The Color of Goodbye

The orange sunset bled through the kitchen window, casting everything in a sickly sweet light—the same color as the juice stains on the counter where Marcus had left his glass three mornings ago. Three days since he'd walked out, and still I was cleaning up after him.

My iPhone buzzed against the granite countertop, Sarah's name lighting up the screen for the third time today. *Are you okay?* she wanted to know. The truth was, I didn't know. The truth was, I was standing here holding a bag of fresh spinach I'd bought because he'd started that health kick, talking about running a marathon together, building a life where we'd be old and vital and still in love.

Lightning flickered across the sky, a sudden white crack that illuminated the dust motes floating in the silence. The storm was coming. Everything was coming.

I looked down at my palm, where the ink from signing the papers earlier had smudged into a dark blue stain. Divorce papers. The word still felt foreign, like a password I'd memorized but didn't truly understand. Twenty years together, dissolved in an afternoon.

The refrigerator hummed, the only sound in a house that had once held so much noise—arguments about money, late-night whispers about our dreams, the rhythmic creak of our bedframe, the laughter that had grown thinner over time, stretched until something snapped.

Outside, thunder rolled. The first heavy drops of rain began to fall, drumming against the roof like fingers, like the way Marcus used to tap his foot when he was anxious, before he learned to hide it, before he learned to hide everything.

I dropped the spinach into the trash can. It landed with a soft thud, joining the orange rinds and coffee grounds and all the other remnants of meals we'd never eat together again. The phone buzzed again—Sarah, persistent as ever.

This time, I answered.

"I'm fine," I said, and for the first time, it wasn't completely a lie. The storm had finally broken.