The Weathering

Margot stood on the balcony, her palm pressed against the cold glass of the sliding door that had stuck shut since last winter. Inside, the dog—a golden retriever named Bear who had outlived his welcome and most of his teeth—whined at her feet. He could smell the rain coming. Animals always knew before the humans did.

The coaxial cable lay coiled on the floor like a dead snake, a relic from when she'd tried to install cable television herself, three years into a relationship that had already begun to fray. David had laughed at her frustration, his hands covering hers as he showed her how to connect the wires properly. That same night, he'd confessed he'd been sleeping with someone from his office. The cable had worked perfectly. Nothing else had.

Now David was gone for good, moved to Seattle with a woman who liked hiking and farmers markets and all the things Margot had pretended to enjoy. Bear whined again, and she picked him up, his arthritic body surprisingly light. He licked her wrist, the rough tongue like sandpaper against skin that had forgotten the intimacy of touch.

Lightning fractured the sky, illuminating the backyard where the palm tree David had planted stood dead and brown, a tropical joke in a temperate climate. He'd said it would be their forever tree, something that would grow as they grew together. Instead, it had died within six months, and she'd never had the heart to remove it.

Bear shivered in her arms as thunder rolled across the valley. She remembered how David used to hold her during storms, his body curved around hers, his breath warm against her neck. Some nights she missed that more than she missed him—the comfort of being held, the illusion of safety, the weight of another person anchoring her to the world.

The rain began to fall, hard and sudden. Margot stepped back inside, closing the door on the storm. She would order takeout and watch something streaming, something without commercials or memories. She would pet Bear and wait for sleep and try not to think about how three years could dissolve into nothing but a dead palm tree and a dog who belonged to a man she no longer knew.