What We Keep in the Dark

The goldfish circled his bowl, the same route every hour, his orange scales catching morning light that no longer woke anyone beside me. David had taken the bed, the good knives, and most of the furniture, but somehow this finned survivor remained — a custody dispute neither of us bothered to win. I'd named him Marcel after the philosophy major I slept with once, twice, three times in college, before David. Before the mortgage and the careful accumulation of things that were supposed to mean something.

The cat appeared at the back door at dusk, a calico with the indifferent posture of someone who'd seen better days. She'd belonged to the neighbors three houses down until they moved to Phoenix. Now she slunk through my yard like she was auditing the property. I fed her because I was alone too often and her judgment felt cleaner than my own. She never stayed longer than it took to eat, and something about that — the way she accepted warmth but refused ownership — made me wish I'd learned that particular lesson earlier.

That's when I saw the fox at the edge of the ravine behind our — my — house. It stood motionless in the dying light, watching me watch it, calculating something about my presence that I couldn't read. David had always said coyotes came down from the hills in winter, said it with the same casual authority he'd used to tell me I was overreacting about the late nights at work, the unread messages, the way he'd started touching me like I was something fragile and disappointing.

The fox dipped its head once, acknowledgment or dismissal, I couldn't tell, then vanished into the brush.

Inside, Marcel continued his circles. The cat returned for midnight feeding. I poured wine and sat in the empty living room where the carpet still held the rectangular ghosts of bookcases, realizing I was the one who'd left, really. Just slowly. Like the goldfish forgetting the same water over and over. Like the cat who knew better than to stay. Like the fox, waiting in the dark to see if I'd finally notice what was already gone.