What the Cat Knows

The orange cat sat on the windowsill, watching Julia pack. Mr. Whiskers had always been David's cat—following him room to room, sleeping on his chest—but now the animal's yellow eyes were fixed on her with something that looked uncomfortably like judgment.

She tossed a bottle of multivitamins into the trash can. David had started taking them three months ago, around the same time he began coming home late smelling of someone else's perfume. Some desperate attempt at renewal, at proving he still cared about being alive for her. The bottle was half-empty. Like their marriage.

"You're being dramatic," he'd said last night, his voice that familiar velvet that had once felt like safety. "She's just a friend from work."

A fox. That's what her mother would have called him—sly and beautiful and impossible to domesticate. Julia had spent seven years thinking she was the exception to his nature.

The cat meowed, sudden and sharp, as David's key turned in the lock.

"Julia." He stood in the doorway, his coat still on, that carefully practiced expression of concern on his face. "We need to talk about this rationally."

She laughed, and it sounded like glass breaking. "Rational. You want rational?" She held up her phone, showing him the text messages she'd found—not that she needed them. The vitamin bottle in the trash had told her everything. The way he'd started jogging, the new shirts, the sudden interest in skincare at forty-two. A midlife crisis, or maybe just life finally breaking through.

"I'm not leaving," he said, but he didn't move closer.

"No," Julia said softly. "You're not. I am."

She shouldered past him, the cat's eyes following her to the door. Outside, the world was gray and endless, and for the first time in years, she didn't know what she would become. But she knew what she wasn't anymore.

Someone's fool.