The Vitamin Regimen

Emma's morning routine was precise, bordering on ritualistic. The vitamin supplements lined up like colorful sentinels on her granite countertop—D3 for the darkness that had settled in her bones since the divorce, B-complex for the anxiety that hummed beneath her skin, magnesium for the sleep that increasingly eluded her.

Her golden retriever, Barnaby, watched with patient eyes from his bed by the sliding glass door. At twelve, he moved slower these days, his once-glossy coat dulling around the muzzle. They were both aging together in this too-quiet house.

She reached for the remote, turning on the cable news. Another talking head, another crisis. Background noise to fill the silence that had become her constant companion since Richard left six months ago.

That's when she saw it—a fox, sleek and impossibly orange, slipping through the gap in her backyard fence. It moved with predatory grace, unlike Barnaby, whose tail thumped hopefully at the sight of another creature. The fox paused, looking directly at her through the glass. Something in that gaze felt like judgment.

"Well," she said to the empty room, "at least someone's living boldly."

Her phone buzzed. Richard. "Left my vitamins on your counter. Need them."

The irony wasn't lost on her. He'd needed a lot of things from her—patience, emotional labor, someone to manage the cable bills and vet appointments. All things he couldn't articulate but quietly consumed.

She looked at the vitamin bottles again. "They're here," she texted back. "Come get them."

The fox was gone when she glanced back out. Barnaby had returned to his bed, sighing in that way dogs do when they're settling into acceptance.

Emma swept the vitamins into her bag—all of them. Let him buy his own. Let him figure out which minerals his body actually needed.

She turned off the cable. The silence returned, but this time she didn't rush to fill it. Some deficiencies, she realized, weren't meant to be supplemented.