The Last Goodbye

The coaxial cable lay severed on the floor between them, a copper serpent exposed—just like their marriage. Elena had sliced through it with the same precision she'd used to dismantle their life together over the past six months. No dramatic scenes. Just the slow, surgical extraction of herself from their shared existence.

"You're still thinking about her," she said, not a question.

Mark stared at the cable. The baseball game on the television had dissolved into static, just like everything else. He'd been watching for the past three hours, not because he cared about the score, but because the announcers' voices filled the silence that had grown between them. The same silence that now filled this room, heavy and suffocating.

"Padel," he said, the word absurd in the moment. "She plays padel now."

Elena laughed, but it wasn't humorous—it was the sound of something breaking beyond repair. "That's what you're thinking about? Her padel game?"

"It's what she told me. Last week. When I called."

"You called your ex-wife last week."

"I called to ask about the summer house."

"You called because you're lonely. Because you realized what happens when someone actually leaves."

She was right, of course. Elena was always right. It was her most infuriating quality, the one that had made him fall in love with her twelve years ago, the one that now made him want to scream. But he didn't scream. He just picked up the severed cable and turned it over in his hands.

Outside, something moved in the garden. A fox, sleek and russet, paused beneath the window. It watched them through the glass, eyes calculating, opportunistic. It knew something they didn't—how to survive when things fell apart. How to move forward, to hunt, to live.

"You called her because you wanted her to want you again," Elena said, her voice soft now. "But she doesn't. And I'm tired of being your second choice."

The fox vanished into the darkness. Mark dropped the cable. It hit the floor with a dull thud.

"I never called her," he said.

Elena looked at him for a long moment. Then she walked out the door, and this time, he knew she wasn't coming back.