What We Leave Behind

Margaret stood in the center of her half-empty living room, the cable TV guy kneeling beside the wall connector, his tool belt clanking against the floorboards. He smelled of cigarettes and boredom. She should have canceled the installation. "You're moving out?" he asked, not really caring.

"Divorce," she said, the word still foreign on her tongue.

He nodded. He'd heard it before. He fiddled with the coaxial cable.

She looked at the cardboard box marked KITCHEN. Inside, a bag of spinach had gone slimy in the fridge during the weeks she'd spent avoiding this house. Richard had always called it "rabbit food" with that charming smirk that had stopped being charming somewhere around year seven. He'd buy it anyway, pretending to be supportive of her diets, her attempts at becoming someone else.

The dog—Buster, a golden retriever they'd adopted after their second miscarriage—whined at her feet. Richard would get the house. Buster would stay with him. It had been decided, along with who kept the good blender and who got the vintage vinyl collection she'd curated.

"All set," the cable guy said, packing up.

She paid him and locked the door behind him, sinking to the floor beside the box. Outside, a fox darted across the backyard—she'd seen it sometimes at dusk, a flash of russet through the fence slats. Richard had wanted to trap it. "It's a pest," he'd said, "it'll kill the dog." She'd argued for its right to exist, for the necessity of wild things in manicured spaces. They'd argued about everything in those final months.

She thought about the spinach rotting in the box, how intent and effort could still end in waste. She thought about the fox, surviving without permission, without apology.

She stood up, grabbed the box, and walked to the trash can. She dumped the spinach. Tomorrow she'd buy fresh. Tomorrow, she'd figure out how to live alone in an apartment with cable she didn't need and a dog she couldn't keep. But tonight, she watched the fox slip through the fence and disappear into the darkness beyond their carefully tended yard.