What the Fox Knows

The orange flash caught my eye near the garden shed—a fox, sleek and cautious, stealing across the lawn. Dinner dishes were still soaking in the sink.

"Eleanor, come look," Marcus called from the patio.

I didn't move. I was swallowing my evening vitamin D tablet—one of the handful of pills now required to keep this forty-eight-year-old body functioning. My doctor called it maintenance. I called it the slow erosion of the person I used to be.

"It's beautiful," he said. "You're missing it."

I wasn't missing anything. I was thinking about tomorrow's padel match with Sarah, and how she'd laughed at something I said last week, really laughed—head thrown back, teeth showing. How her hand had lingered on my shoulder after we won the second set.

"The fox is gone now," Marcus said, sounding disappointed.

The sky opened up. Lightning fractured the darkness, turning the kitchen windows white for a heartbeat. Thunder followed immediately, rattling the glasses in the cabinet. The storm was directly overhead.

Marcus came inside, his university hat—frayed at the brim, smelling faintly of sweat and the cheap shampoo he'd used for twenty years—dripping rain onto the floor. He looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time in months.

"You're unhappy," he said.

"I'm tired."

"No." He stepped closer. "You're somewhere else. You have been for a while." Lightning flashed again, illuminating the deep lines around his eyes, the gray in his beard that I'd stopped noticing. "I still love you, Eleanor. Whatever's happening, I'm still here."

The fox appeared in the doorway, watching us. Or maybe I only imagined it.

"We're fine," I said.

He nodded, once. "Okay."

He walked into the study and closed the door. I stood in the kitchen as the rain pounded against the roof, thinking about how foxes are solitary creatures. How they mate for life, but spend most of their days hunting alone.