The Color of Goodbye

Maria sat alone at the kitchen table, pushing cold spinach around her plate with a fork. Six months since David left, and she still couldn't bring herself to cook portions for one. The refrigerator remained stocked with his favorites—leafy greens he'd insisted were essential for longevity, oranges he'd peel with surgeon-like precision, leaving no pith behind.

She pressed her palm against the cold windowpane. Outside, the Florida rain battered against the glass, blurring the world beyond. Their retirement paradise had become her prison of memories. David had chosen this house with its vaulted ceilings and tropical landscaping. "Something to look forward to," he'd said, while secretly planning his exit strategy.

The realtor would arrive in an hour. Maria had already packed what remained of their twenty-three years together. His golf clubs and Hawaiian shirts were gone. She'd kept only his orange pocketknife, the one he used to peel fruit during their Sunday breakfasts on the lanai.

Her phone buzzed. David's name on the screen still made her breath catch. "Thinking of you," the text read, followed by an emoji she couldn't quite identify. A heart? A palm tree?

Maria dropped the phone on the table. She remembered their last dinner together—the spinach salad he'd barely touched, the way he'd studied her face as if committing it to memory, his confession: "I need to find myself before I lose myself completely."

What he'd really meant: I met someone else during that conference in Boca Raton. She learned later from mutual friends—thirty-two, chiropractor, loved sunrise yoga. Everything Maria wasn't.

The realtor's knock came precisely on schedule. Maria opened the door, smoothing her dress, suddenly aware of the spinach residue in her teeth. She'd forgotten to brush after that abandoned lunch.

"Ms. Hernandez?" The realtor extended her hand. "I'm sorry about the rain. Always happens this time of year."

Maria accepted the handshake. Her palm tingled from the contact, a reminder that she could still feel something beyond anger and betrayal.

"Shall we?" Maria gestured toward the empty living room.

As the realtor began her script about market value and comparable sales, Maria's hand drifted to her pocket where the orange knife sat cold against her thigh. She remembered David's voice, the morning he'd left: "You'll be fine, Maria. You're stronger than you know."

She hated that he was right.