What We Leave Behind

The orange peel lay curled on the counter like a question mark. Sarah stared at it, her fingers still tingling from the acid, the way they used to tingle when she traced the contours of his back in the mornings they pretended would last forever. Three months since Daniel left, and still she found herself buying oranges — his favorite, never hers — as if muscle memory could summon him back through the citrus scent.

Her hair fell forward in the bathroom mirror, gray threads webbing through the dark brown like cracks in a foundation. At forty-two, she'd stopped pulling them. Daniel used to say he loved the silver emerging, called it evidence of a life fully lived. That was before he decided their life wasn't enough anymore, before the careful architecture of their decade together dissolved into boxes packed and forwarded addresses updated.

Barnaby, their golden retriever, nosed at her ankle. The dog had been Daniel's anniversary gift five years ago, a surprise that arrived with a red bow and puppy breath. Now Barnaby's muzzle was frosted with age, his joints stiff, his loyalty divided between the ghost of a man who'd left and the woman who'd stayed. Sometimes Sarah resented the animal for being Daniel's living artifact in her home. Other times, she buried her face in his fur and wept.

"You're looking old, girl," she told the dog, rubbing behind his ears the way Daniel used to. Barnaby thumped his tail against the cabinet, indifferent to her cruelty.

She was supposed to meet someone for coffee tomorrow. A colleague's friend, someone who supposedly understood loss. Sarah had agreed, then spent three days oscillating between showering and not, between caring and numbness. Now she caught herself checking her reflection again, her fingers hovering over the silver strands, wondering if she should dye them back to who she was before.

The orange on the counter had already begun to oxidize. She picked it up, bit into the flesh, letting the juice run down her chin. The taste was sharp and terrible and wonderful, like grief itself, like starting over, like the first day of the rest of her life whether she wanted it or not. Barnaby whined, pressing his warm weight against her leg.

"I know," she said to the empty kitchen, to the dog, to herself. "I know."