What We Carry in February

The hat was the first thing Elena packed. A worn navy fedora, the brim permanently bent from Richard's nervous fidgeting during his speech at their wedding. She'd found him wearing it that morning, too — standing by the goldfish pond at dawn, staring into the murky water as if the fish might suddenly speak. They hadn't. They just swam in endless circles, orange flashes against the stone, oblivious to the man whose life was unspooling cell by cell.

"You're leaving me," he'd said, not a question. She hadn't denied it.

Now she sat at his kitchen table, surrounded by boxes. His phone — her old iPhone he'd adopted when his died — glowed with unanswered messages. Work. His sister. The oncologist. She hadn't told anyone about the diagnosis yet. That would be Richard's burden to carry, or not, in his own time.

Her phone buzzed. A text from him: Come back.

Elena pushed spinach around her plate, dinner abandoned. She'd planned this meal weeks ago — his favorite, the way his mother made it — but her appetite had vanished with the ring she'd left on the counter. The dog, Baxter, sensed something was wrong. He pressed his warm weight against her leg, his muzzle finding her palm. Richard had rescued him five years ago from a shelter, another broken thing he couldn't fix but couldn't leave behind.

That was the problem, really. Richard collected broken things. The abused dog with the jagged scar. The wilted spinach plants she'd given up on, now thriving in his care. Even her — thirty-seven, divorced, convinced she'd never love again, until he proved her wrong with patience and terrible cooking and late-night conversations about everything and nothing.

She stood up, the hat in her hands. The dog whined. Outside, February pressed against the windows, gray and endless.

Elena put the hat back on its hook. Then she called him.

"I'm coming home," she said. "We'll figure out the cancer together."

His silence was loud. Then: "The goldfish died this morning."

"I know," she said. "I saw you mourning them."

"How did you —"

"Because I know you, Richard. And because I'm still here."

She unpacked the boxes. Some things, once carried, become too heavy to set down.