The Last Supper at Santorini's

Maggie's spinach salad lay wilting on the white tablecloth, the delicate leaves already turning slimy from the dressing. She hadn't touched it. Neither had she touched her phone, though it buzzed every three minutes like a dying heart monitor—Richard calling, Richard texting, Richard's lawyer calling.

"You're being dramatic," he'd said that morning, his voice already drifting away from her even as he stood in their bedroom packing a suitcase. "This is just... we need space. You know how the market's been. The bull run can't last forever, and neither can we."

He always talked about their marriage like it was a stock option—something to be leveraged, something that could crash or rally depending on forces beyond their control. Never mind that she'd found the receipts. Never mind that the woman's perfume still clung to his shirtsuits.

The restaurant around her hummed with conversations she couldn't quite make out. Couples leaning toward each other over candlelit tables. Young professionals in expensive blazers laughing too loudly. And here she sat, thirty-eight years old, realizing she was about to become that woman—the one whose husband leaves her for someone younger, someone without stretch marks, someone whose hair still smelled like coconut shampoo instead of baby formula and sleeplessness.

Her phone lit up again. Not Richard this time. Her mother. MAGGIE, HONEY, RICHARD'S MOTHER CALLED. SHE SAYS HE'S MOVING IN WITH THAT GIRL FROM THE FIRM. THE TWENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD. SWEETIE, ARE YOU OKAY?

Maggie reached up and pulled a single gray hair from her temple, watching it catch the light before letting it fall onto her untouched spinach. She'd found the first one the morning after Emma's third birthday party, when Richard had disappeared to take a work call and come back smelling like vanilla and desperation. That was two years ago. There were more now. A whole constellation of them.

She signaled for the check.

The phone buzzed again. Richard: PLEASE ANSWER. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT THE HOUSE. THE OFFER ON THE HOUSE.

Maggie left the spinach salad untouched, left the restaurant, left her phone ringing on the table as she walked out into the cold October wind. She'd get a new phone. She'd dye her hair. She'd sell the house herself and keep every goddamn cent. The market might crash, but she wouldn't.