What We Bear in Silence

Mara picked at the papaya on her plate, the seeds like tiny black eyes staring up at her. The resort restaurant hummed around them—couples in love, families on vacation, everyone living lives that felt foreign to her now.

"You're not eating," David said, not really looking at her. He was scrolling through his phone, the blue light washing out his features.

"Not hungry."

"You ordered it."

"I thought I might be."

The papaya sat there, a reminder of how well she used to know herself. She used to know she loved this fruit, sweet and musky, the taste of their honeymoon in St. Lucia. Now everything tasted like cardboard. Everything felt like borrowed time.

They'd come to Costa Rica to fix what was broken, but some fractures ran too deep. Six months of his late nights at the office. Her discovery of the text messages. The awkward conversation where he'd said he didn't know why he'd done it, that he loved her, that it meant nothing.

She'd been walking through their marriage like a **zombie** since then—present, functioning, but somehow not alive. Going through motions without feeling them.

"Mara?"

She looked up. David had put down his phone. His eyes were tired, sad.

"I can't do this anymore," she said softly. "I can't pretend it's okay. I can't eat this papaya and pretend everything's fine."

"I know."

"Do you? Because you keep looking at your phone. You keep—" She stopped, throat tight. "I don't think you understand what it's like to wake up every day and have to **bear** the weight of knowing your husband found someone else to talk to at night. Someone else to share things with. What was she to you, David?"

"It wasn't—" He stopped himself, whatever excuse he'd been about to make dying on his tongue. "It doesn't matter what it was. It matters that I broke something I can't fix."

A waiter came by. "Everything okay here?"

"No," Mara said. "But thank you."

He nodded, understanding in his eyes, and moved away.

"I read about the **bear** problems they have here," David said suddenly. "The ones that come into the resort looking for food. They're not dangerous, really. Just hungry. Just trying to survive."

Mara looked at him, really looked at him. For the first time in months, she saw something beyond the betrayal. She saw a man who was also hungry, also trying to survive his own mistakes.

"Are you comparing yourself to a bear?" she asked, the ghost of a smile touching her lips.

"I'm saying maybe we're all just looking for what we need. Sometimes in the wrong places."

They sat in silence for a long moment. The papaya continued its silent vigil between them.

"I don't know if I can forgive you," she said finally. "But I'm tired of feeling dead inside."

"Let's start there," he said. "Just let's start there."

Outside, a tropical bird called out sharply, insistently, like hope demanding to be heard.