The Things We Keep

Elena stared at the nightstand, where her late husband's fedora lay like a collapsed shadow against the lamp base. Three years since David's funeral, and she still couldn't bring herself to move the hat.

Her iPhone buzzed - another notification from the dating app her sister had insisted she download. Forty-seven years old and back in the marketplace, swiping through faces that held none of the weathered warmth of David's. She silenced the phone without looking.

On the nightstand next to the hat sat the bottle of vitamins her doctor had prescribed after the last checkup. "Precautionary," he'd called them. Elena had bought them but never opened them. What was the point of preserving a body that felt more like a rental with each passing year?

Milo, their tabby cat, jumped onto the bed with his familiar thud. He head-butted her hand, purring like a small engine. David had brought him home as a kitten on their tenth anniversary - "Something to keep you company when I'm working late," he'd said. Now, at seventeen, Milo was blind in one eye and moved with arthritic slowness, but he was still here. Still demanding his breakfast at 6 AM sharp, still judging her with those mismatched eyes.

Elena ran her fingers through his fur, and he purred louder, pressing against her palm. The vitamins caught her eye again - orange plastic promising health, longevity, more mornings like this one.

She reached for the bottle instead of the phone.

The hat stayed on the nightstand. Some things you moved past. Some things you kept.

Milo shifted, curling into the warm space beside her hip. Elena lay back and watched the dust motes dance in the morning light. She dry-swallowed two vitamins.

Later, she would delete the app. Tomorrow, maybe she'd move the hat. Today, she had breakfast to make for a cat who had outlasted love itself, and vitamins that promised she might outlast him too.