What We Carry

The papaya sat on the kitchen counter, its mottled yellow skin like a bruise, for three days before Elena finally touched it. It had been Marco's idea to buy it—some attempt at romance, at pretending their marriage wasn't hollowed out by three years of fertility treatments, negative results, and the silence that had grown between them like a tumor.

She cut into the fruit while Barnaby, their aging golden retriever, watched from his bed with cloudy eyes. The dog had been with them through twelve years of marriage, through all the versions of themselves they'd been and failed to become. Now his hip dysplasia meant he could barely make it up the back steps. Another living thing slowing down, giving out.

"You gonna eat that?" Marco stood in the doorway, his hair thinner than she'd noticed until this moment. When had that happened? Time moved differently when you were waiting for something that never came.

"Not hungry." Elena pushed the papaya aside. "We need to talk about Barnaby."

"Not today."

"He's in pain, Marco."

"Everything's in pain." He walked to the refrigerator, not meeting her eyes. "The vet said we could wait."

"What are we waiting for?" The question hung between them, heavier than the fruit, heavier than the dog's labored breathing. What were any of them waiting for?

That night, she found the photo album she'd hidden—the one with pictures from before. Before the injections, before the tears, before the waiting. In one photo, she was twenty-five, her hair long and dark, laughing at something Marco had said. She looked at that woman like she was a stranger. Someone who didn't know yet what it meant to bear something that broke you, that changed you so thoroughly you couldn't even recognize your own face.

Barnaby whined from the hallway, and she went to him, stroking his soft ears. "I know," she whispered. "I know."

Marco appeared behind her, his hand on her shoulder. "Tomorrow," he said. "We'll take him tomorrow."

She nodded. Tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

They ate the papaya for breakfast, standing at the counter together while the dog slept. It was too ripe now, sweet and faintly fermented, like something decaying. Like something that had waited too long.

"It's not bad," Marco said, and she thought he might have been talking about more than the fruit.

"No," she agreed. "It's not."

Outside, the sun rose anyway. It always did.