What the Cat Knew

The goldfish had been floating upside down for three days before Marian finally noticed. Another week passed before she bothered to flush it. That was Marian—efficient, detached, always three steps ahead of grief, and now, apparently, of me.

I found her hat on the kitchen counter that morning, the wide-brimmed beige one she'd worn to our anniversary dinner three months ago. She never left her hats lying around. They were hung carefully, preserved like museum pieces. This one rested beside a coffee mug that wasn't mine, ceramic, chipped at the rim—mine were intact. A bachelor mug.

The cat, Bast, wound between my ankles, yowling. She'd been doing that for weeks, crying at nothing, staring at corners I couldn't see. Animals sense tremors before the earthquake hits. I'd thought she was just getting old, blind to what was happening in our own house.

"Did you have company?" I asked when Marian came home, my voice hollow as the goldfish bowl now sitting empty in the trash.

She didn't flinch. Didn't pretend. Just set her keys on the counter, her hand brushing past the hat, and said, "Yes."

"Who?"

"Does it matter?"

"It might."

"His name is David. He's a statistician. He likes my hats."

She said it without cruelty, which somehow made it worse. That was the thing about Marian—she could dismantle a decade of marriage with the calm precision of someone filing taxes. The cat watched from the doorway, her golden eyes knowing what I'd refused to see: we'd been dead longer than the goldfish, and unlike the fish, neither of us had the decency to float to the surface.

"What happens now?" I asked.

"I move out. David has a guesthouse." She picked up the hat, turned it in her hands. "You can keep Bast. She likes you better anyway."

"She hates us both. She's just hungry."

"Yes." Marian slipped the hat onto her head, tilting it precisely, smoothing the brim. "That's the trouble, isn't it? We're all just hungry. Some of us admit it."

She left without another word. Bast stopped crying after that. Some nights, when the house is too quiet, I almost miss the noise. Almost.