The Electric Season

The storm broke just as Mara finished packing—lightning cracking the sky open like a poorly kept secret. She watched the flash illuminate the apartment she'd shared with David for seven years, catching dust motes in that split second of brilliance. Somewhere in the chaos, the cat, Barnaby, stirred from his perch atop the refrigerator and let out a mournful yowl.

'Don't look at me like that,' she told him. 'You're the one who stopped sleeping through the night three months ago.'

Barnaby only blinked, his fur already static-charged from the rising atmospheric pressure. David had always sworn the cat could sense weather shifts before they happened, some preternatural barometer in feline form. Now Mara wondered if Barnaby had been sensing something else entirely—the slow dissolution of a marriage, the way affection had curdled into something like tolerance, then

indifference.

She paused before the bathroom mirror. Her hair, once the color of autumn leaves, had begun its gradual surrender to gray at David's mother's funeral two years ago. He'd stopped noticing the small

changes then—how she switched from whole milk to almond, how she abandoned her daily vitamin D regimen when depression made even the smallest rituals feel impossible. He'd stopped asking

how her day went. She'd stopped expecting him to.

Outside, another lightning strike, closer this time. The power flickered and died, leaving her in the gray half-light of emergency. Perfect timing. David would return from his conference in Chicago tomorrow to find her gone, the apartment stripped of her presence like a ribcage stripped of its organs.

The cat wound through her legs, purring against the

emptiness. 'You'll like it at Sarah's,' she promised. 'She's got those windows you like. And actual sunshine.'

She placed the bottle of vitamins she'd resumed taking last week into her carry-on—a small declaration of intent. For the first time in years, she wanted to be well, whatever that meant now. The storms would pass. That was the thing about

lightning—it changed everything, and then it was gone.