The Color of Goodbye

Elena stood in the produce aisle, her cart half-full of things she didn't particularly want to eat. The fluorescent lights hummed above her, the same sterile song they'd been singing for three years now—since Tom's diagnosis, since his death, since she'd learned to shop for one.

She reached for a bag of spinach, her fingers pausing mid-air. Tom had hated spinach. Called it "grass clippings for people who've given up." She'd started buying it anyway, a small rebellion against the ghost of his opinion that still lived in her kitchen, in her bed, in the silence between her thoughts.

"Excuse me," a voice said behind her.

Elena turned to find a man in his sixties, wearing a crushed fedora the color of burnt orange. The hat was absurd, anachronistic, somehow perfect. He gestured to the spinach display.

"Do you know if this is any good? My wife wants me to make that salad she likes, but I keep buying the wrong kind."

Something tightened in Elena's chest. Tom had worn a hat like that, once, to a Halloween party years ago. He'd gone as a detective from some noir film she'd never seen. The orange fabric had made his skin look warm, alive. The last time she'd seen him, he'd been pale, translucent, the color leeched out of him by treatments and time.

"The organic," she heard herself say. "She'll want the organic. The other kind is too bitter."

The man nodded, grateful, and placed the bag in his cart. "Thank you. She's particular about these things. I keep telling her we could just order takeout, but she says fresh vegetables matter."

Elena watched him walk away, the orange hat bobbing above the aisles like a small sun. She looked down at her hand, still hovering over the spinach. Her fingers were shaking.

She dropped the bag into her cart and moved toward the oranges, her chest burning with something that wasn't quite grief anymore. Something harder, something with teeth. She selected the brightest one, its skin taut and perfect, and brought it to her nose. It smelled like sunshine, like the mornings Tom used to make her breakfast, like the days when she still believed they had forever.

The man with the orange hat was gone by the time she reached the checkout. But as she placed her items on the belt—spinach, oranges, a bottle of wine—Elena found herself smiling, just a little. The ghost in her kitchen would have to adjust. Tonight, she would eat her grass clippings, and she would enjoy them, and she would learn again what it meant to choose for herself.

The sky through the automatic doors was the color of burnt orange as she walked to her car, carrying her small bag of groceries like an offering to whoever she was becoming.