The Things We Leave Behind

Marcus stood in the produce aisle, paralyzed by the papaya display. It had been Elena's favorite—she'd eat it with lime juice and a little salt, laughing when the juice dripped down her chin. Three months since the funeral and he still couldn't walk past this section without his chest seizing up. The irony wasn't lost on him: he was the one with the heart condition, yet she was the one who died first. A brain aneurysm at forty-two, while folding laundry.

He grabbed the papaya anyway. Some perverse impulse to punish himself.

At home, the apartment smelled like whatever he'd cooked last and forgotten to clean up. The spinach in his crisper had gone slimy, much like his motivation since Elena died. His cardiologist had him on a strict diet—leafy greens, no red meat, moderate sodium. "You want to see your daughter graduate, Marcus," Dr. Patel kept saying. But some days, he wasn't sure he did want to see anything. The future stretched out before him like a prison sentence.

The baseball sat on his bedside table. A Little League trophy from when he was twelve, the last time he'd felt proud of himself. Elena had found it in a box during their move four years ago. "Look at this," she'd said, turning it over in her hands. "You were adorable." He'd snatched it back, embarrassed. But later, she'd polished it and put it on his nightstand. "You should remember who you were before everything got so heavy," she'd told him.

Heavy. The word echoed through him.

He chopped the spinach, throwing away the rotting parts, and scrambled it with eggs. The papaya sat on the counter, watching him with its dumb orange face. He couldn't eat it. He couldn't throw it away. It would sit there until it rotted, just like everything else.

His phone buzzed. His sister: "Coming over later. We need to talk about the house."

The house. Their house. The one they'd bought two months before she died. The one with the nursery they'd already started planning.

Marcus slid to the kitchen floor, his back against the cabinets. The baseball trophy glinted from the other room. Somewhere in this apartment, in the back of a closet, was the positive pregnancy test she'd taped to the bathroom mirror. The one she'd been carrying when she collapsed.

He stayed on the floor for a long time. Eventually, he got up, sliced the papaya, squeezed lime over it, and ate every piece standing at the sink. He cried the whole time. When he finished, he rinsed the plate and called his sister back.

"We can sell it," he said. "I'm done holding onto things that aren't here anymore."