What We Leave Behind

The kitchen was quiet except for the sound of her chopping. Sarah stood at the counter, knife rhythmic against the cutting board. The spinach lay in dark green mounds, destined for a salad neither of them particularly wanted.

"You're going again, aren't you?" Mark said from the table. He hadn't looked up from his phone.

"Next week."

"This time it's Chicago?"

"Minneapolis."

The lie was smooth, practiced. She'd been lying to him for six months. Not about the trips—those were real—but about what happened during them. The conferences, the late nights in hotel bars, the way someone else's hands had learned the geography of her body.

She peeled an orange, the citrus scent sharp and sudden, cutting through the stale air of their marriage. The fruit reminded her of their honeymoon in Barcelona, how they'd eaten oranges on a balcony while the city hummed below them. Now she segmented it alone, juice running down her fingers, sticky and sweet.

"There's a fox," Mark said suddenly.

She turned. "What?"

"In the garden. I saw it this morning. Just standing there, watching the house. It looked like it was waiting for something."

The fox had been coming for weeks. Sarah had seen it too—a flash of russet at dawn, still as a statue, ears perked toward their bedroom window. It felt like an omen, though she didn't believe in omens. Wild things sensing the rot before it was visible.

"Maybe it's hungry," she said.

"Maybe," Mark said, and finally looked at her. His eyes were tired, holding a question he hadn't asked yet. Or maybe he already knew the answer.

She combined the spinach and orange in a bowl, colors vivid against each other. The fox watched from beyond the glass. Something was ending here. Something had already ended, and neither of them wanted to be the first to say it aloud.

They would eat this salad in silence. They would sleep in the same bed, bodies turned away from each other. And tomorrow she would pack for Minneapolis, though Minneapolis wasn't where she was going.

The fox outside knew. The fox always knew when something had already died, even if the people inside refused to bury it.