What We Keep

The cable modem flashed its lonely little lights at 3 AM, a digital heartbeat in a room that had forgotten how to be quiet. Elena sat cross-legged on the floor of her almost-empty apartment, watching the router's patient pulse. Her ex had taken the good furniture and the dog—Barnaby, a sweet, anxious golden retriever who'd chosen Mark's side in the breakup. That stung more than the furniture.

She'd kept the bear, though. Not a real one, but the mounted head above where the television used to be. A family heirloom, dusty and slightly ridiculous, with glass eyes that seemed to judge her life choices. It had belonged to her grandfather, a man who'd hunted things and mounted them on walls, proud of his conquests. Elena's conquests were smaller: surviving another week of layoff rumors at the tech company, paying rent on an apartment that echoed, keeping her handful of friends from noticing how thoroughly she was falling apart.

She got up, knees cracking, and went to the kitchen. The goldfish bowl sat on the counter, a single orange fish swimming in endless circles. Mark had bought it as a joke—"our first pet," he'd said, grinning like they had all the time in the world. Now it was just a fish that refused to die, outliving their relationship by three months and counting. She sprinkled some flakes into the water, watching the fish rise to eat, thinking about how some things kept swimming regardless of who was watching.

Her phone buzzed. A notification from work: another all-hands meeting tomorrow, another round of vague reassurances, another week of checking her email while her stomach tied itself into knots. She turned the phone off and went back to the living room, stood before the bear's mounted head.

"You should see me now," she told it. "I'm surviving. Sort of."

The bear said nothing, of course. But its glass eyes seemed to soften, just a little, in the pale light of the router's persistent signal. Somewhere out there, Barnaby was probably asleep at Mark's feet. Somewhere, the market continued its bearish slide. And here she was, keeping the fish alive, keeping the lights on, keeping herself together one cable pulse at a time. It would have to be enough. For now, it was.