The Last Thing She Said

The fox had been coming to their garden for three weeks before Mark left, a vixen with mangy fur and one ear that stood at a permanent alert. Sarah watched it now from the kitchen window, phone vibrating in her hand with messages she refused to read. Her mother's goldfish—Bubbles, Mark had named it, with that particular brand of husband irony thatmasked tenderness—swam in lazy circles in its bowl on the counter.

"You're checking your iPhone again," Mark had said that morning, not as a question but as an accusation. "She could be dead for all we know, and you're looking at memes."

"It's how I cope," she'd replied, which was both true and not. The goldfish had stared at them both from its glass prison, mouth opening and closing in silent judgment.

Now the fox outside caught something—a mouse, maybe—and shook it violently in its jaws. Nature didn't cope. Nature didn't scroll through other people's lives while its own family fell apart. Nature just was, in all its terrible clarity.

Her phone buzzed again. Sarah looked down: her sister's name lit up the screen. She swiped left, letting it go to voicemail. Some things deserved undivided attention, even grief. Even endings.

The fox lifted its head and looked directly at her through the window, eyes bright with ancient knowing. Then it turned and vanished into the hedge, taking something small and lifeless with it.

Sarah finally turned off her phone and went to feed the fish.