Palm Sunday at the End of the World

The coaxial cable lay frayed across her balcony like a dead snake, its copper guts exposed to the tropical humidity. Elena stared at it, her third margarita sweating onto the glass table, an orange slice sliding slowly down the condensation.

She'd come to Costa Rica to escape. That was the plan, anyway. Leave the corporate grind, find herself, write that novel. Instead, she'd spent three months becoming a different kind of zombie—not the mindless office worker she'd been, but something worse: a woman with nothing to do but watch her thoughts eat each other.

"Room service," a voice called from beyond the sliding glass door.

Elena jumped. Her palm, slick with sweat and lime juice, knocked over the margarita. Orange and tequila splashed across her laptop keyboard.

"Fuck," she whispered. Then louder: "Just a minute!"

She grabbed the hotel towel and mopped at the mess, but the damage was done. The screen flickered once, twice, then died. Along with it went her half-finished novel, her emails, her connection to anything resembling a life.

The knock came again, more insistent.

She opened the door to find a young man holding a tray with a bottle of water. He couldn't have been more than twenty, his skin darkened by the sun, his eyes suspiciously bright.

"Ms. Rivera?" he asked. "Your sister sent me. She's worried about you."

Elena laughed, and it sounded like glass breaking. "My sister's been dead for seven years."

"No," he said, confused. "I mean your other sister. Maria. She said you haven't been answering your phone."

Maria. Right. Her sister who'd just gotten divorced, who'd lost her job, who'd actually needed someone to talk to while Elena was busy playing existential crisis in paradise.

"The cable's down," Elena said, gesturing vaguely toward the balcony. "Everything's down. I've been—I've been having some trouble."

"I can see that," he said gently. "Maria says you're always welcome home. She says you don't have to figure everything out alone."

He set the water on the table and left, but not before she saw it: the same look her father used to give her, the one that said he recognized something in her he feared he'd passed down.

Elena sat on the balcony edge, her legs dangling over three stories of empty air. Below her, the Pacific stretched dark and endless. She could hear the palm fronds rustling in the wind, a whisper of all the things she hadn't written.

The orange slice from her glass had fallen to the floor. It lay there like a small, failed sun.

She picked up her phone, surprised to find she had one bar of service.

"Maria," she said when her sister answered. "I think I'm ready to come home."