What We Carry

Mara stood at the kitchen counter, forcing spinach leaves through the garlic press. The green pulp reminded her of everything she couldn't fix—this marriage, her body, the way silence had grown like ivy between them in the six months since the second miscarriage.

"You going to eat that?" David asked from the doorway. He held his old baseball glove, the leather cracked at the thumb. His father's glove.

"It's for the salad."

"Right."

He turned to leave, then stopped. "I found this in the attic. Thought maybe... I don't know. Maybe we could throw the ball around. Like we used to."

The memory hit her: summer evenings at the park, his easy laugh, how she'd loved the way his wrist snapped when he threw. Before everything became about timing and temperature and the cruel arithmetic of hope. She'd kept herself busy with meal prep and yoga and organic vegetables—as if enough spinach could make her whole again.

"David."

"Yeah?"

"Your sister called. She's pregnant again."

He didn't turn around. His shoulders collapsed by an inch. That was the thing about grief—it was a beast you kept feeding, and still it demanded more. It bore down on them both, but differently. He escaped into nostalgia. She escaped into control.

"I'm going for a drive," he said quietly.

The screen door slammed. She watched his taillights recede down the dark street, feeling the empty house expand around her. The garlic press fell from her hand. Outside, somewhere in the woods beyond their subdivision, a bear cried out—a sound like nothing she'd ever heard, raw and lonely and perfect.

She sank onto the kitchen floor and let herself make a similar sound. Some things, she finally understood, could not be prepared or measured or forced. Some things had to break before they could heal.

When David returned an hour later, frost on his jacket, he found her sitting in the dark. He didn't ask. He simply sat beside her on the cold floor, his shoulder pressed against hers, and they listened to the house settle around them.

"Tomorrow," he said. "We could start with something simple."

She leaned into his warmth. "Like what?"

"Like breakfast. And maybe we don't have to fix everything at once."

The spinach lay forgotten on the counter. In the morning, it would wilt. In the morning, they would begin again.