The Lightning Wire

The third time our cable cut out during the championship game, Mark threw the remote. It shattered against the television screen, a spectacular explosion of plastic and batteries that should have surprised me more than it did.

"Your dog's whining again," he said, not looking at me.

"She's terrified of storms." I retrieved the remote pieces while thunder rattled the windowpane. Outside, lightning fractured the sky—a terrible, beautiful white flash that illuminated our living room like an autopsy room. In that stark light, I saw what I'd been ignoring for months: Mark's hollow cheeks, my own defensive posture, the way we'd arranged ourselves on opposite ends of the couch like strangers on a bus.

"Just call the cable company," he said, already reaching for his phone. "We're missing the game."

"Mark, we're missing everything."

My sister's cat, now living with us since her divorce, jumped onto the coffee table and knocked over Mark's beer. He didn't flinch. The cat—something impossibly elegant named Mrs. Dalloway—circled the spreading puddle, then settled into the space between us.

"That animal hates me," Mark said.

"She doesn't hate you. She's just... present. Unlike some people."

The dog whimpered from the kitchen. I went to her, burying my face in her terrified, warm fur. She smelled like thunderstorms and loyalty. When I looked up, Mark was standing in the doorway, phone still in hand, screen dark.

"Are we doing this?" he asked. "Having this conversation now?"

"The cable's out, Mark. The game's over. What else are we going to do?"

He looked at the television, black and silent as a coffin. At the cat, now licking beer from the table. At the dog, pressed against my leg like she could hold me together.

"I don't know," he said quietly. "I don't know what comes next."

Lightning struck again, closer this time. The power died completely, plunging us into darkness. Somewhere in that black room, between the scared dog and the indifferent cat and the man I'd loved but somehow stopped seeing, I heard something shift. Not in the storm—something inside me, final as a door closing.

"We'll call the cable company in the morning," I said into the dark. "We'll get everything fixed."

But I knew I was lying. Some things, once broken, can't be reconnected.