What the Cat Knows

The vitamin bottle sat on the counter where Elena had left it three months ago. I'd been meaning to throw it out—her half-formed attempts at health, the biotin supplements she swore would fix everything that was wrong with us. Some days I'd catch myself reaching for it, muscle memory from seven years of sharing this bathroom, this life, this slow accumulation of disappointments we called marriage.

Barnaby, her cat, wound between my legs, his orange fur bright against the gray morning light. He'd chosen me in the end, or perhaps he'd simply had no choice. Elena had left with nothing but a suitcase and her yoga mat, leaving behind all the heavy things: the furniture, the dishes, the creature who'd outlived her usefulness as a prop in her curated Instagram life.

"You know," I said to him, scratching behind his ears the way she never had patience to do, "she asked me once what love was. Not at the beginning. At the end."

The cat purred, indifferent to my existential processing.

I remembered the dinner party where she'd posed the question—what is love, really?—with that sphinx-like smile she'd perfected, the one that suggested she already knew something the rest of us didn't. I'd said something about commitment, about showing up. She'd laughed, that sharp, surprised laugh that meant I'd surprised her, and for a moment I'd thought—

But that was the problem with Elena. She loved riddles more than answers. She loved the performance of questioning more than the messy work of resolution.

The morning light caught the orange throw pillows she'd selected, the ones I'd hated but never said so. That was my riddle, wasn't it? The things I'd never said, the ways I'd learned to accommodate myself out of existence.

I swept the vitamin bottle into the trash. Barnaby watched, then jumped onto the counter, into the space where it had been. He looked at me with those ancient, knowing eyes.

"You're right," I said. "Some riddles answer themselves."