The Chemistry of Goodbye

Mara stood in the doorway of what had been their apartment, her palm pressed against the cool brass of the knob. She was thirty-four and starting over, again. The boxes were stacked like accusations in the living room.

"You're running away," David had said, his voice that familiar mix of pity and condemnation. He'd been wearing that stupid hat she'd bought him in Barcelona—the one he swore made him look like Hemingway but actually made him look like every other man trying too hard in a coffee shop.

"I'm running toward," she'd corrected, though she wasn't sure toward what. Another city. Another job in marketing where she'd sell things people didn't need to people who couldn't afford them.

Now she stood alone, staring at the empty space where his vintage sofa had been. The morning light hit the dust motes floating in the air, each one suspended in that terrible stillness that follows a departure. She touched her pocket, felt the smooth plastic of the vitamin bottle. David's new girlfriend—yes, the one he'd sworn was just a colleague—had recommended them. "For stress," she'd said with that smug wellness that cost three hundred dollars a month in supplements.

Mara had taken them for three weeks, swallowing the bitter pills with the same obedience she'd applied to everything in their seven-year relationship. The irony wasn't lost on her: she was ingesting advice from the woman who'd helped dismantle her life, all while pretending everything was fine.

She stepped outside. The air smelled of exhaust and possibility. A palm tree swayed in the courtyard, its frond scraping against the building with a whispery persistence. It had been there when they moved in, and it would be there long after she left.

Her phone buzzed. Her mother, probably calling to ask if she'd reconsidered the divorce. To ask if she'd thought about how this would look to the family. Mara let it ring.

She got into her car, the engine starting with a reassuring growl. For the first time in years, there was no discussion about where to go, no compromise, no negotiation. She pressed her foot on the accelerator and pulled away from the curb, watching the palm tree grow smaller in the rearview mirror until it disappeared into the glare of morning.

The vitamins sat in her pocket like tiny anchors, but she left them there. Some things, she was learning, you didn't swallow—you simply outgrew them.