The Lightning Grounded

Mara stood in the shadow of the swaying **palm**, its fronds illuminated by distant **lightning** that fractured the night sky over Santa Monica. She held the severed coaxial **cable** in her hand, the copper wire exposed like an artery.

Three hours earlier, her boss had called—the same man who'd promised her the promotion, then given it to his nephew. "You'll just have to **bear** with us, Mara. Budget cuts."

The beach was nearly empty. Just the rhythmic crash of waves and her own footsteps, **running** harder than she had in years. Her sandals were somewhere behind her, abandoned near the Venice Beach sign.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. Mark. Always Mark.

She'd been seeing him for six months— dinners that turned into breakfasts, conversations about everything and nothing. He wanted her to move in. She'd said she needed time.

"The truth is," she'd told him last week, "I don't know what I'm doing with my life. I'm thirty- seven and I'm still installing cable for a living."

"There's nothing wrong with honest work," he'd said, but she'd heard the hesitation. The unspoken: *honest work that doesn't pay enough for the life we want.*

More lightning. Closer this time. The air tasted of ozone and impending rain.

She looked down at the cable in her hand. Someone's connection, severed in the wind. She could fix it. She was good at fixing things—connections, signals, other people's problems.

"Just bear with it," she whispered to herself. "Just keep running."

But her feet were rooted now. The distant thunder rolled like the sound of all the things she'd never said to anyone.

The phone buzzed again. Mark again.

This time, she answered.

"I'm scared," she said, as the first drops began to fall, as the palm tree swayed above her like a witness to her undoing. "I'm scared that if I stop running, I'll realize I've been running in the wrong direction."

"Then don't stop," he said. "Just turn around."