What We Keep

The sphinx stared at her from across the room, its limestone face cracked in half—a perfect metaphor for what remained of her marriage. Elena had wanted it during the divorce proceedings. Marcus had insisted he didn't care, but the way he'd looked at her when she loaded it into her car said otherwise.

Now it sat in her new apartment, watching her eat dinner alone.

She found a long strand of Marcus's hair tangled in the Sphinx's wing. Dark, slightly curled—the kind that smelled like sandalwood and felt like silk between her fingers. She should throw it away. Instead, she wound it around her finger, the way she used to when they lay in bed on Sunday mornings, discussing their future.

The future was here, and she was forty-two with a cat she couldn't stand and a goldfish that wouldn't die.

The fish, a birthday gift from Marcus three years ago, swam in endless circles in its bowl on the counter. She'd tried to kill it twice—accidentally, mostly. Once by forgetting to feed it for three weeks. Once by leaving the bowl near a window in winter. But the goldfish persisted, its orange scales gleaming like something that wanted to survive.

"You and me both," she murmured.

The cat, an orange tabby she'd rescued during their second year together, jumped onto the table and knocked over her wine glass. It shattered against the floor.

"Dammit, Aristotle."

She cleaned the glass while the cat watched, unrepentant. When Marcus had left, he'd taken the dog. The coffee maker. The good towels. She'd gotten the cat, the fish, and the sphinx—objects he claimed he never wanted but seemed oddly proprietary about when faced with losing them forever.

The sphinx's riddle had nothing on her own: how had seven years become a pile of things to be divided?

She found another hair in the bathroom sink that night. Gray this time, unmistakably hers. She pulled it from the drain and studied it in the harsh light. When had that happened? She'd been so busy building a life with Marcus that she hadn't noticed herself changing.

Tomorrow she would turn forty-three. Her sister was taking her to dinner. Marcus had sent a calendar reminder that kept dinging on her phone—happy birthday, with a heart emoji he'd never used when they were together.

She deleted the reminder. Then she uncorked another bottle of wine and sat with the sphinx, listening to the cat purr and the fish filter hum, and for the first time in months, she didn't feel like she was waiting for something to begin.