The Last Supper at Giovanni's

The goldfish in the tank near our table kept swimming in endless circles, oblivious to the conversation that would end our marriage. I watched its translucent gills pulse—open, close, open, close—while Elena picked at her spinach risotto, the same dish she'd ordered every anniversary for seventeen years.

"You're like a sphinx," I said, the words leaving my mouth before I could stop them. "All those riddles, and you never let me solve any of them."

She looked up then, and I noticed something I hadn't allowed myself to see before. A single strand of silver hair at her temple, glinting under the restaurant's warm lights. When had that appeared? In all the years I'd stopped really seeing her, had she been quietly transforming?

"You knew what I was when you married me, David." Her voice was tired, not angry. That was worse somehow. "I never pretended to be an open book."

"No. You were a fox then—clever, beautiful, wild. I thought I could tame you. I thought that's what love was."

She laughed, a dry sound that crumbled between us like old bread. "And now? Now you just want someone who'll give you straight answers. Someone simple."

Outside, rain began to streak the window, distorting the streetlights into blurry watercolors. A homeless man walked by with a cart piled high with black plastic bags—his entire life, exposed and drowning.

"I'm leaving," Elena said, and it wasn't a threat. It was a statement of fact, like the weather. "I've already found a place."

The goldfish bumped its nose against the glass, trapped in its invisible cage.

"Will you be happy?" I asked, though I already knew the answer had stopped being mine to know.

She stood up, smoothed her dress, and for a moment I saw the young woman I'd fallen for, bright and impossible as a comet. Then she was just Elena again, fifty-one years old and finally, terrifyingly, free.

"I don't know," she said. "But I'll finally find out."

She left me with the check and the goldfish and the spinach risotto congealing on my plate, and somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed like the sound of something ending that should have ended years ago.