What We Carry Forward

Marcus stood at the edge of his life at forty-seven, his daughter's old dog—a wheezing golden retriever named Buster—leaning against his leg like it understood everything and nothing at once. The running shoes by the door were still laced from his morning attempt to outrun the divorce papers, but some things can't be sprinted away from.

His broker had called earlier that morning, voice thick with forced optimism. 'Bear market territory, Marcus. But we think the bottom's near.' He'd laughed, a dry sound that scraped his throat. His entire portfolio wasn't the only thing hitting bottom. The house, the marriage, the carefully constructed version of himself he'd been bullshitting everyone with for two decades—it was all correcting at once.

Buster whined and Marcus scratched behind his ears, the way Sarah used to when she couldn't sleep. 'She's not coming back, boy,' he said, and the dog thumped his tail anyway, that terrible optimism of animals who assume food will appear, love will return, the door will open.

He'd met Sarah at a running club when they were twenty-three, both of them sprinting toward something they couldn't name. Last week she'd told him she was tired of running in place, tired of being married to a man who treated marriage like another quarterly target to hit. She wanted real, not whatever efficient simulation of real they'd been operating.

The phone rang again. Probably his broker, or his mother, or someone wanting something he couldn't give. Marcus watched the dust motes in the afternoon sun, thought about the way a bear winters through the dark, how maybe some transformations required hibernation, required the cold. Maybe this was his winter.

Buster stood up, joints popping, and limped toward the kitchen. Marcus followed. There were still dog food in the pantry, still half a bottle of whiskey in the cabinet, still tomorrow to wake up for. The market would cycle back. He would find something new to run toward or maybe learn to walk instead. Buster looked back at him, expectant. 'Yeah,' Marcus said. 'Yeah, we're okay.'