The Last Call

Maggie had been running for three weeks—running from the conversation, running from the truth, running from the way Marcus looked at her across the dinner table like she was already a ghost. Tonight, the running stopped.

She sat in their car in the grocery store parking lot, the engine cooling, the orange of the sunset bleeding across the dashboard like a wound. Her iphone buzzed in the cupholder where she'd tossed it an hour ago. Marcus's name lit up the screen again.

Thirty-seven missed calls.

Maggie picked up the phone, her thumb hovering over the screen. The orange light shifted to twilight gray. She thought about how Marcus had bought her this phone after her promotion, how proud he'd been. How she'd stopped telling him about her days somewhere around month six of the marriage.

The phone buzzed again. A text this time: "I know you're at the store. I know you bought wine. I know you're not coming back."

Maggie's chest hollowed out. She hadn't bought wine. She'd bought oranges—four of them, perfect and heavy in her hands. She'd stood in the produce section remembering how Marcus made fresh squeezed juice on Sunday mornings, back when Sunday mornings meant something.

She wasn't running anymore. She was sitting in a parked car with four oranges and a husband who knew her better than she knew herself.

The phone lit up once more. Another text: "The juice is cold. Come home."

Maggie started the engine. The oranges rolled across the passenger seat as she pulled out of the parking lot, heading toward the one place she wasn't sure she belonged anymore, toward the man who'd spent forty days waiting for her to stop running from a marriage she'd forgotten how to want.

The orange sunset deepened to purple behind her. Some running ends when you cross a finish line. Some running ends when you finally turn around.