Palm to Palm

The vitamin bottle sat on Elena's desk like an accusation. She'd started taking them three months ago, after the miscarriage, after Richard started coming home late smelling of hospital corridors. The label promised wellness. Elena was beginning to think wellness was just expensive失望.

"You're eating spinach again," Richard said, not looking up from his phone. Their Tuesday dinners had become a liturgy of silent chewing and questions met with monosyllables. Elena had started researching corporate espionage the way other women researched divorce lawyers.

"It's good for iron," she said, watching his thumb scroll past something he didn't want her to see.

She'd followed him yesterday—to a gleaming office building downtown, watched him meet a woman with palms that lingered too long on his forearm when they shook hands. Elena wasn't stupid. She knew what she looked like: thirty-eight, tired, carrying ten extra pounds of grief, married to a man who had forgotten how to look her in the eye.

The spy across from her—because that's what he was, wasn't he?—had stopped pretending to eat. Richard's phone buzzed. He ignored it.

"Elena—"

"Don't." She stood up, her chair scraping against the hardwood. "Just tell me one thing. Was she worth it?"

"There's no she." His voice cracked. "I'm losing my job. The pharmaceutical company—I've been leaking evidence about their new vitamin supplement. It's causing liver damage. I've been meeting with a journalist."

The room tilted. Elena thought of the vitamins in her bathroom cabinet, the ones Richard had bought her.

"The ones you gave me—"

"Placebos." Richard reached across the table, palm up. "I couldn't let you take them. I couldn't tell you why I was really downtown. I signed an NDA. Elena, I've been carrying this alone for six months."

She looked at his palm—the lifeline she'd traced so many times, the callus from his wedding band that had never worn down. The weight between them wasn't another woman. It was conscience, it was sacrifice, it was a man who'd chosen integrity over his career and couldn't protect his wife from the fallout.

Elena sat back down. She reached out, palm to palm, and laced her fingers through his.

"We'll bear it," she said. "Together."

Richard's shoulders shook once. Then he squeezed her hand, finally meeting her eyes. "Together."

The spinach was cold. The vitamins were probably unnecessary anyway. But Elena had never felt more nourished in her life.