The Vitamin Regimen

The plastic bottle rattles as Sarah shakes another vitamin into her palm. B12, the label promises, for energy and vitality. She swallows it dry, standing in her kitchen at 2 AM, the refrigerator humming like a living thing she can't bring herself to feed anymore.

Three months since Mark left. Three months of vitamins, of organized closets, of pretending she's always been this person who alphabetizes her spice rack.

Her phone buzzes. A text from Lisa, her oldest friend, asking if she wants to come over tomorrow. They'd had a fight last week—something stupid about Sarah not trying hard enough to move on. Lisa had said, "You're still married to a ghost, Sarah. He's not coming back." Sarah had thrown a wine glass against the wall. They haven't spoken since.

Sarah opens the refrigerator and stares at the Tupperware container on the middle shelf. Mark's baseball collection, protected in humidity-controlled plastic like museum artifacts. He'd been obsessed with them in those last months, spending hours on eBay, bidding on signed balls from players he'd never watched play. It was the first thing that made him seem like a stranger.

The terminal diagnosis had come two weeks later. Early onset. Aggressive. The vitamins were supposed to help, the doctor had said, as if supplements could fix the unravelling of a mind.

Sarah remembers the last time they'd gone to their cabin in Montana. Mark had pointed at something in the distance—a bear, he'd insisted, though she'd never seen it. He'd been so certain, so excited, his face lit up with that boyish enthusiasm she'd fallen in love with twenty years ago. She'd nodded and agreed, because that's what you do when someone you love is slipping away in inches.

Now she wonders if there ever was a bear. If there ever was a Mark who collected baseballs, or if that was just the disease wearing his face like a mask.

Sarah picks up her phone and types: I'll come over. Then she adds: Can we get tacos? That place we used to go?

The reply is immediate. Mexican it is. 7?

She opens the vitamin bottle again and shakes out two more, though the directions say one daily. What does it matter? She's already taking them for ghosts anyway. The vitamins rattle in her hand like small bones, like promises she's still learning how to keep, even when there's no one left to make them to.