What the Water Remembers

The last box sat packed in the hallway, labeled KITCHEN in Elena's aggressive block letters. I'd been pulling out my hair for weeks—literally, a patch of thinning near my temple that the stylist called stress-related. At forty-two, I'd thought I was too old for heartbreak to manifest physically. I was wrong.

The goldfish tank glowed in the corner, the only light in the darkened apartment. Malcolm had bought them on our fifth anniversary, two fantails with flowing fins like wedding veils. Now only one remained, swimming its endless laps in cloudy water. I'd been forgetting to feed it, the same way I'd forgotten to call my mother, the same way I'd forgotten to be the person Malcolm fell in love with.

My phone buzzed. Sarah, the friend who'd listened to hours of drunken weeping, who'd shown up with soup and sarcasm when I couldn't get out of bed. "You coming?" her text read. "Drinks are on me."

Outside, a fox slipped between the fences, its rusty coat catching the streetlamp. It moved like it owned the neighborhood—bold, calculating, utterly unlike the creatures in the children's stories we'd read to our nieces. This fox was survivor, not trickster. I watched it through the kitchen window, doing dishes that weren't even mine.

Malcolm's dog, Buster, scratched at the neighbor's door. We'd negotiated custody like actual parents: I got the cat (who hated me), he kept the dog (who still whimpered when he heard my key in the lock). The arrangement had seemed reasonable during those mediation sessions in his lawyer's office. Now, hearing Buster's familiar whine through the thin walls, it felt like amputation.

The goldfish surfaced, gulping at air that wouldn't satisfy it. I thought about Mal's face when he said he'd met someone else. How he'd stroked my hair afterward, like I was the one needing comfort.

I picked up the final box and walked out without feeding the fish. Some things, I decided, should be left to survive on their own.