The Last Supper at Giza

The hotel room in Cairo had a bathtub that wouldn't drain properly. Sarah stood in three inches of lukewarm water, watching spinach leaves float between her ankles like abandoned lily pads. She'd been trying to make herself dinner—sautéed spinach with garlic, their mother's recipe—but her hands had started shaking somewhere between the rinsing and the chopping.

Now the spinach was ruined, floating in bathwater instead of sizzling in olive oil, and somewhere in the next room, David was probably explaining to their children why Mommy needed a few minutes alone.

They'd come to Egypt to save their marriage, or at least that's what the marriage counselor had suggested. "Do something epic together," she'd said. "Reconnect through wonder."

Instead, they'd spent three days snapping at each other in hotel lobbies and refusing to acknowledge what they both knew: their fifteen-year partnership had been slowly eroding for years, and no amount of breathtaking ancient architecture could paper over the cracks.

Sarah stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in a thin hotel towel. Through the window, the Great Pyramid glowed amber against the indigo sky—a monument to eternal love, or at least eternal ego. Khufu had built his masterpiece so his name would echo through millennia. David had built their life together on a foundation of unspoken resentments and convenient silences.

"Sarah?" David's voice through the door. "The kids are asking if you're okay."

She thought about the spinach—how something so vibrant and nourishing could turn slimy and unappealing with just a little too much heat. How their love, once so fresh and green, had wilted under years of pressure and disappointment.

"I'm fine," she called back. "Just tired."

Tomorrow they would walk around the pyramids, take family photos, pretend this vacation had fixed something. But tonight, Sarah knew, she would pack her suitcase. The water in the tub would eventually drain away, leaving behind only a ring of residue where something alive had once been.