The Cost of Thunder

Miranda stood on the balcony of her forty-second floor apartment, watching the storm carve the Chicago sky into jagged pieces. Lightning struck somewhere over the lake, a white scar that momentarily revealed the truth of her marriage: it had ended three years ago, neither of them willing to speak the words.

"You're going to fall out there," David said from behind her. He sounded like he always did now—tired, careful, as if she were something fragile that might break if he spoke too loudly.

"The dog needs to go out," she said, though Barnaby was asleep at David's feet, the old retriever's chin resting on David's slipper. The dog had chosen sides, or perhaps simply chosen whoever stayed home more.

Another flash of lightning. This time she counted. One thousand one, one thousand two—thunder shook the glass doors. She remembered the night they'd met, a decade ago at that terrible office party, how she'd dragged him onto the dance floor while her boss shouted something about the bull market and bonuses that never came. They'd been drunk on possibility then, on the terrifying electric certainty that they could be something extraordinary together.

"Miranda." David's voice had that note she'd come to dread—the one that meant he was about to say something he'd rehearsed. "I got the offer. The one in Austin."

She turned. He was holding something behind his back, and she knew before he showed her. An orange. Always an orange in the mornings, even when groceries were tight, even when the layoff notices went around and everyone pretended not to look at each other in the elevator. It was their thing.

"I know," she said. "I saw the email."

"I didn't want—" He stopped. The dog lifted his head, sensing something, then settled back down. Some animals knew when a pack was fracturing. "I didn't want it to be like this."

"How did you think it would be?" She was surprised by her own calm. "That we'd just keep existing in this apartment, with our dog and our oranges and our Sunday mornings, until one of us died?"

Lightning closer now. The thunder came almost immediately.

"We could try," he said, and she saw it then—the bull-headedness that had made her fall in love with him, the same quality that had slowly, steadily driven them apart. He was offering her the choice he should have offered three years ago, before the silence became the only language they spoke.

"No," she said. "We couldn't."

He nodded once, something like relief breaking across his face. The orange sat on the counter between them, impossibly bright against the gray storm light. Outside, the rain began in earnest, washing the city clean or perhaps just washing it away—she couldn't tell the difference anymore.