What the Cat Knew

Margaret sat at the edge of the hotel pool, her legs dangling in the chlorinated water, watching papaya juice slide down her wrist. The fruit had been Richard's favorite—a luxury he'd denied himself until the diagnosis, until everything became permissible and nothing mattered.

A stray cat with matted orange fur materialized from beneath the lounger, eyeing her breakfast. Margaret tossed a chunk of papaya. The cat sniffed it delicately, then ate, its rough tongue scraping the concrete.

"You're pickier than he was," she murmured.

Three weeks since the funeral. Two since she'd found the gray hair—Richard's hair—gathered in a plastic bag inside his sock drawer. A lock he'd saved after chemotherapy, when they'd both believed survival was possible. When he'd still had hope.

The pool lights shimmered beneath the surface, casting rippling reflections against her skin. She should be at the conference. Instead, she'd told her colleagues she was sick. The irony wasn't lost on her.

"That papaya's going to rot."

Margaret jumped. A man stood at the pool's edge—maybe fifty, silver hair, swimmer's shoulders. His voice held the rough edge of someone who'd been crying, or hadn't slept, or both.

"The cat likes it," she said.

"The cat would eat anything." He sat beside her, close but not touching. "My wife loved papaya."

"Loved?"

"Died. Six months."

The air between them shifted—something fragile and terrible blooming in the silence. The cat wound around the man's ankles, purring.

"I'm sorry," Margaret said.

"I'm sorry too." He looked at her then, really looked. "You're wearing black."

"It's all I packed."

He nodded, understanding. "I'm David."

"Margaret."

They sat watching the pool's surface, the morning light refracting through water, through loss, through the terrible beautiful continuity of a world that kept spinning when yours had stopped. The cat settled between them, its orange fur against both their shadows, purring as if it had known all along they would find each other here, at the edge of the water, with papaya on their hands and grief in their teeth.