from the slat of sunlight through the kitchen window. She'd been taking them religiously until the end, until the pills became just one more thing she couldn't keep down.

The cat — Merlin, a judgmental tabby she'd rescued from a shelter during their first year together — wound around Marcus's ankles, purring with the indiscriminate affection of the truly hungry. He reached down to stroke Merlin's spine, the same way she used to, and the cat arched into his touch, then bit him gently. A reminder, perhaps, that he was doing it wrong.

On the hook by the door hung her hat. A battered wool thing she'd bought in Edinburgh on that trip where everything had still felt possible, back before the diagnosis, before the chemotherapy that failed, before the hospice nurses and the quiet conversations about quality of life. The hat still smelled faintly of her perfume — lavender and something clinical, hospitals masking themselves as comfort.

Marcus had packed everything else. Donated the clothes. Sold the furniture. But these three things remained, like anchors keeping him moored to a life that no longer existed.

His therapist called it avoidance. His sister called it necessary. Marcus called it Tuesday.

He tipped the vitamins into the trash. The sound they made — a cascade of small hard things surrendering to gravity — echoed in the empty kitchen. Merlin watched, unimpressed, then jumped onto the counter where the bottle had been.

"You're next," Marcus told him. "My sister's taking you on Saturday."

The cat blinked slowly, unconcerned with Marcus's hollow threats. Merlin had already outlived one owner; he seemed confident he could survive another transition.

Marcus took the hat from the hook. For weeks he'd avoided touching it, as if the wool might dissolve at his touch, as if his fingerprints might contaminate the last thing she'd worn outside this apartment. But something shifted today — maybe the sunlight, maybe the vitamins hitting the bottom of the trash can, maybe just that three months was exactly how long it took to realize that staying frozen in grief was its own kind of dying.

He opened the door. The world outside was gray but breathing. Neighbors walking dogs. A delivery truck double-parked. The ordinary selfish momentum of things continuing.

Marcus pulled on the hat. It was too big for him — she'd always had a small head, delicate, the kind of skull that made doctors whisper words like "metastasis" and "palliative." The brim fell over his eyes. He looked ridiculous.

He stepped out anyway.