The Last Supper

The cat sat on the counter, watching Elena chop spinach with the precision of a surgeon performing an autopsy. Their fifth anniversary dinner, and she was making salad.

"You're running again, aren't you?" Marcus said from the doorway. He'd been saying it for months—that she was always running, from their fights, from their future, from the life they'd built together.

"It's just spinach, Marcus." She didn't turn around. The knife made a rhythmic thwack against the wooden board. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

"It's not the spinach." He moved closer, and she could see him in her peripheral vision, still wearing his suit from the office, tie undone, that look of exhausted patience he'd perfected over the past year. "You signed the lease today. For the studio apartment in Wicker Park."

The knife stopped.

"How did you—"

"Email confirmation. Open on your tablet when you were in the shower." His voice was gentle, which was worse than angry. "You're really leaving."

Elena turned to face him. The cat, Pancake, meowed demandingly, sensing the tension like a barometric pressure drop. "We've been over this for months, Marcus. I'm not happy. You're not happy. We're just... maintaining the infrastructure of a marriage that stopped being real a long time ago."

"So you run."

"I'm not running. I'm moving forward."

"What's the difference?" He reached for her hand, and something in her chest contracted. "Elena, we used to be the kind of couple who talked about everything. Remember? Remember how we met? You were running along the lake, and I—"

"I was running from a job I hated, toward a life I thought I wanted with you." She pulled away. "People change, Marcus. You wanted stability. I bought into that, for a while. But this domestic sprawl? The cat, the condo, the organic spinach and Sunday night meal prep? It's not me. It's never been me."

Marcus stared at her for a long moment. "So who are you, then?"

She looked at the spinach, piled green and raw and uncompromising on the cutting board. "I don't know yet. But I need to find out alone."

The cat jumped down and walked toward Marcus, rubbing against his leg. He picked up Pancake absently, burying his face in the cat's fur. When he looked up, his eyes were wet.

"Okay," he said. "Okay."

Elena felt something break inside her—relief and devastating loss, all at once. The spinach still needed chopping. The anniversary dinner still needed making. Some things kept demanding attention, even when your entire life was falling apart.