The Lightning Split

The padel court echoed with the sharp *thwack* of racquet against ball, a rhythm that had become the soundtrack of Elena's Wednesday evenings. She sat on the bench, watching her husband David play doubles with Sarah—twenty-five, athletic, and increasingly the reason David's post-match showers ran longer than usual.

Outside, lightning fractured the sky, illuminating the indoor court in strobe flashes that made everyone look frozen, caught in moments they couldn't take back. Elena's phone buzzed. Her therapist's reminder: *Don't forget your vitamin D. Seasonal affective disorder thrives in denial.*

"Game point!" David called out, his voice tight with that competitive edge Elena used to find sexy. Now it just sounded like he was trying to prove something—to himself, to Sarah, maybe to both of them.

"You're coming home with us, right?" Sarah asked, leaning against the chain-link fence, her ponytail somehow perfect even after three sets. "Max has been waiting for you all day."

Max. Their golden retriever, who'd developed a habit of sitting by the door whenever David left, who'd started whimpering in his sleep. Last week, Elena had found David's phone open to a text from Sarah: *Can't stop thinking about that game.*

Vitamin D. That's what they'd started calling it—the pretense that everything was normal. David taking vitamins for "energy," Sarah's "friendship" framed as something healthy and necessary. Elena swallowing her own pills—wellbutrin, magnesium, anything to make the mornings bearable.

"Elena?" David was looking at her. "You okay?"

The lightning struck closer now, thunder rattling the court's metal roof. She thought about the vitamins in her bathroom cabinet, about Max waiting at home, about how three years of marriage could dissolve in the space of a padel match.

"I'm fine," she said, standing up. "But I think Max needs a walk. Alone."

She left them there—David and Sarah, racquets in hand, suspended in that electric moment before everything changed. Outside, the rain finally broke, and Elena stepped into it, feeling clean for the first time in months.