The Dinner Party

Margaret stood at the kitchen counter, chopping spinach with rhythmic precision. The green leaves fell like tiny surrender flags. In the dining room, David's laughter rang out — that too-loud laugh he'd perfected over six years of dinner parties, six years of being the couple everyone wanted to be.

"You're the architect," Sarah had told her yesterday at lunch. "You built this life. You can unbuild it."

Sarah wasn't really her friend anymore. Not since the incident at the Christmas party, when Margaret had drunkenly announced she was leaving David, then showed up the next morning with a fresh manicure and a story about stress-induced confusion. Sarah's look had said everything: *You're not ready.*

The spinach went into the salad bowl. David's brother was coming over with his new girlfriend — some twenty-something who probably thought quinoa was a lifestyle choice, not a carbohydrate. Margaret had spent three hours preparing.

She remembered swimming in Lake Superior last summer, how the cold had shocked her breath away. How she'd floated on her back, watching the sky turn from blue to orange to purple, wondering what it would feel like to just keep floating, to let the water take her somewhere else. Anywhere else.

David appeared in the doorway, holding two wine glasses. "Everything okay?"

"Fine," she said. "Just finishing up."

He studied her for a moment — really looked at her, which was new. Or maybe she'd just stopped noticing.

"You seem... different lately."

"I'm thirty-eight, David. Everyone seems different at thirty-eight."

That night, after David's brother left and the dishes were done, they sat on the back porch. A fox appeared at the edge of the yard — a sleek rust-colored shape moving through the shadows. It paused, watching them with intelligent eyes.

"Beautiful," David whispered.

"Yes," Margaret said. "Wild things are."

The fox vanished into the darkness. She finished her wine and set the glass down gently. The spinach salad was gone. The dinner party was over. Something in her chest unclenched, finally, like a fist opened after years.

"David," she said. "We need to talk."