The Last Papaya

Elena watched Thomas's gray hair catch the morning light as he bent over the cutting board. Thirty years of marriage had etched itself into the strands that had once matched her own dark brown. Now his hair was silver at the temples, hers dyed a shade too dark to be natural.

"Remember Costa Rica?" she asked, not moving from the doorway.

Thomas didn't look up. "Every day."

He was slicing a papaya with surgical precision, the same way he'd done on that trip they'd taken two months before the accident. Their dog, Buster, had been alive then — a golden retriever who'd bounded through tropical waves and fallen asleep between them in a bed that had seemed too small even then. Now the papaya sat alone on the counter, its orange flesh bleeding onto the cutting board, and Buster's ashes were in an urn on the highest shelf where they couldn't accidentally knock him over.

"You started leaving things undone," she said. "Small things. Toothpaste caps, mail unopened, papaya ripening on the counter until it fermented."

"I'm tired, El."

"No." She stepped closer. "You're disappearing. And I can't decide if you're doing it on purpose or if it's just happening to you."

The knife paused. His hair fell over his eyes, hiding whatever expression might have been there. Outside, a neighbor's dog barked — some young, eager thing that still believed in balls being thrown and masters who always came home.

"After the accident," Thomas said softly, "I promised myself I'd stop pretending we could go back to before. But I can't seem to move forward either."

He set down the knife and turned. His hair was messy, his eyes were tired, and the papaya sat between them like something that had waited too long to be consumed.

"Maybe," Elena said, reaching for his hand, "we stop trying to go anywhere. Maybe we just eat the papaya before it rots."