What the Cat Knew

Emma stood at the kitchen counter, forcing down another handful of raw spinach while Barnaby watched from the windowsill. His amber eyes followed her every movement, that unblinking feline gaze that made her feel simultaneously judged and understood. The cat had been her wedding gift from Richard, exactly three years ago tomorrow.

"You're still doing that?" Richard's voice came from the doorway. He was already dressed for work,西装完美无瑕, while she stood there in her robe with green teeth.

"Doctor said my iron's low again." She swallowed the bitter leaves. "And the vitamin D supplements aren't enough."

He checked his watch. "We need to talk about tonight."

"Dinner with your mother? I haven't forgotten."

"Not dinner." He stepped closer, and Barnaby's ears flattened. "About us. About the trying, the treatments, all of it."

Emma's stomach lurched. The spinach suddenly felt like stones in her gut. This was the conversation they'd been dodging for six months, since the third failed IVF cycle. Since she'd started measuring her life in blood draws and hormone injections and vitamin deficiencies.

"What about us?" she whispered, though she already knew.

"I can't watch you disappear anymore." His voice broke. "The woman who loved art and wine and staying up until dawn arguing about philosophy—she's gone. And in her place is this person who counts milligrams and tracks ovulation like it's a second job."

Barnaby jumped down from the windowsill and wound between Richard's legs, purring. The cat had always chosen sides.

"So that's it?" Emma heard the shrillness in her own voice, hated it. "You're leaving because I'm trying to have your child?"

"I'm leaving because we both are. And neither of us knows how to stop."

Later, after he'd walked out with just a suitcase and the clothes on his back, Emma sat on the kitchen floor. Barnaby crawled into her lap and kneaded her thighs with sharp claws, demanding attention through the fog of her grief. She looked at the remaining spinach on the counter, at the neat row of vitamin bottles that had become her religion.

Outside, the sun rose over a city full of couples waking up together. Some would try for babies today. Some would give up. Some would never know they should care. Emma stroked the cat's soft head and realized, with devastating clarity, that she had spent so long becoming a mother she had forgotten how to be a wife. And now, perhaps, she had forgotten how to be anything at all.