What We Keep

The goldfish circles his bowl in the kitchen that no longer smells like coffee. Orange against the glass, mouth opening and closing in that perpetual silent request for food that David always forgot to give. Elena watches it now, counting the revolutions, measuring time in something other than the hours since she packed her suitcase.

"You want him," David says from the doorway. He's wearing the bear t-shirt she bought him in Yellowstone—the one with the grizzly that looks startled to be on a human chest. "You always wanted him."

She doesn't correct him. The goldfish was his anniversary gift two years ago, his idea of low-maintenance companionship. It lived. That was more than she could say for most things between them.

"What about Mimi?" she asks instead.

The cat appears then, winding between David's legs like she knows they're talking about her. Tabby, one ear notched from a street fight before they adopted her, independent and contemptuous of both of them in equal measure. Mimi sleeps on Elena's pillow. Mimi purrs when David works late. Mimi belongs to herself.

"She needs space," David says, which is rich coming from the man who moved into his home office three months ago and hasn't really left. "Cats pick up on tension."

"She needs dinner," Elena says. "Like always."

The goldfish does another lap. She thinks about the word bear—to carry, to endure, to hold up under weight. She has borne his silences, his apologies, his incremental withdrawals. She has carried this apartment like a shell around something that stopped living inside it. The bear on his shirt looks perpetually surprised, mouth open in shock she finally understands.

"Take the fish," she says. "He was yours."

"You're the one who—"

"David. Just take the fish."

The cat jumps onto the counter, tail twitching as she watches the orange shape in the bowl. In the other room, Elena's phone vibrates—a text from her sister asking if she needs help moving. The bear on David's shirt rises and falls with his breathing. The goldfish opens and closes its mouth, creating waves it doesn't know are invisible.

"Mimi stays," Elena says, because something has to. "She'll come and go. She usually does."

David nods. The bear nods with him. In the distance, a car horn sounds once, sharp and lonely, and the goldfish begins another circle around nothing at all.