The Lightning Season

Mara sat at the kitchen table, the storm outside pressing against the windows like a memory trying to break in. On the table sat a single orange, its bright skin discordant against the gray light filtering through the rain-streaked glass. She had bought it three days ago, when she still believed in small gestures.

David stood at the counter, his back to her. He was making coffee with the same mechanical precision he used for everything now—since the layoff, since the fifth month of job rejections, since he'd started moving through their apartment like a zombie inhabiting his own life. She watched him in the reflection of the darkened window, a ghost inhabiting the husk of her husband.

"David," she said. The name felt foreign in her mouth, like speaking in a language she'd once known but hadn't used in years. He didn't turn.

The first bolt of lightning cracked the sky, white and brutal. For a second, everything in the kitchen was seared into clarity: the dust on the windowsill, the half-peeled orange, David's hollowed face as he finally turned. In that flash, she saw how much weight he'd lost, how his clothes hung wrong on his frame, how he'd been disappearing so gradually she hadn't noticed until there was almost nothing left.

"I'm leaving," she said, and the words were easier than she'd expected. "Not because of the money. Because you're not here anymore. You haven't been here for months."

Another lightning strike, closer this time. The thunder followed, shaking the floor beneath her feet. David's expression didn't change, but something in his eyes shifted—recognition, perhaps, or the first flicker of something alive behind the dead calm he'd been wearing like armor.

"I know," he said, finally speaking. His voice sounded unused. "I've been waiting for you to say it."

Mara peeled the rest of the orange, her fingers leaving small cuts in the zest. She divided it into sections, placed half on a napkin, and slid it across the table toward him. The storm raged outside, but inside, something had finally broken open. They would both survive this, she realized. They would just have to do it separately.