The Last Supper

The cabin was supposed to save us. That was the joke, wasn't it? That distance from the city could somehow bridge the distance between two people who'd forgotten how to look at each other.

I found his iPhone on the kitchen counter while he was out gathering wood. It buzzed—her name lighting up the screen like an accusation. Maya. Not the Maya from his office, but another one, younger, with hair that fell in waves I'd paid three hundred dollars to replicate last month, sitting in a salon chair while the stylist asked if I was going on a vacation.

"Just trying something new," I'd said, fingering the vitamin D supplements in my purse. Dr. Miller had recommended them after my blood work came back deficient. "You're not a young woman anymore," he'd said, and I'd wanted to scream that thirty-seven wasn't ancient, that I still ran marathons, that my body could still do things.

Outside, the wind howled. Something moved at the edge of the treeline—a bear, massive and dark, watching me through the glass. We'd been warned about them at the rental office. Keep your food sealed. Don't make eye contact. They're more afraid of you than you are of them.

The bear didn't look afraid. It looked hungry. Or maybe just lonely.

I opened the messages. There weren't many—just enough. Plans to meet. A hotel downtown. "She doesn't suspect anything, does she?" Maya had written. His response: "She's too busy with her vitamins and her hair appointments. She doesn't see anything."

The bear stepped closer, its nose pressed against the glass now. I could see the huff of its breath fogging the windowpane.

I set the phone down carefully, precisely, on the counter. Took the bottle of vitamins from my purse. Opened the back door and walked out into the cold, the bear's eyes following me as I scattered them across the snow—tiny white pills that were supposed to fix what was broken inside me.

"Here," I said to the bear. "They didn't work anyway."

It turned and walked away into the trees, and I stood there until David came back with an armful of wood, asking why I was standing in the snow without a coat.

"Just looking," I said. "Just trying to see."