The Groceries That Betrayed Me

Margaret stood in the kitchen, the hum of the refrigerator her only company. The papaya sat on the counter, its yellow-orange skin mottled with brown spots—too ripe, just like she'd become. She'd bought it yesterday because Marcus used to love it, scooping out the seeds with a silver spoon that had been a wedding gift from his mother.

The cat, Barnaby, wound around her ankles, his purr like a small motor demanding attention. He was the only one who still needed anything from her. Marcus had stopped needing anything months ago, though he'd only moved out last week.

"You're the lucky one," she told Barnaby, scratching behind his ears. "You don't have to pretend everything's normal. You can just scream for food and get it."

She turned to the spinach wilting in the colander, planned for a salad that would never happen. It had been Marcus's idea—eat healthier, start fresh, pretend their marriage wasn't already rotting from the inside out. The spinach was like her: green and pretentiously virtuous on the surface, but underneath, something was slowly turning to mush.

What had finally broken them wasn't any grand betrayal. No affairs, no screaming matches across the dinner table. It was smaller than that. It was Marcus coming home three hours late with vague explanations about traffic, or working late, or just needing to drive. It was how he'd started buying his own groceries separately, keeping them in a crisper drawer she wasn't supposed to touch. It was the way he'd look at her sometimes, eyes flat and distant, like she was a piece of furniture he'd accidentally bumped into in the dark.

The papaya's sweetness would cloy in her mouth alone. The spinach would taste bitter without him there to comment on how much better he felt, eating like this. They were props in a play that had closed months ago, and she was still backstage in costume, waiting for cues that would never come.

Barnaby meowed, sharp and demanding.

"Fine," she said, opening a can of tuna. "You get what you want. That's more than I can say for the rest of us."

She watched him eat, efficient and unapologetic, and for the first time in weeks, she felt something like envy.