What the Fox Knows

The papaya sat on the counter, its yellow skin mottled with brown spots—overripe, like us. Elena had bought it three days ago, in that optimistic stretch after couples counseling where we pretended things might get better.

Now the storm outside shook the windows, and the coaxial cable snaked across the floor, disconnected from the wall where I'd yanked it during the fight. We'd been watching something when the argument started, but I couldn't remember what.

"You're being a bull about this," she said, her voice quiet. "Just charging through, horns first, no regard for what gets trampled."

I looked at the papaya instead of her. "I'm not the one who applied for that transfer to Seattle without mentioning it."

Lightning flashed, illuminating her face—tired, beautiful, the woman I'd loved for six years. In that instant of white light, I saw everything we'd been and everything we wouldn't be. The papaya between us on the counter seemed to pulse with the same terrible knowledge.

"There's a fox that comes to the garden at night," she said, apropos of nothing. "Did you know?"

I shook my head.

"She's there most evenings. Just watching. Like she's waiting for something to give."

The thunder that followed shook the house. I thought about all the things I'd never told her—how I'd started taking the long way home from work, how I'd stopped imagining our future, how I'd been hollowing out from the inside for a year.

The papaya was soft when I touched it. A bruise bloomed under my thumb.

"It's gone bad," I said.

"Yes," Elena replied. "It has."

We stood there as the storm raged outside, two people who had run out of things to say to each other, waiting for the courage to do what the fox already knew we'd do.