What We Keep

The running hadn't helped. Three months after Elena left, Marcus still found himself jogging the same loop at 5 AM, as if motion alone could outpace the hollow echo of their apartment. His breath formed ghosts in the October dark.

Barnaby, their golden retriever, struggled to keep pace. At eleven, his hips were failing, but Marcus refused to leave him behind. What else did he have? The dog was the last breathing thing that remembered them together.

"Come on, old man," Marcus murmured, slowing to a walk. Barnaby's muzzle was gray now, his once-boundless energy reduced to careful steps.

That afternoon, Marcus stood at the padel court — Elena's court. She'd been the one who played, all aggression and grace in a skirt. Now it was his turn to learn, a clumsy attempt to inhabit something that had been hers. His partner, a woman named Sara with kind eyes and a divorcée's knowing smile, watched him miss every serve.

"You're holding the racket like it's a weapon," she said.

It was. Everything was.

Afterward, they sat on a bench while Barnaby rested his head on Marcus's knee. Sara talked about her daughter's wedding, the way parents never really let go, they just learned to love from a distance. Marcus found himself telling her about the spinach.

Elena had hated it. She'd called it "grass for rabbits" and pushed it around her plate. Last night, Marcus had made himself dinner — spinach wilted with garlic, eaten standing over the sink. He'd wept into his plate because something so small, so hated, could suddenly taste like absence.

"It's funny what we miss," Sara said. "Not the big things. The stupid arguments about vegetables."

Barnaby whined, pressing closer.

Marcus looked at his phone — a message from Elena: "How's the dog?" Not how are you. Never how are you.

"He's good," Marcus typed back, "but he misses you." And then, because it was true and couldn't be unsaid: "So do I."