What the Storm Takes

The orange cat — Barnaby, though she'd stopped using his name months ago — sat on the windowsill watching the storm gather. Sarah packed her suitcase in the bedroom, the zipper sound like a final period at the end of a sentence she'd been writing in her head for years.

"You're taking him?" Marcus stood in the doorway, silhouette against the hallway's gloom.

"Barnaby? Yes. You're allergic."

"I took those pills. Remember? For you."

The lightning flashed, sudden and blinding, illuminating the dust motes floating in the space between them. In that brief white second, she saw his face — the same face she'd seen across the breakfast table for seven years, suddenly unrecognizable. The way his mouth pulled slightly to the left when he was hurt. The way his eyes refused to meet hers.

"I remember," she said. "I remember everything."

She'd stopped expecting lightning to strike. That was the problem with long-term relationships — the slow erosion of hope, the way you stopped looking up at the sky and started watching your feet instead. Three miscarriages in two years, each one followed by his quiet retreat into work, into projects, into anything but the space between them in their bed.

The orange cat jumped down from the sill and wound through her legs, purring. Some animals could sense barometric pressure drops. She wondered if they could sense the end of a marriage too.

"I can change," he said, as the first thunder rattled the windowpane. "Counseling. Whatever you need."

"It's not about change anymore. It's about who we became while we were waiting for things to get better."

She lifted the suitcase. He didn't help. Another flash of lightning, and for a moment, the orange cat's eyes glowed like amber moons in the darkened room.

Outside, rain began to fall, washing the world clean. She opened the door and stepped into it, the cat carrier in one hand, her future in the other.