What We Leave Behind

Marie knelt beside the tub, her knees protesting after four hours of this work. The blood had mostly washed away, but the hair remained — clumps of it dark against the porcelain, like seaweed tangled in a drain. The woman's hair, long and silver, now detritus in a crime scene that would never make the news.

"She loved that cat more than anything," Marie's supervisor had said earlier, gesturing toward the carrier in the corner. The cat inside — a ragged calico named Bear, because the first owner had a dark sense of humor — let out a low, guttural sound that was half-purr, half-growl. Marie had taken the job because the money was good, because someone had to clean up after suicides, and because her own divorce had left her with bills that no ordinary wage could cover.

Now she ran her fingers through the remaining hair in the drain, thinking about how her ex-husband had always complained about her shedding strands everywhere. On his pillow, in the shower, woven into the carpet — evidence of existence he couldn't abide. Some people needed to erase every trace of you. Others clung to every piece left behind.

Bear scratched at the carrier door. Marie opened it, and the cat padded over to sniff at the drain, then rubbed its head against Marie's wrist. The dead woman's sister was coming tomorrow to collect the cat and whatever personal items the police had released. Marie wondered what she'd make of the hair still tangled in the drain — whether she'd see it as something to be saved or something to be scrubbed away.

She finished cleaning, sealed the biohazard bags, and sat on the bathroom floor for a moment, Bear curled in her lap. The cat purred loudly, vibrating against her chest, alive in a room where someone had chosen not to be. Marie had always loved the way hair kept growing after death — cells dividing blindly toward a future that would never arrive. It was the closest thing to hope she'd ever seen in this work.

She locked up the house and drove home with Bear in the passenger seat, the cat's carrier buckled in like a child. Tomorrow she'd drop the cat at the sister's place. But for tonight, she had someone to bear witness to her own small survival.