What Remains

The goldfish circled his bowl, a orange comet trailing memory through water that had grown cloudy in the six months since Elena died. Marcus watched it from the armchair she'd loved, his tea cooling on the side table where she'd left her reading glasses the night before the ambulance came.

The cat, Bast, wound around his ankles, her purr like a small motor fighting against the silence of the house. She was Elena's cat, really—a creature of routine and stubborn affection who now seemed to understand that Marcus required someone to need him. Her food bowl, replenished daily, was the only schedule he kept.

"You're hungry again," he said to Bast, voice rusty from disuse. She blinked up at him, then returned to weaving through his legs as he moved to the kitchen.

In the backyard, the dog—Buster, ancient now and mostly blind—lay in the patch of sunlight that migrated across the lawn. Elena had found him wandering behind a gas station twelve years ago, mangy and terrified. She'd brought him home like she brought home strays: with certainty that they belonged somewhere warm.

Marcus stepped outside, the screen door's groan familiar. Buster lifted his head at the sound, tail thumping a slow rhythm against the grass.

"There you are," Marcus said, sitting beside him. The dog's muzzle was white now, his cloudy eyes fixed somewhere past Marcus's shoulder. "Still here."

The goldfish had been Elena's birthday gift to herself three years ago. A reminder that she could keep something alive. Now Marcus performed the ritual she'd established: flakes sprinkled across the water's surface, watching the flash of orange rise to meet them.

The therapist said it would get easier. That grief was not a straight line but a spiral, circling back on itself with less force each time. But Marcus found himself stuck in the circle of this house—the cat who demanded breakfast, the dog who needed his medication, the goldfish who expected his dinner.

He wasn't keeping them alive. They were keeping him.

Bast appeared at the screen door, meowing her insistence. Buster heaved himself up, joints stiff, and limped toward the house. The goldfish waited.

Marcus stood, his knees popping, and followed them inside. Tomorrow he would call the plumber about the dripping faucet. Tomorrow he would sort through Elena's closet. Tomorrow he would water the plants she'd loved.

But not today. Today there was still feeding to do.