What the Cat Knows

Marcus stood in the kitchen at 2 AM, staring at a wilted bag of spinach like it held the answer to his marriage. Three years with Elena, and he still couldn't decipher her. She was a sphinx in maternity clothes, pregnant with their second child, her riddles delivered in sighs and slammed doors.

"You're just going through the motions," she'd told him earlier that evening. "A zombie in a suit."

The accusation stung because it wasn't entirely wrong. He popped a vitamin D supplement—his daily ritual of pretending to care about longevity when he barely cared about the present. The cat, Bast, wound around his ankles, purring like she understood everything and judged nothing.

"You're the lucky one," Marcus whispered, scratching behind her ears. "No expectations. No mortgage. No existential dread wrapped in a prenatal vitamin."

He remembered when they'd met, how Elena could read him like a paperback. Now she looked at him like he was a book in a language she'd forgotten. He tried, God knows he tried. Date nights. Couples therapy. Herbal supplements and omega-3s. But somewhere between the first mortgage and the second positive pregnancy test, something essential had calcified.

Bast meowed, demanding her dinner. Marcus dumped food into her bowl, the sound too loud in the sleeping house. He thought about waking Elena, offering her the spinach like some wilted olive branch. See? I can still make the effort. I can still remember what you like.

But the truth was, he didn't know what she liked anymore. She'd become unreadable as ancient hieroglyphs, and he was just another tourist gazing at the mystery, taking pictures, understanding nothing.

The vitamin landed in his stomach like a stone. Another day survived. Another night surrendered to the refrigerator's hum. Bast finished her meal and padded away, leaving him alone with the spinach and the terrible quiet of a house where love hadn't died, but had perhaps forgotten how to speak.