What Remains

The vitamin bottle sat on her nightstand, orange and white capsules promising optimism she no longer felt. Sarah swallowed two dry, staring at the pillow where a single dark hair coiled like a question mark. Jeremy's hair, lighter than hers, always left these small betrayals.

"We need to talk," he'd said that morning, but the words had felt rehearsed. His friend's voice from the night before still echoed in her memory—David, always the cable connecting Jeremy to his worst impulses, transmitting doubts like some slow-acting poison.

Barnaby, their golden retriever, sensed it first. Usually he'd greet Jeremy with full-body enthusiasm, but yesterday he'd just watched from his bed, chin on paws, when Jeremy came home smelling of whiskey and someone else's perfume. Even the dog knew.

Sarah found the cable bill first. Hotel charges in a neighborhood where Jeremy had no business being. Then the receipts. Then the silence between them grew thick enough to choke on.

Now she packed. Folded seven years into cardboard while Barnaby watched with that terrible understanding dogs sometimes have—when someone is about to leave and not come back. Her hair caught in the zipper of her old duffel, long dark strands that Jeremy used to wrap around his fingers when they couldn't sleep, back when insomnia was their shared problem.

"It's not what you think," Jeremy stood in the doorway, but his eyes said otherwise. "David's going through a divorce. I was just—"

"Being a friend?" She zipped the bag. "Being there?"

"Yes."

She swallowed another vitamin without water. "Your friend's problems aren't why you smelled like her, Jeremy."

His silence was answer enough.

The dog stood, stretched, came to her. Not to Jeremy. Even Barnaby knew which side of this split was permanent.

She left the vitamins on the nightstand. Let him figure out what to do with all that unclaimed optimism now.