What Remains

The taxidermied bear stood in the corner of the living room, its glass eyes catching the morning light. Sarah had hated it—called it a macabre reminder of David's midlife crisis phase, that month he'd tried to reinvent himself as an outdoorsman. Now she was gone, and the bear remained, along with the mortgage and her half-empty closet.

Barnaby, their elderly golden retriever, wheezed at David's feet. The dog had been Sarah's companion for thirteen years, through promotions and miscarriages, through dinner parties and silent Sundays. Now Barnaby looked at David with something like accusation, as if David had personally engineered the dissolution of everything.

"She's not coming back," David told the dog. Barnaby thumped his tail once, hopelessly.

In the kitchen, the goldfish swam in endless circles in its bowl on the windowsill. Another relic Sarah had left behind—a carnival prize from some date they'd barely remembered, now swimming through its fifth year of captivity. David watched it for a long moment, hypnotized by its stupid persistence. The fish knew nothing of divorce lawyers or asset division or the crushing silence of a queen bed. It just kept swimming, mouth opening and closing in perpetual surprise.

David thought about Sarah's final words: *You never really saw me.* He'd stood there stunned as she packed her suitcase, unable to form words that might change anything. The truth was, she wasn't wrong. He'd stopped seeing her years ago, somewhere between the promotion to regional manager and the second miscarriage they'd never discussed. She'd become a fixture, reliable as the bear, constant as the fish.

He poured coffee into his favorite mug—the one Sarah had bought him in Rome, back when they still made each other laugh. The apartment felt impossibly large. The bear watched him with dead eyes. The dog sighed at his feet. Somewhere beyond the window, the city continued its indifferent rotation.

David thought about getting another goldfish. Maybe two. Company for the first one. He wondered if fish got lonely, or if their endless swimming was enough. He took his coffee to the window and watched the traffic, alone with the things they'd accumulated together, each one a small monument to a life that no longer existed.