What the River Takes

The iphone lay face down on the wooden dock, its screen shattered but still glowing with that stubborn blue light of unanswered messages. Mara had thrown it—an act of uncharacteristic violence that now seemed distant, performed by some other version of herself. Before the throw, she'd seen what she needed to see. The confirmation. The other woman's name in capitals, the heart emoji that made her stomach turn.

She stepped into the river, the cold shocking her ankles, then her knees, then her waist. Swimming had always been her way of processing grief, of moving through something that wanted to drown her. The current pressed against her legs, insistent and greedy. She let herself float, staring up at the pine canopy, watching the clouds migrate like slow thoughts across the sky.

That's when she saw the fox—standing at the water's edge, impossibly still, its coat the color of dried rust. It watched her with an intelligence that felt almost judgmental. She held her breath. The fox dipped its head, drank from the river, then turned and vanished into the brush without a sound.

Mara waded back to shore, her skin pebbling in the evening chill. On the cabin's porch, she found the bottle of vitamin D tablets she'd bought at David's insistence—his voice in her head, You're always tired, you need them, it's just science. The irony tasted metallic. She'd spent years taking what he prescribed, swallowing his solutions for problems he'd diagnosed without her consent.

She popped the lid. The tablets rattled like a promise she no longer intended to keep. One by one, she shook them into the river, watching them dissolve into nothing, nutrients for waters that would flow forever beyond her reach.

Her phone would be replaceable. David was already gone, in every way that mattered. What remained was the silence, the river, and the sudden sharp clarity that some things—some vitamins for the soul—could only be manufactured alone.