The Last Supper

Emma smoothed the fabric of her father's fedora, her thumb tracing the worn sweatband where his name was written in fading cursive. He'd died three weeks ago, leaving her with an apartment full of things she couldn't sort through and a blood test result she couldn't face.

"You need to take your vitamin D supplements," Sarah had told her that morning, sliding a bottle across the desk. Sarah, who treated their shared office like a battlefield. Last month, Sarah had launched what everyone called her "bull in a china shop" campaign to restructure the department, but Emma knew it was really just bullying disguised as leadership.

Emma set the hat on her father's kitchen table. His lasagna pan sat in the sink, crusty with three days of hardened cheese. She'd promised herself she'd clean it out today.

The phone buzzed. Her doctor's office.

"Ms. Chen, we need to discuss your latest results. The vitamin B12 deficiency is more significant than we initially—"

Emma hung up. She opened the refrigerator. There was spinach, wilting in the crisper drawer. Her father had bought it, convinced it would help his memory. It hadn't.

She stood in his kitchen, wearing her father's hat now, and realized she'd been waiting for permission to grieve. For permission to be scared. For permission to admit that Sarah's workplace terrorism was breaking her, that her health was crumbling, that forty-two felt too young to feel this old.

The spinach went into the pan with olive oil and garlic. She watched it wilt, surrendering to the heat, becoming something new. Her father had taught her that cooking was transformation—taking what's given and making it nourishing.

Emma took off the hat and set it on the counter. She dialed the doctor back. Then she drafted her resignation letter to send to Sarah.

Some things, she decided, needed to be faced head-on. Like a bull.

And some things needed to be cooked slowly, with patience and heat, until they became something you could actually swallow.