The Things We Keep

Mara found the bottle of vitamin D pills in his medicine cabinet, expiration date three years past. She held it like evidence, though she wasn't sure what crime it proved. They'd moved in together six months ago, and she was still discovering his ghost landscapes—the parts of him that remained inaccessible despite sharing a bed, a bathroom, a life.

The cat, Luna, wound around her ankles, purring with a demanding affection that felt almost reproachful. David had brought Luna home from a shelter two weeks after his father died, the same week he stopped showing up to his therapy appointments. The cat was his anchor, or his excuse—depending on which conversation you were having.

Downstairs, David was swimming laps in the darkness of the living room, not in water but in the blue glow of his work computer. The ethernet cable trailed across the floor like a mechanical snake, umbilical to something that wasn't her. She watched from the stairs as he typed furiously, backlit by the screen, his face illuminated in that sick, electric pallor that had become his complexion over the past three months.

Her iphone buzzed on the nightstand—David's mother again, calling to check on her son, as if Mara were his caseworker rather than his girlfriend. She declined the call, just as she'd declined the last twelve.

The cable from his laptop was strung tight, tension lines in the dim room. She thought about unplugging it, creating a forced interruption, a power outage of the heart. But she knew he'd only find another connection, another workaround, some way to remain submerged in whatever digital waters he'd chosen to drown himself in.

The vitamin bottle clattered as she set it on the counter. Luna meowed, a sound like a question. Mara realized she didn't know the answer anymore.

She walked past him on the way to the kitchen. He didn't look up. The cable remained plugged in, the current flowing, the distance between them measured not in feet but in bandwidth. In the kitchen, she poured wine with hands that wanted to shake but wouldn't. Some things you keep. Some things you let go of. She was still learning which was which.