What We Carried Into the Woods

The cabin smelled of pine and something sweeter — papaya, which Elena had insisted on buying at that overpriced organic market before we drove three hours into the middle of nowhere. She sat at the rough-hewn table now, slicing into the fruit with deliberate precision, her wedding ring catching the morning light that slanted through dusty windows.

"You've checked your iPhone six times since we got here," she said, not looking up. "We left the city to escape, remember?"

I felt the familiar weight in my pocket, the phantom vibration that lived in my nervous system. Work was imploding — merger talks, whispers of layoffs, my career balanced on something as fragile as a shareholder's whim. But I couldn't tell her that. Not when she'd looked at me with those exhausted eyes last month and said she didn't know who I was anymore.

"Just checking the weather," I lied.

Outside, our dog — a rescued lab mix named Bosco who'd witnessed our marriage's best and worst years — barked at something in the treeline. Then silence. The wrong kind of silence.

I walked to the window and felt the blood drain from my face. A black bear, smaller than full-grown but massive enough, stood near our rental car. It looked at Bosco, who had frozen mid-bark, and then it looked at me through the glass.

"Elena."

She joined me at the window, her breath warm against my shoulder. For a moment, we were united by the same fear, the same recognition that we were fragile visitors in someone else's home. The bear sniffed the car door, seemed to find it wanting, and ambled back toward the dense cover of pines.

Bosco trotted inside, tail between his legs, and collapsed at our feet.

Elena's hand found mine. "Do you remember what we said before we got married? That we'd protect each other from everything?"

"I remember."

"Whatever's happening at work," she said softly, "it's not bigger than this. Than us being here, alive, together."

The papaya sat forgotten on the table. I took my iPhone out and turned it off, then folded her into my arms as the morning sun climbed higher over the trees where the bear had disappeared, into the deep green wilderness that reminded us how small our problems really were.