Unspooled

The rain had been falling for three days when Maya found him in the bathroom, scissors in one hand, a clump of dark hair in the other. The chemotherapy had taken Erik's hair three weeks ago, but he'd kept trimming the stubborn patches that refused to surrender.

"I can't do it anymore," he said, not meeting her eyes. Maya knelt beside him, the tile cold against her knees. She took the scissors gently from his grip and set them on the counter.

"Let me," she said. She trimmed the last uneven tufts while water drummed against the window, relentless and indifferent. When she finished, Erik looked like someone else—someone harder, someone preparing for battle.

That evening, the cable went out. Some storm-damaged line somewhere between their living room and the world. Usually this would send Erik into a spiral of dark humor and fury, but tonight he only sat in the blue-gray light from the window, watching the rain blur the garden into abstract strokes of color.

"Do you remember," Maya said from the doorway, "that weekend in Portland? When we stayed in that cabin?"

Erik turned slowly. "The one with the fox?"

"Yes. The fox that came onto the porch every morning like it was paying rent." They'd watched it through the fogged glass, that sleek rust-colored creature with eyes like polished amber, eating the scrambled eggs Erik left on a paper plate. They'd been younger then, or perhaps just foolish enough to think they had forever.

"She had kits in the crawlspace," Erik said. "I saw them playing in the leaves. Three of them."

"I know. I saw them too."

He looked at her then, really looked at her, for the first time in weeks. "Why didn't you tell me you knew?"

"Because you liked having secrets." Maya crossed the room and sat beside him on the couch. "You liked that there was something in that place that belonged only to you."

The cable box sat dark on the shelf, a dead monument to entertainment and distraction. Without it, the house felt larger, cavernous with the things they weren't saying. Water dripped from the eaves in a rhythm that seemed to count down something irreversible.

"I'm afraid," Erik said. His voice sounded very small in the gathering dark. "Not of dying. Of leaving you alone with all these secrets."

Maya took his hand, his fingers thin and cold. "You won't be the first one to leave me with secrets," she said. "But you're the only one who ever trusted me to keep them."

Outside, something moved in the garden—maybe the wind, maybe something wilder. For a moment, Maya imagined that fox from eight years ago, somewhere out there in the rain, sleek and clever and impossibly alive. She squeezed Erik's hand and didn't let go.