What She Left Behind

Maya stood in her bathroom, scissors poised at shoulder-length brown hair that had grown three inches since Elena's funeral. Three months of numb mornings, of going through motions, of the persistent voicemail from Elena's husband asking if she'd come by to pick up the rest of her things.

"Do it," she whispered.

The first lock fell into the sink. Then another. With each cut, she remembered Elena's hands in her hair — braiding it before job interviews, brushing it while they drank wine on her balcony, holding it back while Maya vomited after chemotherapy. Elena had been the one person who never flinched at the bald patches, who helped her tape eyebrows onto her face before dates, who promised they'd grow old together even when the doctors gave Maya thirty percent odds.

Maya had survived. Elena had died in a car crash on her way to the hospital with a broken leg.

She looked in the mirror. Chopped, uneven strands stuck out at odd angles. She looked like she was falling apart.

Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.

"Maya? This is David. Elena's husband. I hate to ask, but I have a meeting and the dog sitter cancelled. Could you watch Buster for a few hours?"

"Of course," she heard herself say.

Buster, Elena's golden retriever, met her at the door with frantic tail wags and a toy in his mouth. David gave her a grateful smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"Thanks again. He really likes you."

He left. Maya sat on Elena's couch, surrounded by Elena's life. Elena's throw pillows. Elena's art on the walls. Elena's smell still lingering in the fabric.

Buster rested his head on her knee, whining softly.

"I know," Maya said, fingers tangling in his fur. "I miss her too."

She found herself in the bathroom, staring at Elena's hairbrush. Brown strands wound through the bristles — Elena's hair, left behind like fingerprints. Maya used to joke that Elena shed everywhere. Now those shed hairs felt like artifacts, holy relics of a friendship that had defined thirty years of her life.

Buster scratched at the door. He wanted to go out.

They walked the route Elena must have taken a thousand times. Past the coffee shop where they'd met in college. Past the bookstore where they'd celebrated Maya's first publication. Past the park where they'd spread a blanket the day before Elena died, talking about nothing and everything, making plans they'd never keep.

They stopped at a bench. Buster settled at her feet, chin on her paws. Maya ran her hand over his soft ears, suddenly overwhelmed.

"She promised," she said to the dog. "She said we'd grow old together. She said she'd be there when I published my next book. She said —" Her voice cracked.

A woman walked by with a stroller, glancing at Maya's hacked-off hair with something like recognition. Like she'd seen a woman who'd lost something essential.

Maya pulled a small ziplock bag from her pocket. Elena's hair, gathered from her brush the last time Maya had visited, before the accident. She'd taken it without knowing why, without admitting to herself what she planned to do.

She opened the bag. Let the brown strands drift into the wind, watching them catch the sunlight like gold dust.

"Friend," she said, the word feeling inadequate for what they'd been, for the space Elena occupied in her chest, in her history, in the architecture of who she'd become. "Friend didn't cover it. Never had."