'Cusp' by Emily Huso

The stroller meows. The pier creaks like a loose tooth, the chapped shore leers. Serena extracts a child-sized cat. In the numbing spray, she can pretend to forget. “Do you see, Luca?” she whispers, nibbling his velvet ears, savoring the purr. This was her maternal joy—to witness every first: gnash of perfect baby teeth stained popsicle red, delight of sand between toes, wonder that recast everything from spilt milk to rising sea levels in a more hopeful light.

“But you know the cat isn’t really your son,” concerned relatives keep reminding.

Of course I know that, Serena would snap. But lately, at night, after tucking the cat into its cradle, she smells the baby’s unwashed pajamas and pores over an online forum where people confide about cats that appeared around the time of a loved one’s death. Spirits can occupy certain animals, including cats, for years before departing to whatever comes next, one user asserts.

Serena isn’t sure, yet she cannot deny the resemblance between Luca’s and the baby’s eyes, nor the familiar way he sucks at his toe, not to mention how he responds to the baby’s name.

Now, the cat nips Serena’s hand and leaps onto the railing. The blanket lilts into the ocean’s wide mouth. Serena sucks the blood from her finger, watches, feeling something inside her becoming unmoored.

One moment he is there, safely within reach, the next moment he is gone.

The animal streaks down the pier.

As if from a distance, Serena hears the slap of her sandals against wood, the wind’s wet lick, feels the deep gnaw of grief adjusting its hold.

She has to believe her son is ahead of her, just out of view.

She runs toward whatever comes next.