The Lightning We Ate

Mara stood at the kitchen counter, forcing wilted spinach into her mouth like penance. Behind her, David moved with the heavy deliberation of someone packing for a trip he'd already decided to take. Their anniversary dinner sat cooling on the stove—orange glazed salmon, now the color of a fading bruise.

"You're really going?" she asked, though his duffel bag was answer enough.

"I don't see another choice." David's voice was flat, worn smooth by three months of this same circular argument. "We've been eating each other alive, Mara."

Outside, lightning fractured the sky—a sudden, violent white that illuminated the dust motes dancing in the silence between them. For a moment, she saw him clearly: the gray at his temples, the way his shoulders curved inward as if protecting something fragile.

"Remember," she said quietly, "when we used to lie in bed during storms and guess how many miles away the lightning was?"

David paused, his hand hovering over his keys. "We were different people then."

"No." Mara swallowed the bitter spinach. "We just stopped counting."

The storm broke then. Rain drummed against the windows like applause for a performance they'd both forgotten they were performing. David reached for the door handle, then stopped. Something in the way the orange light from the streetlamp caught his profile—a flash of the man she'd fallen in love with seven years ago, before compromise had calcified into resentment.

"Mara—"

"The spinach is from your garden," she said suddenly. "The one you planted when you said you wanted to put down roots."

He turned. For the first time that evening, really looked at her. She saw the war behind his eyes—the exhaustion warring with something stubborn and hopeful that refused to die.

Lightning struck again, closer this time. The power flickered. In that darkness, something shifted. Not resolution—adults rarely got those—but an acknowledgment. They were both still here, still hungry, still terrible at knowing when to leave well enough alone.

"I heated the salmon," David said finally, setting down his keys. "But I didn't make the orange sauce."

Mara almost smiled. "Start over?"

"Yeah," he said, not moving toward her, but not moving toward the door either. "Start over."