What the Bear Left Behind

The baseball game droned on in the background, another loss for the home team, as Marie sat across from her brother in the dimly lit kitchen. Dad's old chair sat empty in the corner, the leather cracked where his bear of a frame had worn it down over thirty years of evenings.

"You're not eating," Marie said, gesturing to the untouched slice of pizza on Hunter's plate.

"Not hungry." Hunter peeled an orange, the citrus scent sharp in the stagnant air. "Three months today."

Marie nodded. Their father had been a man of few words, a force of nature who'd left behind a house full of things and very little understanding of the man himself. It was in the sorting through his belongings that they'd found it—the taxidermied fox in the attic, its glass eyes watching them from atop an old trunk, preserved in unnatural stillness.

"Remember how he used to take us to games?" Hunter asked, finally meeting her eyes. "The signed ball he got us at that Yankees game?"

"He only went because Mom made him," Marie said. "He sat there the whole time, checking his watch."

"Still. He tried."

"Did he?" Marie thought of the fox again, the way it had been positioned mid-pounce, frozen in a moment of violence it would never complete. Their father had bought it at some estate sale, another trophy for a house already full of things that meant nothing to him.

Hunter laughed bitterly. "You know what's messed up? I asked him once, when I was a kid, why he kept that fox. He told me it reminded him that sometimes you have to be clever just to survive."

"And what did you think that meant?"

"I thought he was talking about work. The business. The way he had to fight for everything he got." Hunter's voice cracked. "But now I wonder if he meant himself. If he felt hunted his whole life."

The baseball game announcer's voice swelled—the crowd cheering, the crack of the bat, the orchestrated drama of men playing a children's game in front of thousands.

"Maybe," Marie said, reaching across the table to cover her brother's hand with hers. "Or maybe he just liked the way it looked in the attic, watching us."

"You think he loved us?" The question hung between them, simple and devastating.

Marie squeezed his hand, her palm warm against his cold fingers. "I think he did what he could. Which isn't the same thing."

Outside, summer pressed against the windows. Somewhere in the house, the old fox watched them from its shadowed perch, its preserved fur immaculate, its cleverness eternal. Neither of them would go up there tonight. Some questions, Marie had learned, were better left unanswered, frozen in place like creatures that would never again breathe.