What We Bear in the Thunder

The fiber optic cable hung limp between poles like a severed artery, and Maya knelt in the mud, freezing rain plastering her hair to her skull. Another fucking repair in another fucking town, the third since David moved out two weeks ago. He'd taken the furniture, the good coffee maker, and apparently Maya's ability to sleep through the night.

Lightning split the sky—a jagged wound of white that seared her retinas. One-Mississippi. The thunder arrived like a fist to the chest. She'd always counted the seconds between flash and boom as a child, some childish belief that if she counted fast enough, she could somehow outrun what was coming. But she was thirty-two now, and storms didn't work like that. Neither did divorces you never saw coming.

A cat emerged from beneath the porch of the house she'd been dispatched to repair—orange, matted, missing half an ear. It regarded her with assessing yellow eyes, then trotted over and rubbed against her knee, purring like a small engine. Maya's throat tightened. She hadn't known she could still feel something like tenderness.

"You should be inside," she whispered, scratching its chin. The cat arched into her touch, indifferent to the storm building around them. Above them, the cable swayed violently in the wind.

Her phone buzzed—David. Probably wanting to know if she'd signed the papers yet. She stared at his name on the screen, thumb hovering, while the cat wound between her legs. Lightning struck closer this time, and the animal startled but didn't flee. It simply pressed harder against her, as if proximity alone could make them both safer.

Maya thought about what she'd been carrying since he left—the way she'd been bearing it all alone. The weight of unsaid words, the nights she cried in the shower so the neighbors wouldn't hear, the devastating quiet of an apartment built for two.

The bear had visited their campsite in Montana three years ago, drawn by the smell of their dinner. David had grabbed the pan while Maya stood paralyzed, certain this was how she'd die. But the bear had only looked at them with mild curiosity before ambling away. "We're not that interesting," David had laughed, wrapping his arms around her waist.

She wasn't interesting now either. Just a technician in the rain, a cat pressing against her leg, a phone screen glowing with his name like an accusation.

Maya declined the call. She finished the splice, tested the connection—green lights. The cat watched her pack up, then retreated beneath the porch as the first real drops began to fall. By the time Maya reached her truck, the storm had broken open, and she could barely see the road through the windshield. But for the first time in weeks, she didn't feel alone in it.