The Last Supper

Mara stood in the center of their kitchen, the granite cold against her palms. On the counter lay the ingredients for tonight's dinner: fresh spinach leaves still glistening with rinse water, a perfect orange rolling slightly in the draft from the open window. David's favorite meal - or what she'd believed was his favorite, before the email.

She'd meant to confront him at dinner, to demand explanations about the messages she'd found on his laptop. But then came the call from hospice.

Now she chopped mechanically, the knife sinking through spinach leaves with wet sighs. The goldfish in the bowl on the windowsink watched her with its perpetual surprise, its mouth opening and closing in silent judgment. David had won it at a carnival two years ago, that night they'd both drunk too much cheap wine and stumbled home laughing at 3 AM, certain they'd beaten the odds.

Some odds you couldn't beat.

The front door opened. David's footsteps, then his voice calling her name, tired in that way that made her chest ache even through the betrayal.

"My mother's gone," he said from the doorway, and when she turned, he was holding his father's old fedora - the hat his mother had kept pressed with lavender sachets since the funeral. His eyes were red-rimmed, stunned.

Mara set down the knife. The spinach lay in ruined green ribbons. The orange sat innocent on the cutting board. She thought about the other woman's name in his inbox, then about David's face when he'd taught her to make his mother's braised spinach, the way his voice had softened saying 'she used to make this when I was sick.'

She peeled the orange. "Sit down," she said. "Eat something."

He didn't ask why she was crying too. Some griefs run too deep for explanations, and some second chances arrive disguised as ordinary Wednesday evenings. The goldfish swam another loop around its small universe, and Mara began to cook.