The Last Supper

Margaret's iphone lay on the countertop like a dead thing, its dark screen reflecting her own hollowed face. David's final text had arrived three hours ago: *I can't do this anymore. I'm sorry.* No explanation. No goodbye. Just five years evaporated in twenty-seven words.

She chopped spinach with mechanical precision, the knife's rhythm her only tether to sanity. The green leaves wilted under her touch, surrendering like everything else in this godforsaken apartment. Outside, lightning fractured the sky — sudden, violent, beautiful. Each flash illuminated the half-empty boxes stacked by the door, the shadows where his furniture used to be, the cat watching her with judgmental yellow eyes.

"What are you looking at?" she whispered to Barnaby, who had been David's anniversary gift three years ago. The cat blinked slowly, unimpressed by her melodrama.

The spinach sizzled in the pan, releasing memories of dinners they'd cooked together — laughter over burnt garlic, wine spilled on the rug, the way he'd wrap his arms around her waist as she stirred. Now the kitchen felt cavernous. She plated the wilted greens alone, fork trembling in her hand.

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The thunder followed like a sob wrung from the sky. Margaret's iphone lit up with a new notification: her sister asking if she was okay. She couldn't answer. What could she say? That she was thirty-seven and starting over? That love was a lie and she should have known?

Barnaby jumped onto the table, tail twitching, and sniffed at her plate. Margaret slid it toward him, watching him devour the spinach with enthusiastic indifference. The cat ate what she couldn't stomach.

"Lucky bastard," she murmured. "You don't have to pretend everything's fine."

The storm raged outside, but inside, something quiet was breaking apart. Not suddenly like lightning — slowly, like a leaf surrendering to heat. Margaret sat alone in the kitchen's half-light, finally letting herself feel the hunger she'd been denying for years.