Storm Theory

Margot sat on her balcony watching the lightning split the sky above downtown Minneapolis, counting the seconds until thunder shook her wine glass. One, two, three—enough distance to be safe, close enough to feel alive.

"You're doing that thing again," David said from the living room. He didn't look up from his phone. "The storm thing. You always get philosophical when there's lightning."

"It's not philosophical. It's statistical."

"It's coping, Margot. That's what it is."

She took a sip of cheap Pinot and thought about the bottle of prenatal vitamins hidden in her nightstand, the ones she'd started taking three months ago when they'd decided to try for a baby. The ones she hadn't told him about stopping last week, after the specialist appointment she'd scheduled without telling him either.

The cat—a stray calico that had adopted them two years ago—jumped onto the railing, fearless. Margot reached out to stroke her back, but the cat recoiled, hissing at something invisible in the dark.

"Even the cat knows something's wrong," David said, finally looking up. "You've been different since the appointment. What did they say?"

Margot set her glass down harder than she intended. The wine rippled like a small storm.

"They said it's not happening, David. They said it's not going to happen. Not naturally, not with help, probably not at all. And they asked about my family history, the cancer patterns, the heart stuff. They asked why I never mentioned my mother died at forty-two." She paused. "They asked why you weren't at the appointment."

"I had that meeting—"

"The meeting that was more important than knowing whether we can have children? That meeting?"

A flash of lightning illuminated his face—annoyed, defensive, already checking his phone again.

"You're being dramatic. We can explore other options. There's always—"

"There's always what? Always someone else's biological material? Always adoption applications that take years? Always what, David?"

The cat jumped into her lap finally, purring against her stomach like she knew.

"I'm done waiting for storms to pass," Margot said, standing up. "I'm done thinking lightning illuminates anything worth seeing."

"What does that mean?"

She thought about the vitamins she'd flushed yesterday. She thought about the specialist's gentle suggestion that maybe they weren't trying for the right reasons—maybe to save a marriage that had been failing since before they'd even moved in together.

"It means," she said, "that I'm not taking vitamins for a garden I'm not planting anymore."

The thunder rattled the balcony doors as she walked back inside, the cat following at her heels like she'd been waiting for this moment all along.