What We Keep in Empty Rooms

Mara stood in the center of her living room, thirty-eight and suddenly half of everything she owned was gone. The silence pressed against her ears like deep water.

On the counter sat the bottle of vitamin D capsules—Elena's brand, the expensive ones with the enhanced absorption formula. Elena had left them behind with the cat, as if Barnaby were a chore and the vitamins were somehow part of the same package.

Barnaby wound himself around Mara's ankles, purring like a small engine. He was Elena's cat, technically, but Elena had taken the apartment in Brooklyn that allowed dogs, leaving the cat behind as if he were an oversized coat she'd grown tired of wearing. "You always liked him better anyway," she'd said, which wasn't true but wasn't not true either.

Mara had liked being the friend who loved the cat more. It was a role, a thing to be.

The goldfish bowl sat on the windowsill, catching the last of the orange light from the sunset. Goldie—or was it Goldie II? They'd stopped keeping track—swam in slow circles, its mouth opening and closing in silent repetition. They'd won him at a carnival three years ago, the night Elena met someone else at the ring toss booth. The fish had outlasted that relationship, and now it would outlast this one too.

Mara opened the bottle of vitamins. The gel capsules were bright amber, like tiny secrets. She swallowed one without water.

"We're not leaving," she told Barnaby, though she wasn't sure if she was lying.

The truth was, Elena hadn't just moved out. She'd moved on. And somewhere between the vitamin deficiencies and the carnival goldfish and the cat who chose Mara with his cold nose, Mara understood that being someone's second choice wasn't a failure. It was just a place to start.

She turned on the lamp. The orange glow warmed the room. Barnaby jumped into her lap, heavy and real, and for the first time in weeks, Mara didn't feel like she was waiting for someone to come home.