What We Carry

The cabin had been her sister's, left to Sarah when the cancer finally won. Now it was just Sarah and Marcus and Buster—the old golden retriever who'd outlived everyone they loved. Three days into what was supposed to be a reconciliation, they'd barely spoken.

Marcus sat on the porch watching the lake where they'd once swum naked in those first intoxicating months of dating, before the years and disappointments piled up like driftwood. Sarah watched him from the kitchen window, her chest tight with everything she couldn't say.

Buster lifted his head from the wooden floorboards and growled, low and guttural.

"What is it?" Marcus called through the screen door.

Then she saw it—a massive grizzly at the tree line, shoulders hunched, watching them with terrible deliberation. Her breath caught. In all her summers here as a girl, through all her sister's years, she'd never seen one.

Buster was up, moving toward the screen door with terrifying purpose for a fifteen-year-old dog.

"No," Sarah said, but Marcus was already moving, grabbing the shotgun from behind the door.

"Get back," he told her, stepping onto the porch. The bear stood its ground. Buster pressed against his legs, trembling, suddenly an old dog again.

Sarah felt stripped bare—of pretense, of the carefully constructed anger she'd carried like armor. She thought of what she'd said to Marcus in their last fight: *I can't bear this anymore. Can't bear trying, can't bear failing, can't bear watching you look at me like I'm someone you used to love.*

The bear dipped its head, turned, and loped back into the forest.

Marcus lowered the gun. His hands were shaking. Sarah pushed through the door and wrapped her arms around him from behind, burying her face in his back. He smelled like woodsmoke and the lake and the man she'd spent half her life learning.

"I'm still running," she whispered against his spine. "Even when I'm standing still."

He turned in her arms. "I know. Me too."

Buster pressed between them, tail thumping tentatively. The lake rippled in the distance, waiting. Later they would swim together in the cold dark water, holding onto each other like survivors always do. For now, they just breathed, three hearts beating against the silence of everything they'd almost lost.