The Vitamin Counter

Marcus had been dead three weeks when Elena found the vitamin bottle in his nightstand. Not his usual ones—these were an expensive imported brand she'd never seen before, tucked behind his passport. The expiration date was two years past.

She sat on the edge of the bed they'd shared for seventeen years, the bottle cool in her palm. Downstairs, Barnaby—his aging golden retriever—scratched at the door, insistent. Barnaby who'd loved Marcus best, who still waited by the garage door each evening.

"Just a moment," she called, but her voice cracked.

The pills rattled as she shook them. Two fell into her hand: identical white tablets. Except they weren't. Under the lamplight, she saw the faint scratch marks. Micro-etching. She turned one at an angle. Numbers. A date. Coordinates?

Her stomach hollowed. Marcus was an accountant. He did taxes for small businesses. He gardened. He loved Barnaby.

She remembered his business trips to Chicago. Portland. Austin. Always quarterly, always routine. The way he'd come back exhausted, needing extra sleep. The way his phone would sometimes sit face-down on the counter.

Barnaby whined again, and something in the sound made her blood run cold. Marcus's phone had used that same tone when he received certain messages. A pattern.

She went to the home office they'd never used as a nursery. Bookshelves lined the walls. She pulled down the tax code volumes he kept for reference, something he'd joked was his sleeping aid. They were heavy, dense. The third one felt wrong—lighter.

When she opened it, a false bottom slid away.

Five passports, four aliases, a stack of cash in various currencies. And a photo, faded at the edges, of a younger Marcus she'd never met, standing beside a woman who looked like her but wasn't. Another life. Another name.

She didn't cry. She thought about how she'd been meaning to start taking vitamins herself. How she'd complained about feeling tired, how Marcus had suggested she see a doctor. Concern, or distraction?

Barnaby scratched at the office door now, and she let him in. He limped to her, pressed his warm flank against her leg. This, at least, was real. His loyalty, his need. The dog who'd loved a man who'd never existed.

"I know," she told him, scratching behind his ears. "I know."

She gathered the passports, the cash, the vitamin bottle with its micro-etched coordinates. She would call the number she found taped inside the book's spine. She would learn whatever truth remained.

But first, she needed to feed the dog.