The Medicine Cabinet

The bottle of prenatal vitamins sat on the edge of the sink, mocking her. Three months of swallowed hope, and still the pregnancy tests came back negative. Marie traced her palm over her flat abdomen, feeling the ridiculous emptiness there.

In the living room, thunder cracked. Not actual weather—their old dog, Barnaby, dreaming of chase, his paws twitching against the hardwood. The cat, Luna, watched from her perch on the refrigerator, judgment in those yellow eyes.

"You're obsessing," David said from the doorway. He held two mugs of tea, steam rising like ghost fingers between them. "It'll happen when it happens."

Marie wanted to scream. It was easy for him to say—his contribution took five minutes in the dark, hers was a daily regimen of shots and supplements and temperature charts. The lightning flash of attraction that had drawn them together five years ago had burned down to this: resentment in fluorescent bathroom lighting.

"My sister's pregnant," she said instead. "She announced at dinner tonight. We're supposed to be happy for her."

David set the mugs on the counter. "And you're not."

"I'm trying to be. But God, David, she's twenty-four. She wasn't even trying. And here I am, swallowing a horse vitamin every morning with my organic green juice, charting my cycle like it's a second job—"

"You think this isn't hard for me too?" His voice cracked. Something broke open between them, raw and weeping. "I see you looking at babies in the park. I hear you in the bathroom at night, crying so quietly you think I can't hear."

Marie turned to him, really looked at him. The lines around his eyes, deeper than she remembered. The way his shoulders carried the weight of her disappointment.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I thought I was the only one drowning."

"We're both drowning." He reached for her hand, palm to palm, their fingers lacing together. "But we can do it together. Or we can figure out something else. Adoption, fostering—or maybe we're just meant to be the cool aunt and uncle who give the kids too much sugar and send them home."

Barnaby whimpered in his sleep, chasing something just out of reach. Luna leaped down and wound between their legs, demanding attention.

"Maybe," Marie said, "we start by being kind to each other again."

She picked up the vitamin bottle and set it in the medicine cabinet, closing the door on the ritual that had come to define them. Outside, actual rain began to fall, washing the evening clean.