What Survives

Elena returned three days early from the conference in Chicago, her flight landing at 11:47 PM. She'd told Marcus she'd be gone until Friday. Some marriages required advance notice for reentry.

The house was dark except for the blue flicker of the television in the den. She found him asleep on the leather sofa, a half-eaten bowl of something on the coffee table—wilted spinach, she realized, stepping closer. He'd attempted to cook. Marcus, who claimed boiling water required unnatural talent, had purchased fresh spinach and tried. For her.

She stood there in her traveling clothes, her heart doing something complicated and traitorous in her chest.

The goldfish—Bubbles, a carnival prize from their niece's birthday party last summer, expected to die within weeks—swam to the surface of its bowl on the bookshelf. Elena had secretly researched how to care for it. Marcus had pretended not to care. Yet here it was, six months later, doing slow loops in its illuminated water.

She noticed the coaxial cable disconnected from the wall, hanging limp like a severed tendon. He'd mentioned canceling the subscription. Something about streaming services, saving money. A practical decision. Like separating their finances, like sleeping in the guest room "until the construction noise stopped" (the construction had ended in October).

Marcus stirred, blinking at her. A piece of spinach was caught between his front teeth.

"You're back," he said, sitting up. "I made—you should eat before it gets cold."

"Why didn't you let the fish die?" she asked. It wasn't what she meant to say.

He stared at her. Then: "You liked it."

"It's a fish, Marcus. It's not—it doesn't have a personality."

"No," he agreed softly. "But you were proud of it. You kept it alive."

The spinach cooled on her tongue when she finally took a bite, over-salted, under-cooked. He'd tried. She'd left. The fish swam. The cable hung dead between them.

"It's good," she said. And sat beside him on the sofa. The blue light washed over them both, caught in the tiny space between sleeping and waking, between leaving and staying, not quite ready to move in either direction.