What We Carry

The spinach had been stuck between Marcus's front teeth for forty-five minutes. Elena watched it as he described his promotion—something about scalability and synergies—while she calculated how many seconds of polite silence remained before she could mention it. Outside, lightning fractured the sky, briefly illuminating the dust motes dancing above their anniversary dinner.

"You're not listening," Marcus said, not unkindly.

"I am."

"You have that look. Like you're somewhere else."

Elena thought about the goldfish bowl on their kitchen counter, won by their son at a carnival three months before Ethan died. The fish kept swimming, oblivious to its abandonment. She kept forgetting to feed it. It refused to die, a tiny orange testament to persistence in the face of neglect.

"I'm right here," she said.

Marcus reached across the table. "Then why do I feel like I'm dining with a ghost?"

Another flash of lightning. Rain began to lash the windows. In the strobe effect, she saw him clearly—his hair thinner at the temples, the new lines around his mouth, the earnestness that had once endeared him to her and now felt like a demand she couldn't meet.

"There's spinach," she said softly.

"What?"

"In your teeth. It's been there all through dessert."

He laughed, surprised. Then his face crumbled. "Why didn't you say something?"

"I don't know."

"No," he said, his voice cracking. "You don't. You haven't said anything in months."

Elena felt it then—the bear she'd been carrying, the grief she'd convinced herself she could hold alone. Ethan would have been twelve next week. She'd planned a party, then cancelled it, then pretended she'd never planned anything at all.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

Marcus stood up, knocking his chair back. "Sorry doesn't fix what's broken, El. I can't watch you disappear one more day." He walked toward the door, then stopped. "The fish is dead, by the way. I flushed it this morning."

The lightning struck closer now, thunder shaking the floorboards. Elena sat alone at the table, the spinach finally gone from Marcus's teeth, everything else still there.