What the Fox Remembers

The papaya was perfectly ripe when Elena sliced it open, its flesh the color of something that had once been whole.

"You're not really swimming," she said. "You're just ... existing in the water."

I tread water in her pool, watching my dog, Jasper, pace the perimeter. At the edge of the yard, a fox watched us both—amber eyes fixed on something beyond the water, beyond the papaya, beyond the two of us pretending this wasn't strange.

"Tom and I are getting a divorce," I said.

Elena's knife paused. "Oh."

"It's been coming for years. We just ... forgot to notice."

She set down the papaya. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because you're the only friend I have who won't say the wrong thing."

The fox shifted, tilting its head.

"You haven't been my friend in five years," Elena said quietly. "Not really. Not since—"

"I know."

The water felt suddenly cold. Jasper whined from the edge of the pool.

"I should go," I said, swimming toward the ladder.

"Evelyn."

I stopped.

"The fox comes every Wednesday," she said. "She had kits under the porch last spring. Sometimes I think she remembers things we've forgotten."

"Like what?"

"Like how to just be wild. Like how not to apologize for existing."

I pulled myself from the water, dripping and weightless. The papaya sat between us on the table, bright and impossible.

"Stay," Elena said. "Eat papaya with me. Like we used to."

The fox slipped through the fence, taking her secrets with her.

"We can't go back," I said.

"No," she agreed. "But we can swim forward."

Jasper settled at our feet. We ate papaya in the dying light, two women who had forgotten how to be friends, learning how to be something else entirely.