What She Left Behind

The fedora sat on her closet shelf, gathering dust for three years. Not my style—I was a baseball cap man—but it was the only thing I hadn't been able to throw away.

I'd put it on sometimes, when the apartment got too quiet. The scent still clung to the lining: jasmine and stale cigarettes and whatever perfume she'd worn that last night. It made me feel closer to her, which was exactly what I didn't need.

The cat, Saturn, wound around my ankles as I stood there. He'd been hers too, but he'd chosen me in the divorce. Smart animal. I fed him, cleaned his litter, learned to interpret his different purrs. Sometimes I wondered if he missed her, or if cats were simply pragmatic about whoever filled the bowl.

"Hungry?" I asked. He chirped back.

I moved to the kitchen, Saturn trailing me. My dinner plans were ambitious: goat cheese salad with spinach, garlic confit, a decent pinot noir. Cooking for one felt performative, like practicing a speech for an empty room. But I'd promised myself I'd stop ordering takeout, stop living like a depressed bachelor in his twenties instead of a grown man approaching forty.

The spinach wilted in the pan, releasing that earthy, metallic smell that always made me think of health, of the future—things she'd stopped caring about somewhere around year seven. By the end, she existed on coffee and wine and whatever she could grab between shifts at the hospital. I'd cooked then too, filling the refrigerator with containers she never opened.

Saturn jumped onto the counter. I nudged him down gently.

"Not for you."

The phone buzzed. Her name lit up the screen. My heart did that stupid thing it always did—leaped, then sank. I hadn't heard from her in six months, not since the final papers arrived. I thought about not answering. I thought about throwing the phone across the room, finally putting on that hat and stepping onto the balcony and screaming into the Seattle rain.

Instead, I answered.

"I'm in town," she said. "Can I come over?"

The spinach was burning. I turned off the stove and exhaled, something tight loosening in my chest. The cat looked up at me, expectant.

"Yes," I said. "I'm making dinner."

Saturn purred like he understood everything. Maybe he did.