The Things We Keep

Maya found her old iphone in the back of the junk drawer, wedged behind a bag of freezer-burned spinach she'd been meaning to use for months. The screen still lit up, somehow, after all these years. Three missed calls from Sarah. The night everything fell apart.

She'd been meaning to throw it out for years, like she'd been meaning to call Sarah back. Like she'd been meaning to do a lot of things.

The dog—Buster, ancient now—stumbled into the kitchen, his nails clicking on the linoleum. He looked up at her with milky eyes, and she scratched behind his ears the way he used to like. He'd been a puppy when Sarah last visited. They'd sat in this very kitchen, drinking wine and laughing about their disastrous attempts at online dating, while Sarah's golden retriever puppy destroyed a baseball cap David had left on the floor.

"Remember that?" Maya whispered to Buster. "She was supposed to be your godmother."

She'd canceled the dinner where she was going to introduce Sarah to David—her David, not the one whose cap the puppy had chewed. Then she'd stopped answering calls. Then she'd moved across the country without saying goodbye. All because she'd fallen in love with Sarah's ex, the one Sarah wasn't quite over yet, the one who'd broken her heart six months earlier at a baseball game, of all places.

Some betrayals didn't feel like betrayals until you looked back at them from a distance.

Maya's thumb hovered over Sarah's number. Ten years of silence. David was gone now—cancer, cruel and fast. She'd sold the house. The spinach in the freezer was probably older than some of her coworkers.

She pressed call.

"Hello?" A woman's voice, older but still Sarah.

"I found an old phone," Maya said. "It had your missed calls. From that night."

Silence. Then: "I've got this amazing spinach recipe now. I make it every Sunday."

Maya laughed, and it felt like something breaking open inside her chest. "I've still got that bag in my freezer."

"Bring it over," Sarah said. "And Maya?"

"Yeah?"

"I still have that baseball cap. I keep it in the drawer where I keep things I can't throw away."

Maya looked around her empty kitchen. Buster whined, impatient for dinner. She thought about all the things she'd kept, and all the things she'd thrown away.

"I'll be there in an hour," she said.

The spinach could wait a little longer. Some things, it turned out, were worth keeping after all.