Seasons of Loss

The jar of vitamins sat on the counter like a accusation. Three months' worth of daily rituals, abandoned since the funeral. Elena stared at them while the kettle screamed on the stove.

Her mother had been obsessed with supplements—vitamin D for bone health, B-complex for energy, magnesium for sleep. In the end, none of it had mattered. The cancer had spread regardless of optimal nutrient levels.

Elena's phone buzzed. A text from David: *Still up for dinner?*

She deleted it.

The apartment felt wrong without her mother's things. The baseball cap collection on the wall—her father's, each hat representing a different stadium they'd visited together—now seemed like artifacts from a civilization that had vanished. Elena's hand trembled as she filled a glass of water from the tap. She could still hear her mother's voice from the kitchen: *You need to drink more water, mija. Your skin looks like old parchment.*

But water didn't fix grief. Neither did time. Neither did David's cautious texts, checking in like she was a bomb that might detonate.

She opened the refrigerator. There, wrapped in plastic, was a bag of spinach her mother had bought two weeks ago. It had wilted into something unrecognizable—black edges, slimy leaves, a forest that had died in the crisper drawer. Just like the rest of them.

Elena grabbed the baseball cap from the hook by the door—her father's lucky Cubs cap from 2016—and put it on. It smelled like old sweat and tobacco and a father who'd left when she was seven.

She walked to the window and watched the city below. People moving, living, loving, while she stood frozen in an apartment that still held the shape of someone who no longer existed.

The water in her glass rippled. She took a breath and drank. Then she opened her phone and texted David back.

*Yes. Tonight. 7.*

The vitamins on the counter caught the afternoon light. Tomorrow, she thought. Tomorrow she'd take one. Tomorrow she'd throw away the spinach. Tomorrow she'd figure out how to be a person who kept living.

Tonight, she'd just have dinner with the only person who kept showing up.