What We Keep in the Dark

Margaret stood in the kitchen, forcing down another mouthful of spinach. The doctor had been emphatic about iron, about rebuilding, as if her blood could be fortified against what she'd lost. Three months since David left, and her body still hadn't learned to metabolize the absence.

The dog, Buster, pressed against her shin—old, arthritic, and increasingly incontinent, like everything else she was trying to keep alive. He'd been David's dog originally, a rescue from some abuse case, the kind of project that had defined their marriage. Save the broken things. Fix them. Love them until they're whole again or until you can't anymore.

Outside, lightning split the sky, sudden and violent, illuminating the baseball glove she'd found in David's closet that morning. She'd meant to pack it with his things, but her hands had moved on their own, pulling the worn leather onto her left hand. It still smelled like him—linseed oil and that woodsy cologne she'd bought him for their tenth anniversary, back when she still believed in milestones.

The glove had been his father's. David had never played, not really, but he'd kept it like a talisman. Some nights, when the insomnia was particularly cruel, she'd catch him in the backyard, tossing a tennis ball against the garage wall in the dark, catching it with that same careful precision he'd brought to everything except their marriage.

Another flash of lightning. Buster whined, pressing closer.

"I know," she whispered, her fingers working the spinach stem. "I know."

She'd found the receipt yesterday—dinner reservations for two, made the night before he walked out. He hadn't just planned to leave; he'd planned to replace her. The baseball glove, the dog, the way he'd meticulously dismantled their life while she was still trying to save it.

The spinach tasted like ash.

Lightning struck again, closer now, and the power died. In the sudden dark, Buster began to howl, a sound raw and ancient. Margaret stood there, spinach forgotten, and understood what she hadn't been able to say aloud: she wasn't grieving David anymore. She was grieving the version of herself who'd thought love was something you could earn through endurance.

She took off the glove and set it on the counter. Some things, she decided, you don't get to keep just because you learned how to hold them.