The Last Vitamin

The bottle sat on her nightstand—vitamin D supplements he'd bought during that winter they both forgot to go outside. Sarah stared at the orange plastic container, its expiration date approaching like a quiet deadline. Two years since David moved out, and she was still living off the residue of their shared life.

Her iPhone lit up beside her, the screen cutting through the morning gray. A notification: "Your storage is almost full." A metaphor, she thought, for everything these days.

She'd been dreaming about the fox again. The one that used to appear in their backyard in Maine, its rust-colored coat brilliant against snow, watching them with those too-knowing yellow eyes. David had called it their spirit animal—cunning, adaptable, survivors. The last time they'd spoken, drunk and disastrous at 2 AM, he'd asked if she still saw it.

"Everywhere," she'd lied.

The truth was, she only saw it in dreams now, darting between memories she couldn't quite catch, leaving behind only tracks in snow that melted before she could follow.

Sarah reached for her phone, scrolling through photos from three years ago. There it was: the fox, caught mid-bound, and beside it, David's hand holding a vitamin C tablet—his ridiculous habit of posing with whatever was in his pocket when she aimed the camera.

She'd archived everything but couldn't bring herself to delete. The weight of all those moments, stored in glowing glass, was both anchor and lifeline.

The fox appeared at her window then—real this time, not a dream fragment. It pressed its nose against the glass, exhaling steam that bloomed and vanished. Sarah watched it study her with those ancient, intelligent eyes.

Then it turned and loped away toward the woods, moving with purpose, like it had somewhere important to be.

Sarah uncurled her fingers from the nightstand. The vitamin bottle clattered into the trash can. She picked up her phone and began—really began—to delete.

Some things, she understood, you had to let hunt you down. And some things you had to release, trusting the ones who mattered would find their way back, or find their way forward, without the weight of everything you couldn't say.