The Last Supper at Sunset

Margaret wore her husband's fedora to the dinner party—a ridiculous choice, she knew, but it smelled like his pomade and cigarettes. Grief made you do strange things. Made you wear dead men's hats.

The papaya sat on the centerpiece, ripe and alien-orange, sliced open to reveal its black seeds like so many watching eyes. Ellen had bought it at some specialty market, the way she'd bought into that pyramid scheme last year—the one that left them all paying monthly fees for wellness supplements nobody wanted.

"You look like a gangster's widow," Ellen said, gesturing at the hat with her wine glass. Red Merlot sloshed dangerously.

Margaret shrugged. "Bear with me, El. It's been a month."

"A month since Richard—"

"Since the funeral," she cut in. "Since the empty chairs started showing up at dinner."

Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, a fox moved across the lawn. Orange-red against the dusk, its movements precise and unhurried. Margaret watched it pick something from the grass—a mouse, maybe—and carry it toward the treeline.

"Did you know Richard left me everything?" she said suddenly.

Ellen set down her glass. "Everything?"

"The house. The accounts. The studio downtown."

"But he said—"

"He said a lot of things."

Margaret stood up, the fox disappearing into the dark beyond the glass. She took the papaya slice from its platter, the fruit's flesh soft and yielding under her fingers.

"He told me once that life is just a pyramid of accumulated secrets," she said, sweetness blooming on her tongue. "The ones at the top crush the ones beneath them."

"Margaret, what are you saying?"

She smiled then—a sharp, surprising expression. "I'm saying Richard's pyramid collapsed. And I'm the only one left to bear the weight."

She tipped the hat forward, shadows falling across her face. The papaya tasted like guilt and new beginnings.Outside, somewhere in the darkness, the fox screamed.