The Dead Season

The office had been dead for weeks. Elena moved through the corridors like a zombie, her commute reduced to muscle memory, her conversations reduced to scripts. At 42, she'd mastered the art of appearing engaged while her mind wandered to more pressing matters: whether to leave Michael, whether to sell the house, whether this was all there was.

She noticed it first in the restroom mirror—a single strand of silver hair, coarse and defiant among the dyed brown. Her mother's hair had started turning at thirty-eight. Genetics as countdown clock.

"You're distracted," Michael had said that morning, not looking up from his coffee. "Always somewhere else."

The accusation hung between them like smoke. He wasn't wrong. Elena's thoughts had been wandering to Nathan, the new senior partner—a fox in every sense. Sharp, predatory, impossibly charismatic. He'd caught her crying in the stairwell yesterday after the merger announcement. His hand on her shoulder had lingered. His smile had promised understanding.

But promises were cheap.

She drove to the lake house instead of home. The pond was choked with algae, the goldfish bloated and sluggish, surfacing briefly like forgotten thoughts before sinking back into murk. She'd bought them on impulse five years ago, some desperate bid for domestic tranquility. Now they just existed.

Her phone buzzed. Nathan: "Want to grab a drink? Discuss the transition."

Elena watched a real fox slip through the backyard, russet and impossibly graceful. It moved like it belonged, unlike her. She felt suddenly, violently sick of transition, of the constant state of becoming something else.

The baseball from her father's last game sat on the mantel, signed by players whose names she'd forgotten. He'd died believing she'd made something of herself. She had, technically. Six figures, corner office, the kind of exhaustion that felt like achievement.

Her zombie days had started in that office. Maybe it was time to stop walking through other people's scripted lives.

Elena typed back: "No. But thank you."

Then she called Michael. "I'm coming home. We need to talk."

"About what?"

"About not being dead anymore."